Dust to Dust

by Beverly Connor

  “What about the bed?” said Fisher. “Did you check it?”

  “Yes. It was negligible. The amount was what you might get from transfer,” she said.

  Diane put a photograph of the rope in front of them.

  “This was around her neck. Notice that it is tied with a granny knot. If you are involved in cutting off the blood supply to your brain for fun, it’s important for the knot to be easily released when you want it to be, or you lose consciousness. You use a knot that lets the rope slip, or you use a knot that can be released by a pull on the end of the rope. You don’t use a granny knot. Granny knots are incorrectly tied square knots that are notoriously hard to untie, and they don’t slip. Look at the picture. There is no way she could have gotten out of this. She would have lost consciousness in as little as four seconds after the knot was pulled tight, and death would have followed within minutes.”

  “It could have been suicide,” Fisher shot back.

  “Have you ever in your experience seen a suicide like this?” said Kingsley. “Has anyone committing suicide ever attached clothespins to their nipples?” Fisher didn’t say anything. “This was staged to humiliate as well as to deflect the manner of death.”

  “You know about knots?” Stark asked Diane.

  “Diane is an expert in knots,” said Kingsley.

  “She is,” said Lynn Webber. “I hadn’t heard of a forensic knot expert until I met her. Let me tell you, when we had those hanging victims, she made sure my diener and I were really careful with the knots. She read those knots like a book.”

  “How do you get to be a forensic knot expert?” asked Fisher.

  Diane could see the skepticism in his face. But she saw interest too.

  “Study and experience. My interest began when I became a caver. In caving, your life often depends on your knowledge of rope and knots. Then I had my first case involving ropes, and it grew from there,” said Diane. “Knots carry unique information. They tell you things about the person who tied them. It’s often not a great deal, but it can be a critical piece of information. I can look at a set of knots and tell you if the person is a caver or a rock climber, a boater, or a hauler. I can also tell you by looking at their rope if they are careful or reckless.”

  “Huh, interesting,” said Stark. “So this is not a knot someone would use in this situation?”

  “Not like this. In this situation, if a granny knot is used at all, it would be to tie a small loop to stick the end of the rope through to make a loop around the neck that would release.”

  Diane watched their faces to see if she was winning them over. She couldn’t tell. They had far better poker faces than she did. Except Doppelmeyer. And he was not ever going to be won over. But he didn’t need to be. Nancy Stark was their audience. She was the one who needed to be convinced.

  Diane showed them another photograph of the rope. “This part of the rope—the opposite end from the noose—has Stacy Dance’s epithelials and blood on it for a length of a little more than eighteen inches. She was strangled with this end.” Diane looked to Kingsley.

  “We also found other evidence, which we will discuss in a moment,” said Kingsley. He nodded to Lynn Webber.

  Lynn placed her autopsy photographs of Stacy’s neck on the table beside the photograph they took of Stacy as she was found. She handed them her report. With her well-manicured fingers, Lynn pointed to Stacy’s neck in their photo. Lynn didn’t use nail polish. She buffed her nails to a shine and kept them short. Her nail beds were long and made her nails look longer than they were. She had pretty hands that were a contrast to the difficult photographs she was showing.

  “This ligature here,” she said, pointing to a reddened line across the neck, “it’s the same line here on your photo. This is the mark left when she was strangled, as evidenced by the deep-cutting indentation of the rope and the characteristic perimortem color and pattern of the tissue damage.”

  Stark nodded. “Go on.”

  “This ligature”—she pointed to a second indentation around the neck—“is where the rope was later tied around her neck—the way she was found. If you look at your photograph, you can see some of it where the towel sort of lifts the rope a little.”

  She handed them a magnifying glass. Stark and Fisher picked up the photographs and examined each.

  “Notice the different color,” Webber said. “See that the bruising did not spread through the tissues from the site of the rope. She was already dead when this was tied around her neck.”

