Andie smiled too. “I just want to make a good impression. With the other guys I’ve dated, it didn’t matter. They would just have to take me as I am.”
“Wanting people to take you for who you are is not a bad attitude to have,” said Diane.
“Maybe. I have to say, I’m glad Kendel isn’t here. She’s so much more worldly than I am,” said Andie.
Diane laughed. “You’re just fine. You get quite a bit of the taste of the world just working here. He obviously thinks you’re very interesting.”
“He likes to listen. A lot of guys aren’t like that. They are all about themselves. He enjoyed hearing about my webcam project with the schools,” said Andie. “We’re having lunch here in the restaurant today.”
“Perhaps I can meet him,” said Diane, getting up from the chair.
She patted Andie on the shoulder and went to her office. She worked on the budget for the upcoming board meeting in a few days. It was after noon when she finished. Andie came in and said she was going to lunch. She nervously smoothed her dress and fluffed her hair.
“You look great,” said Diane.
“Thanks, I hope so,” she said, fingering her curls again. “There’s a guy here to see you.”
“Who is it?” asked Diane.
“Deputy Travis Conrad,” said Andie. “Shall I tell him you can meet with him?”
“Yes, definitely,” said Diane. This might work out well, she thought.
Andie showed Travis into the office. He was in his deputy uniform and carried his hat in his hand. Diane gestured to a leather chair in front of her desk and he sat down, holding his hat in his lap.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard. We had another killing-just like the Barres.”
Chapter 18
Diane sat stunned. “Another murder?” she said. “Like the Barres?” She leaned forward in her chair. “You mean. .”
“Joe and Ella Watson. Older couple, about the same age as the Barres. They lived alone,” Deputy Conrad said, nodding to her unfinished question. “They were found this morning, sitting in their dining room with their throats cut. It happened sometime last night.”
“Do you know the time of night?” Diane asked.
Travis rubbed his hands on his thighs in a nervous gesture. “No. We know very little. That’s why I’m here,” he said.
“Sheriff Conrad wants my help?” Diane had a hard time believing it.
“No. Daddy don’t know I’m here. See. .” He stopped and made a face, as if he had a sudden flash of pain. “I want to solve this,” he said, finally. “I’m talking about me solving it. I told you I want to run for sheriff. If I can solve this, Daddy and everyone else will see I’m the right man for the job. You see?”
Diane nodded. She could imagine his father still treating him like a kid. Travis had a good-looking, boyish face that he’d probably had since high school. The kind of face that aged slowly. She also imagined that the people in his county thought of him still as Sheriff Conrad’s boy.
“Trouble is,” Travis continued, “I don’t know how to collect evidence. I know, if we do manage to stumble across the killer, we’ll have to take him to court with evidence to convict him. I know how to interview folks-witnesses, you know. And I know how to collect fingerprints. But I know there’s a lot of stuff I don’t know about, like trace evidence. I also know I can learn and I’m willing, which is a lot more than can be said for some folks who want to be sheriff.”
“How do you think your father will feel about my helping?” asked Diane.
“That’s the thing,” said Travis, making a face again. “I don’t plan on telling him.”
Diane raised her eyebrows, wondering how he was going to pull that off.
“I know this sounds downright selfish,” he said, “but I was hoping you would help me, but not take credit.”
“I personally don’t care who gets credit,” said Diane. “I just want the killer caught. I’ll help, but I’m not sure what you want me to do. I can’t very well work the crime scene without your father knowing about it. You could share with me what the GBI has found and we could go over it.”
“That’s another thing. He changed his mind about calling in the GBI. His commissioner friends talked him out of it. They think, and Daddy agrees with them, that if we call in outside help, we’ll look like we can’t manage our own business. And Daddy. . well, he don’t want to admit that his method of solving crimes all these years is not good enough for something like what we got now. But, like I said, we haven’t ever had anything like this before.”
