Dust to Dust

by Beverly Connor

  “What did she say? The doctor wouldn’t let me in until tomorrow,” Hanks said. “Her daughter told me that Dr. Payden didn’t remember anything about the attack.”

  “She was concerned about the pieces of pottery she’d found on her property. As we figured, she recognized they were bone tempered. Marcella was letting me know she had sent samples off for analysis. She also wanted to tell me about the desk. I told her I’d seen the message. Marcella told me to examine the pottery myself, but she didn’t say what I was to be looking for. Her side of the conversation was mostly just one or two words at a time.”

  “Do you think this pottery business has anything to do with her attack?” asked Hanks.

  “I don’t know,” said Diane. “I wanted to ask her how old she thought the pottery was, but she was very weak and not up to it. Her nurse ran me out.”

  “I suppose she has no idea who attacked her, or why?” said Hanks.

  “She didn’t even know why she was in the hospital. Tomorrow when you speak with her she may be more clearheaded. But she probably will never remember the events surrounding her attack.”

  Hanks seemed mollified when Diane hung up. She was trying to keep a good working relationship with the police and detectives, but sometimes they didn’t make it easy.

  She turned over to face Frank. “No more answering the phone.”

  “Absolutely not,” he said.

  Next morning, Diane met Jonas in his museum office. Together they pulled out the boxes from Marcella’s that Diane had packed. She gently took the ceramic mask out and set it on the desk facedown, cushioning it with batting. She twisted Marcella’s work lamp over the piece of pottery and began examining the back side with a magnifying glass. She saw immediately what had disturbed Marcella. She turned the mask over and looked at the front.

  “What?” said Jonas, who had pulled up a chair beside her.

  Diane turned the mask over and looked again. “Marcella told me to look at the sherds with it too. We need to pull out the other boxes. Damn.”

  Chapter 21

  “What are you seeing?” said Jonas, bending over and peering at the mask.

  “The inside of the mask has the imprint of eyelashes, eyebrows, blemishes. This was made on a human face,” said Diane.

  “That’s not really all that unusual,” said Jonas. “Why is that a big deal?”

  Diane turned the face around. “The nose and mouth area is solid, no breathing holes. I know they could have been sculpted shut afterward, but Marcella would have realized that too. There was some other reason she wanted me to look at this. She also said to look at pieces she hadn’t put together yet.”

  “Are you saying this might be a death mask?” said Jonas. He put his hands on his hips and looked at her with a great deal of skepticism. “You know, she may have just been worried about preserving her work. Marcella is very dedicated.”

  “I know she is, and I’m not saying this is a death mask. I’m just saying Marcella wanted me to take a look,” said Diane. “If she were concerned only that her work was being cared for, she would not have asked me to take a look. I know nothing about pottery. I do know about other things, and I believe that’s why she wanted me to look at it.”

  Diane began pulling out all the boxes that held the pieces she assumed belonged with the mask. Jonas helped her clear space in the office to work, piling some of Marcella’s books and papers on the floor beside her desk.

  “I called it a mask,” said Diane, “but according to her notes, Marcella thinks the piece might be a stylized pitcher—the liquid would be poured out of the eyes. Not a functional use, I imagine.”

  “But interesting symbolism,” commented Jonas. “Especially if . . .” He let the sentence hang.

  Diane carefully lifted out the potsherds still resting on their backing of paper.

  “These single pieces were surrounding the face in the sandbox on her worktable. Marcella placed them on this paper and drew an outline around each piece. Presumably they are all part of the same set,” she said, looking at Jonas.

  “Okay, let’s see what we have here,” said Jonas. “She’d have sorted and examined all of them first. You may find more information in her computer. She has a pretty sophisticated three-dimensional program she uses to assist in reconstructing pots.”

  “Do you know how to use the program?” asked Diane.

  “You want me to take a look?” he said.

  “Would you?”

  “Sure,” he agreed. “I imagine you guys have one similar to it up there.” He looked up with his eyes, indicating the crime lab on the floor above.