  Chief Stark had a copy of Doppelmeyer’s autopsy report. She read it over several times.

  “Oran, you don’t mention two strangulation ligatures,” said Stark.

  Detective Fisher took the report from her and read it.

  “It means nothing,” Doppelmeyer said. “I told you she’s incompetent. This is not an original photograph. She probably Photoshopped this.”

  “This is a copy of the photograph from your file,” said Kingsley. “If you compare it with the original in your file, you’ll see that it hasn’t been changed in any way. If you don’t believe the photographic evidence, Stacy Dance hasn’t been reburied yet. You can have a third ME look at her.”

  They were silent for several long moments. Diane could now see the doubt in both Stark and Fisher. Doppelmeyer saw it too.

  “You’re not buying this crap, are you?” he said.

  Neither answered him.

  “What is the other evidence you mentioned?” asked Detective Fisher. “The evidence that involves their cases.” He wagged his hand between Detective Hanks and Sheriff Braden.

  “The hell with this,” said Doppelmeyer. “If this is all you have, I have important work to do. What a waste of time. I’m glad I drove.” He got up to leave.

  Diane asked one of the policemen to show him how to get to the first floor. She then turned to Hanks and nodded. He and Braden told them about Marcella Payden and Mary Phyllis Lassiter. Hanks told them about the fiber evidence and he told them about the boot print.

  “The same boot print showed up at the Stacy Dance scene,” said Hanks. “We don’t know why. The crimes were completely different. Not just the age of the victim, but”—he threw up his hands—“all of it. With Payden and Lassiter, it was like a smash and grab. Very quick and violent. With Miss Dance, it was staged and slow. It’s possible the same person was involved in both. Or it’s possible your guy threw away the clothes he used and our guys found them.”

  “When Diane told us about the evidence connection,” said Sheriff Braden, “we looked for some connection between our victims and yours. Couldn’t find any. Not that we had a lot of time to look—this evidence just came to light—but still, nothing so far.”

  “If you get a suspect, we’d like you to allow us to watch the interrogation. We’ll do the same,” said Hanks.

  Both Braden and Hanks had been very matter-of-fact, assuming that Gainesville PD would reopen the Dance case. They didn’t know anything about the politics or the biases that closed it in the first place. They were just looking at the evidence. Diane suspected Stark and perhaps Fisher noticed that about them, the lack of guile.

  “All right,” said Chief Nancy Stark. “We’ll take another look. I’m not making any promises.”

  “There’s something else,” said Kingsley.

  “What’s that?” asked Stark, frowning.

  “I almost hate to say, because it’s going to turn someone’s world upside down,” said Kingsley. “But she knows it’s coming. You know the young woman who discovered the body of Stacy Dance?”

  “The gal from Ohio, cousin to the drummer?” said Fisher. “I suppose I need to get her back here.”

  “She’s not the drummer’s cousin,” said Kingsley. “Her name is Samantha Carruthers. She’s the sister of Ellie Carruthers—the teenager Stacy Dance’s brother was convicted of killing.”

  “What?” said Fisher. “The hell you say. You are not serious?”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” said Kings
ley.

  “What the hell was she doing hanging out with the Dance girl?” Fisher said.

  “Several reasons,” said Kingsley. “Among them, I suspect Samantha Carruthers had doubts about the identity of her sister’s murderer. I think it was something subconscious, but I believe it was there.”

  “How did they get together?” asked Fisher.

  “They were in the same college class,” said Kingsley. “Stacy had a band. Samantha played the guitar and wanted to join the band.”

  “How did you find out?” he said.

  “I was retracing Stacy Dance’s last days. I spoke with her band members. Samantha Carruthers was there, but she was introduced to me only as the drummer’s cousin, visiting from out of town. I went to meet with the Carruthers family, as Stacy had, and Samantha showed up at home—literally walked in through the front door—while I was interviewing Mrs. Carruthers. ‘Hi, Mom. Hi, dear.’ Imagine my surprise.”