He stopped for a moment and stared at the fountain on Diane’s desk. He looked up and chuckled. “I found this book on Amazon. Now, don’t laugh. Well, I guess you’ll have to laugh. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Crime Scene Investigations. It seemed to call out my name. I think I’m going to need a little more, though.”
Diane grinned broadly. “Okay. What I can do is give you a crime scene kit and show you how to use the items in it. But what about the crime scene now? Is someone looking after it?”
“Daddy’s up there with Dr. Linden. He’s a friend Daddy called in to do the autopsy on Roy and Ozella. I’m sorry. I couldn’t convince him to get that woman you recommended for it. Dr. Linden’s been retired for about ten years, but him and Daddy’s good fishing buddies, and Daddy trusts his judgment. Linden was a family doctor for many years before he retired-he was our family doc. Before that, he had some experience with autopsies in the army. Like I said, Daddy trusts him.”
“What exactly are they afraid of in your county?” asked Diane.
“The whole county’s not like the county commissioners and my daddy. It’s just a few like them, but they happen to be in charge of the government. Lots of folks in the county have computers, iPods, and BlackBerrys. All that stuff. Especially the people that travel out of the county because of their jobs. Of course, we don’t have cell service, so some of their gadgets don’t work when they get back home to Rendell County. I hear lots of complaints about it, particularly from the younger folks.”
Travis shifted his weight in his seat. “But as to why Daddy and them are so dead set against accepting help? I’m not sure. Progress, partly. But they also don’t trust that you folks know what you’re doing. Take those finger bones, for example.”
“What about them?” said Diane. She knew she probably wouldn’t like what was coming.
“Dr. Linden said they belonged to a child, that they were too small for an adult. He put them beside his own hand and showed Daddy. Besides that, he said, they are really old. He said the marks you showed Daddy on the bones came from weathering. He’d just been on a dig-you know, archaeology stuff. That’s what he’s been doing now that he’s retired. He said they found bones that looked just like that and they had been in the ground hundreds of years. He told Daddy you probably made a mistake about the skull, since it was raining and dark and all, that kids have large heads, and you probably thought it was an adult.”
Diane was right: She didn’t like what she heard. She knitted her brow together and stared at Travis.
“Hey, I’m with you,” Travis said. “That’s why I came here to get your help. Dr. Linden, he’s a good doctor; at least, he was. When he was still in practice, he wasn’t bashful about sending you to a specialist in Atlanta if he thought you needed one. But I don’t think he knows what he’s doing here.”
“So, your father’s let Slick Massey off the hook?” said Diane.
“Not completely. Daddy got Slick to tell him where he dumped the bones. He says he threw them in the river. Daddy put him in jail overnight for illegally disposing of a body-or something like that.”
“Why did he dump the bones in the river, and why did he chase me?” asked Diane.
“He’s holding to his story about why he chased you. He’s saying you were in an accident in front of his house and he was trying to help. He said he dumped the bones because he was scared,” said Travis.
“Even if your father thinks
the bones are from a child, what is he going to do about it?” asked Diane.
“Well, because of what Doc Linden said, Daddy thinks they are so old that Slick couldn’t have had anything to do with it. So I guess nothing,” said Travis. “Right now, we’ve got our hands full with the murders. I told Daddy I was going to go get the things we needed to do the crime scene stuff ourselves. He probably thinks I’m in some ‘Crime Solving R Us’ store in Atlanta right now.”
Travis fished out a digital camera from the pocket of his pants. “I did what you did at the Barre place. I took these pictures of the Watson murder scene.”
Diane took the camera and removed the memory card.
“Let’s go have a look at what you have here, and I’ll show you what I discovered at the Barre crime scene,” said Diane, rising from her chair.
Chapter 19
Diane led the deputy from the office wing of the museum to the lobby to take the elevator up to the third floor. The lobby was buzzing with activity, a sight she was always relieved to see. Keeping the number of visitors to the museum high was a major concern that affected every decision she made. With no visitors, there would be no museum, no teaching of natural history, and no repository of artifacts.