  “I have one in the osteology lab for skull reconstruction,” Diane said.

  As she conversed with Jonas about the merits of computer programs, Diane examined the sherds. A few had imprints reflecting irregularities similar to what might appear on the back of a shaved human head.

  In the second sample she unpacked were three pieces that immediately caught her eye—broken fragments, each with a protrusion. She picked them up and examined them and then fit them together. Diane had made many casts of skulls for her forensic cases and she recognized what she was looking at—the cast of a sharp-force-trauma wound.

  “Well, damn.This is what Marcella was concerned about.” Diane showed it to Jonas and explained what it was.

  He examined the piece under the light and with the microscope, then stood up. “This is terrible, just terrible. Couldn’t it be something else?” he said.

  “I don’t know. Maybe,” said Diane. She looked at all the broken pieces laid out on the table. “It looks like the potter sculpted the clay around a head. How did he get it off?”

  “Cut it in half,” said Jonas. “Artists sculpting in clay will often create a work, then cut it in half so they can scoop out the center clay. Thick pieces of clay tend to blow up or crack in the kiln, so they scoop out the inside to make it hollow and then they put the pieces back together and sculpt over the seam. This artist could have sculpted the clay around the head to get the form he wanted, then cut the clay into pieces to remove it from the head, and then put the pieces back together to make the piece whole again.”

  “I see why this was on her mind,” said Diane, almost to herself. “It may not be involved in what happened to her, but it still needs to be looked into.”

  As Diane was leaving the hospital room, Marcella had said the word artist. Diane assumed she meant “Find the artist.” She wondered now if Marcella meant she had already found the artist? Could these pieces be younger than they thought? She would get Hanks to ask Marcella.

  “Do you think you could reconstruct the whole pot—pitcher—whatever it is?” she asked.

  “Sure,” he said.

  “First, let me take some photographs,” said Diane.

  She studied the face again. Even up close and even speckled with the bone inclusions, it was a beautiful face. She traced her finger along the curve of the lips and chin. The clay represented the elastic skin of youth, nothing sagging, nothing lined.

  “I asked Jin to try to extract DNA from the bone in the pottery fragments. Hector and Scott suggested some strands might have survived in a very thick piece of the pottery. Could you select a piece that can be destroyed and is thick?” asked Diane.

  “I can, but a bonfire kiln heats up to about thirteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Can DNA withstand that kind of heat?” asked Jonas.

  “No, it can’t. I’d probably just be wasting their time,” she said.

  “What exactly did they have in mind, if you don’t mind my asking?” said Jonas.

  “They were hoping we might luck up and get a piece that was in a cooler place in the fire, and look to see if any DNA strands in the middle of the fragment were protected. They were going to use a protocol some friends of Jin worked out for analyzing the DNA of shed hair.”

  “I didn’t think shed hair had DNA,” said Jonas.

  “It has such a small amount that it gets destroyed using traditional methods of
extracting DNA. There’s a method in which processing takes place on the slide that can save what little DNA exists. It would be a long shot anyway, but if bonfires get that hot, there would be no place cool enough for DNA to survive,” said Diane.

  “Might be worth a try anyway,” said Jonas. “You know, in case it does work.”

  “I’ll put it to them and let Jin and his crew make the decision,” said Diane.

  “How are the Elvi working out?” asked Jonas, grinning broadly.

  “Their work is very good.” Diane smiled back.

  “I think they are a hoot. I’ve talked with them. They aren’t nearly as far-out as they put on.”

  “I sort of suspected that,” said Diane. “You know the thing about the shirts, don’t you?”

  “Color wavelength,” said Jonas. “They’re just showing off—making everything a puzzle. They’re kids really. Of course, most of the people around here are kids to me. You’re a kid to me.”

  Diane laughed.

  “Tell me, can we find out how old these pottery sherds are? How did Marcella know they are modern?”

  “Context, for one. She found them in a pit mixed with bottles and cans. The cans were pretty well rusted out. The bottles were dated to the fifties,” said Jonas.