  “Damn, imagine my surprise,” said Fisher. “Why didn’t she tell me when I interviewed her? Why the fake name?”

  “She said she didn’t want her parents to know. You can imagine what their reaction would be. I didn’t give her away. I knew something must be up. She met with Diane and me later and spilled the beans. Samantha’s moved out now. I’m not sure where, but the drummer probably knows. I told her you would be finding out. Your showing up won’t be a surprise to her, but it will be to her parents. Like I said, I hadn’t wanted to turn her world upside down. I still don’t.”

  Kingsley didn’t mention the diary. It had more to do with the Carruthers murder, and the Gainesville visitors wouldn’t have wanted to revisit that. If the diary came up later, he told Diane, he would give it to them. Diane thought they were about ready to go. Then Stark spoke up.

  “What about that newspaper article?” said Stark. “That has been very uncomfortable for us, and unfair.”

  Diane was hoping they wouldn’t mention it.

  “I sympathize,” Diane said. “As I am director of the museum, newspaper articles have been the bane of my existence lately. We didn’t have anything to do with the article.”

  By we, Diane meant Kingsley and herself. They would assume, however, she also meant Webber. If Lynn wanted to come clean, fine, but Diane doubted she would. Too much to lose.

  Stark nodded. “It had a lot of inaccuracies,” she said.

  “I agree,” said Diane.

  The meeting broke up and Diane called Frank and asked if he felt like having a guest. She knew he had been busy all day repairing the house. She wished she had been there with him.

  “Sure. I’ll order Mexican,” he said. “And I have an idea about the names I couldn’t decipher.”

  Chapter 48

  Diane cleared the table after the dinner of enchiladas, Spanish rice, and chiles rellenos Frank had ordered, and brought out fresh brewed raspberry-chocolate coffee. Frank was laying out the decoded diary pages on the table and explaining to Kingsley what they meant.

  “You’ve impressed me,” said Kingsley. “You talk like this was easy.”

  “It was fairly easy,” said Frank. “Just a little time-consuming. Fortunately, there’s not much to do in a motel room.”

  “That’s right, you just got back from, where was it, Nashville? I’d think there would be a lot to do in Nashville,” said Kingsley.

  “I’m not much into nightlife,” said Frank. “Ben, my partner, and I are pretty boring.”

  Frank gave Kingsley a code sheet with all of Ellie Rose’s little doodles and what they represented. He had another sheet with symbols for proper names that he couldn’t translate.

  “Most of the names were friends from school, judging from the context,” he said. “If I had a list of her friends, I could figure out who she was talking about in each instance. Most of what she wrote about was related to the normal concerns a girl her age would have. Lots of drama, but nothing serious. It’s these two names that are the ones of interest.” Frank pointed to two doodled symbols in the list. “They are the only ones she seemed to be truly wary of.”

  Frank showed Kingsley larger drawings of the two doodles. “Diane and I thought this one looked like a stylized snake with scales and horns. And the other one looked like some kind of a masonry ruin—bricks or something. I thought maybe it looked kind of like an igloo—at least, the blocks reminded me of ice blocks. At any rate, the jagged outline looks like something broken,” said Frank. “Note that the snake scales in the first symbol are small versions of the larger blocks in the other symbol.”

  “You said you had a flash of what they might mean?” said Diane.

  “If they are names, what if the outline represents the first name and the inside pattern represents a last name? That would make these two symbols represent two people who share the same last name. For example, Ellie Rose might have represented my name by using a hot dog with small doughnuts inside it, and my daughter’s name would be a star with doughnuts inside.”

  “Doughnuts?” said Diane and Kingsley together.

  “I don’t get it,” said Kingsley.

  “You know, Dunkin’ Donuts. That’s one type of coding Ellie used—a kind of rebus soundalike: Duncan—Dunkin’.”

  Diane laughed.

  “Like the Brick twins, Snake and Jagged,” said Kingsley, grinning.