When one of the docents saw Diane, she came hurrying over from a small group of Japanese tourists who stood smiling and waving at her. Diane smiled and returned the wave.
“Dr. Fallon,” said Emily, “the Maeda family’s here from Japan. They won the free trip to the museum. You know, the contest in the newspapers.”
“They get newspapers from Georgia in Japan?” said Diane.
“Who knew?” said Emily. “Anyway, they were wondering if they could have their picture made with you.”
“Of course,” said Diane.
She asked Travis to wait a moment while she had her picture taken with the family.
“Take your time, ma’am,” he said. “I like watching all these people. This is a real interesting place you have here.”
“Music to my ears,” she said as she went with Emily over to the family.
Emily introduced her to the Maedas. They were a fairly large family, consisting of father and mother, one middle school-aged boy, two teenage girls, and an adult daughter with a husband and grandchild-all enthusiastic about their vacation plans. They were vacationing in the United States, touring museums and national parks in an RV. After RiverTrail, they were visiting the Smoky Mountains, and from there they were traveling to Washington, DC, and New York.
“Very nice museum,” the father said. “Big building. Room to grow.”
“Thank you,” said Diane. “All of us work very hard on our museum and love to see it enjoyed.”
As she spoke with the family, Diane caught a glimpse of Andie talking to a visitor. She was hoping to see the guy Andie was with, but the view of him was blocked by the visitor they were having the conversation with. Diane did catch a glimpse of take-out bags he was holding by his side. Apparently they were going for a picnic.
Diane didn’t let her attention linger, but remained focused on the guest family. She answered all their questions, posed for a photograph with the mammoth from the Pleistocene room as a backdrop, and told Emily to make sure the restaurant knew they were guests of the museum.
“Thank you for visiting us,” she told them as Emily was about to guide them to the restaurant.
Diane looked over at Andie and her date again as she walked to rejoin Travis Conrad. She saw what all the fuss was about. Andie’s new friend was striking in his good looks. He had a clean-cut appearance, short hair, firm jawline, and a bright smile. He wore tan slacks and a cream-colored shirt that looked expensive, and he had a muscular build-not overly done, but he looked like someone who was very athletic. Diane wished she could linger and meet him, glad Andie had found someone with an interest in museums. She hoped it worked out. Most of the guys Andie dated had no interest in her work, which was one reason they never lasted very long with her. Andie loved her work and she expected the guys she dated to show as much interest in her work as she did in theirs.
Diane called the elevator and got on with Travis. No one else wanted to use it at the moment. Most of the visitors used the bank of elevators in the main hallway of the museum. Just as the doors were closing, a hand came through the opening and pushed the doors open again. It was Scott Spearman, one of the technicians in the DNA lab. He had a folder and a large padded envelope in his hand.
“I was just coming to see you,” he said to Diane.
She introduced Scott to Travis Conrad.
“Oh,” said Scott, “I guess this is for you too.”
“You have some more information?” said Diane.
Scott nodded. “You know those tree and concrete parts you asked us to analyze? Well, I have the report here.” He gently waved the folder. “Quite a lot of decompositional by-products. Someone definitely decomposed inside the tree. Is that weird or what?”
“Were you able to get any indication of postmortem interval?” asked Diane.
He rocked a hand back and forth, indicating that it was inconclusive. She thought it would be.
“You know how it is after remains have been completely skeletonized. But Hector and I are working on a research design for a time-line analysis of decomposition chemistry of the soil surrounding human skeletal remains. And we really, really appreciate the space you are letting us turn into a research facility. We would kiss your feet, but that would probably be too weird.”
Diane smiled and rolled her eyes. “It’s a good adjunct to the DNA lab,” she said. “Can you tell if the body was in the tree for as long as a hundred years?”
Scott looked surprised. “A hundred years? It was in there way less time than that. I’m not sure we would have found much chemical residue after that amount of time. But the button and fibers are pretty helpful.”