  “Context? Is that it?” asked Diane. “Couldn’t this be much older and have gotten mixed in somehow?”

  “No evidence of any mechanism for strata getting mixed. Remember, the pottery sherds she found were of pots she could put back together. All the pieces were there. They were probably broken in situ. Also, we pretty well know all the prehistoric ceramics. Even something this unusual in Georgia would have been known long before now.”

  “Really, nothing left to discover?” said Diane.

  “I didn’t say there is nothing left to discover, but we’re not going to find any lost civilization of bone-tempered face-pot people. It’s like mounds,” said Jonas. “People are always telling me they have an Indian mound in their field, and I tell them no, they don’t. We know where all of them are. What I’m trying to say is that we know an awful lot about the prehistory of Georgia. Yes, we still have questions, but none so profound as lost civilizations of mad potters.”

  Diane smiled. “That’s what Hanks called this unknown artist—a mad potter.”

  “He did, did he? Then I guess he isn’t completely off his rocker,” said Jonas.

  “So you think these pieces date from the fifties?” said Diane.

  “I think so. I didn’t help excavate, and she hasn’t said a lot about them. I didn’t know they were bone tempered, for instance. She just mentioned to me the context she found them in.”

  Diane used the phone on the desk to call David and asked him to come down and photograph the sherds and the face when he had free time. She briefly explained to him what she had discovered.

  “I need some high-contrast pictures,” said Diane. “I need to see the topography of the sherds.”

  “Sure thing,” he said. “Spooky case.”

  “No kidding,” said Diane. “If you could hook up Marcella’s computer, that would be helpful too. The one we found in the house.”

  She hung up the phone and turned to Jonas. “I appreciate your help in this.”

  “We should all get a chance to work on the dark side. Lawrence Michaels is just all tickled to have been asked to lecture on the other side.” Jonas laughed.

  “I need to give everyone in the museum a tour of the crime lab so they won’t think it is so mysterious.”

  “It won’t help. What you do there is mysterious by definition,” said Jonas.

  Diane shook her head and sighed. “I’m going up to call Hanks. I need to keep him apprised of the latest developments. He’s going to love this one.”

  Diane left Jonas working in Marcella’s office. She didn’t get up to her own office as quickly as she would have liked. Too many people stopped her to ask questions. Docents stopped her to introduce her to the group they were giving a tour to. She happened across one of the curators, who wanted to know the status of a requisition. Diane did eventually make it to her office, but not to her phone. Ross Kingsley was waiting for her.

  “I thought we could go interview some of the people Stacy Dance talked with during her investigation,” he said.

  “Sure,” said Diane. She could call Hanks on the way.

  She turned to Andie, who sat behind her desk putting together budget reports for the upcoming board meeting in a few days.

  “When is Kendel going to Australia?” Diane asked.

  “Tomorrow. She got the call from the museum today. She was very excited. She said they have a collection of really neat dinosaur species we don’t have.”

  “Tell her I’ll call her tonight,” said Diane. “I’m going back to Gainesville. Call my cell if you need anything.”

  Chapter 22

  They drove back to Gainesville in Ross’ silver Prius. Diane’s mind was not on Kingsley’s case, but Marcella’s. She had tried to call Hanks, but he hadn’t answered his cell. She left a message telling him she would call back.

  “I interviewed Stacy’s boyfriend and her band members,” said Kingsley, when he got on the interstate.

  “What kind of band did she have?”

  “Rock . . . and a little bit of everything. They seemed to be trying to find themselves.”

  “How did it go?” she asked.

  Kingsley changed lanes a little too abruptly for Diane and she had to hold on to the handle at the ceiling to keep from leaning hard against the door.

  “There is a problem establishing a solid alibi for any of them, since the ME gave only a ballpark time of death. Doppelmeyer decided Stacy did this to herself, and he just didn’t do a proper autopsy. I don’t suppose your friend Lynn can determine the time of death,” he said.