The elevator reached the third floor and they got out at Exhibit Preparations and walked down the hallway toward the crime lab.
“Button and fibers?” said Diane.
Scott pulled out two smaller clear bags. Inside one she saw a pink-brown incised button. The other bag contained pink fibers.
“Yes. David analyzed these. Did you know he has a button database? Amazing.”
Diane nodded. “You’ll discover that David is in the process of databasing the world,” she said.
Scott snickered.
“What about the button and fibers?” asked Diane. “What did they tell us?”
“They were partially encased in the cement. The fibers were in the shank of the button. The button’s from China, made of shell, and was incised with a laser. Don’t think they had those a hundred years ago. The fact of the matter is, the button was manufactured about five years ago. The fiber’s polyester. It has a very unique cross section that David showed me. Very interesting. Got pictures.” He held up the folder. “The fiber was introduced five years ago too, and was also manufactured in China.”
Diane turned to Travis, who had been watching and listening with interest.
“So,” said Travis, “Dr. Linden’s wrong. Daddy ain’t gonna like that.”
“Will he believe it?” asked Diane.
“Yeah, he ain’t stupid. He just wants the world to be different from what it is,” he said.
“Don’t we all,” said Diane.
Diane took the evidence and thanked Scott. She led Travis to the crime lab. David and Izzy were there, both working on different computers. Travis stood looking at the lab and all the equipment. Unlike his father, he appeared to be fascinated.
“You know,” he said, “I didn’t understand much of what that guy was talking about. I’m not sure I would ever understand it,” he said.
“You don’t have to. You just need to know the kind of analysis that can be done with evidence,” said Diane. “Didn’t they cover this in the senior deputy certification courses you took?” asked Diane.
“Probably. I have to confess, I’m not a real good student. It
wasn’t that important to Daddy, so I just got by. I did excel in Advanced Report Writing and Verbal Judo.” He laughed. “Seriously, I did listen in the forensic modules, and got pretty good in fingerprint analysis, but there was just so much stuff.”
“You probably picked up more knowledge than you think,” said Diane.
“Maybe. How are we going to do this? I don’t really want Daddy to know I’m here.”
“I’ll give him a call,” said Diane. “Perhaps I’d better do that first.” She motioned to the round conference table in a corner of the room and they sat down. She fished her cell phone out of her pocket and keyed the sheriff’s number. She was looking forward to speaking with him.
Chapter 20
In the middle of dialing the sheriff’s number Diane realized that he would probably be at the new crime scene. He wasn’t. She was lucky; she caught the sheriff in his office. He wasn’t pleased to hear from her. She hadn’t expected he would be.
“I’m busy right now. Don’t have time to talk,” he said in his rather odd, clipped Southern accent.
Diane almost laughed at the thought that she had called just to talk.
“I won’t be long,” she said, her voice calm and matter-of-fact. “The DNA lab has completed the analysis of the wood from the tree and the cement I took from the road. . ”
“That’s past. My expert says the bones are probably about a hundred years old and of a child. Slick Massey probably didn’t see the bones in the hollow when he cemented the tree,” he said, adding that people cemented hollow trees to try to save them. “What you saw on the finger bones was weathering.”
Diane noted that his voice had a friendlier lilt to it when he told her this. Probably enjoying it, she figured, as she waited for him to finish.
“Your expert is wrong,” she said. “The residue analysis of the wood from inside the tree indicates that decomposition of the body was much more recent. Identification of a button and clothing fibers caught in the cement limits the age to not more than five years ago. I have the evidence here, plus the report. I don’t know your expert, but the skeleton was not a child. Weathering did not remodel the bones. Disease did. How old do you think that tree is if it was hollow when the body was put in it a hundred years ago? It’s been my experience that hollow trees don’t live that long.” And your experience too, if you think about it, she didn’t add. “Sheriff Conrad, I don’t know why you’re trying to say the sun is shining during a thunderstorm, but you have an older individual, probably a woman, who needs justice. It’s now up to you to give it to her.”
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