  “No, not now,” said Diane.

  “Besides Stacy, there were four members of her band, including the boyfriend. A female drummer, the boyfriend, who is the keyboardist, and two singers—a female and a male, who also plays the guitar. Stacy was a third singer. All had alibis of sorts. Which means the alibis aren’t solid by any means.”

  Kingsley had a turnoff coming and he eased over into the right lane. This time Diane didn’t have to hold on to the handle.

  “I couldn’t find any motive for any of them. I spoke with the father again and he said they had all been friends since high school. Two of them were students at the community college with her. If they are involved, we need something to come out in the evidence, because I couldn’t detect anything.”

  “Who found her?” asked Diane.

  “They were thinking about inviting another member into the band, a girl who they said is really good on the guitar. She’s the drummer’s cousin. The cousin and the drummer came together to talk to Stacy about it, and found her. That’s another discrepancy. The police report said the cousin was the one who found her. The father and the others said it was the two of them,” said Kingsley. He shook his head and took the off-ramp. “Perhaps I should go practice psychology. I’m not really cut out for investigation.”

  “What do your psychologist’s sensibilities say about them?” asked Diane.

  “That they are telling the truth. I’ve checked all their backgrounds. None have any known involvement in drugs. But I’ve been fooled before. They practiced in the garage, so Stacy’s father saw them frequently. He doesn’t remember them ever arguing about anything serious. At most, a disagreement about what songs to sing at an event.”

  “You think her death has something to do with her brother’s case, don’t you?” said Diane.

  Diane didn’t like being a passenger. She’d rather be driving. There was a kind of helplessness about being a passenger.

  “Yes. You think I’m making the same mistake as Doppelmeyer? I’ve made up my mind and I’m dismissing all other possibilities?”

  “No, not really,” said Diane.

  “But just a little?” he asked.

  “
No, but I do think the temptation to go in that direction is very strong. We just have to keep an open mind and follow the evidence. Were there any jealousies? Sometimes people don’t need a really big motive for murder. Small, petty ones will do.”

  “I asked about that. I interviewed each one separately. From what I can tell, Stacy and the boyfriend seemed pretty solid. I didn’t see any jealousies about who gets to solo, or who gets top billing. Stacy wasn’t even the lead singer; the other girl was.”

  “Did they have a lot of gigs? Did they make money?” asked Diane.

  “Not really. They mostly played at school dances, bar mitzvahs, weddings, county festivals, that sort of thing. They’ve never played a club. The boyfriend said they were discussing doing a CD. These days you can apparently make them yourself. Don’t know about distribution, though. He seemed to think they could sell enough from their Web site to get a following. What struck me about all of them is that they were having fun. They didn’t see themselves as struggling musicians; they saw themselves as already having made it and were just looking to make it bigger. Stacy’s death is a blow to them. Their grief seems genuine.”

  “Have you seen the Web site?” asked Diane.

  “Yes. Nothing stands out. It introduces them, has a sample of their music, has a short video. It has a nice memorial for Stacy. Which, I should add, tells the world that she was murdered, not that she died by accident.”

  “Did any of them know anything about the investigation she was doing?”

  “That was an odd thing, at least to me. No, they didn’t. They said Stacy kept the business about her brother private. She didn’t even confide to her boyfriend about the investigation. Her friends thought she needed a place where concerns about her brother and his problems didn’t exist—and that was with them and the band. I think we’re here,” he said, turning onto a road that introduced itself as Georgia Heritage Estates.

  The neighborhood Ellie Rose Carruthers had lived in was quite different from the one Stacy Dance and her brother, Ryan, grew up in. This place was far from the industrial district. It was an upper-middle-class neighborhood of doctors, lawyers, and upwardly mobile professionals. The yards were neatly manicured. There was no house that needed a coat of paint. One thing for sure, Ryan’s car would have certainly stood out in a neighborhood filled with the higher-end cars she saw parked in the garages and driveways. Kingsley drove to a large two-story brick house and parked in the drive.