  “Sort of,” said Frank.

  The phone rang. Diane rose from the table, carrying her coffee with her, and answered the phone.

  “Diane, uh, Thomas Barclay here. How are you? Read in the paper you had some kind of dustup at your home.”

  Dustup? Yes, that’s what it was, a dustup. Diane frowned and sat down in the living room and took a sip of hot coffee. Thomas Barclay was one of the museum board members, one whom she struggled to get along with. He was a bank president with a forceful personality.

  “Yes, there was an incident here. A man shot the lock off the door and forced his way in with a gun and tried to kill me. I’m fine. I was able to shoot him before he shot me,” she said. She realized she sounded sharp, but calling what happened to her a dustup pissed her off.

  There were several moments of silence.

  “My God, a home invasion—here in Rosewood. What were they after?”

  “Me, apparently,” said Diane.

  Barclay seemed to be at a loss for words. “Do the police have someone watching your house?” he said.

  “Yes, they’ve had someone with me all day.”

  “Good, good,” he said. “The reason I called is—well, I got a curious call from a friend. A man I serve with on a board of directors in Atlanta. Name’s Everett Walters.”

  “The name sounds familiar,” said Diane. She waited for him to get to the point.

  “He’s a good man. Usually very sensible. He said his son over in Gainesville has a very good friend and neighbor that you’ve been harassing. Of course, I told him that was unlikely. But the thing is, the thing that makes it difficult is, he insists that the board, the museum board, get rid of you. Says your behavior is casting a bad light on the museum. I told him we don’t have the power to fire you. He said we need to do something, that his son’s friends suffered a terrible tragedy and now you are causing them immeasurable suffering on top of it, and you have to be stopped. What’s this about?”

  “It’s not about museum business and I’m sorry that a member of the board was dragged into it. You need not worry about museum involvement. You can tell your friend, Mr. Walters, that the Gainesville police will be handling things from here on out,” she said. “We’ve turned everything over to them.”

  He was quiet again. Apparently Barclay had never been on an advisory board before. He much preferred making policy, rather than merely expressing his opinion. He would have liked very much to be able to fire Diane, or at least to curtail her powers. Not being able to do either, he made an effort to be polite.

  “All right. I’ll tell him the police will be handling it. I’m sure that will be a comfort,” he said.

&nbs
p; “I’m sure it will. You said he is usually very sensible,” said Diane. “How well do you know him?” Diane thought it very odd that he would call with such a vehement request. She could see him asking Barclay to look into it, or to find out what was going on. But to request that she be fired? That was a little over-the-top. Had Wendy leaned hard on him for Marsha Carruthers’ sake?

  “Oh, we go back,” said Barclay in his best bank president’s voice. “He owns several businesses in Gainesville and Atlanta.” He said it as if that were Everett Walters’ measure of worth. She supposed that for Barclay it was.

  “Everett Business Supplies, Walter Ace Parcel Delivery, Night Couriers. His son is chief of oncology at the big hospital in Gainesville and is being looked at to run for a congressional seat. Has a grandson in law school. Good solid family. His father was the one who started the family business. Good tradition. Everett’s not given to histrionics—I wouldn’t have thought.”

  Apparently Walters’ call sounded a little over-the-top to Barclay too. That was interesting.

  “It’s unfortunate he bothered you with this,” said Diane. “I assure you, he has exaggerated to the point of absurdity. There is no reason to worry. I hope the rest of your evening is uneventful.”

  “Yes, ah, yours too. Terrible about the home invasion. Just terrible. Here in Rosewood you don’t expect that kind of thing. Well, good-bye, Diane.”

  Diane bid him good-bye and hung up the phone. She took the phone to its station and went back to the table.

  “What was that?” asked Frank.

  “Thomas Barclay, from the bank—a member of the museum board. Wendy Walters’ father-in-law is calling museum board members. Or rather, he called Thomas Barclay, at any rate, and asked him to fire me for harassing Marsha Carruthers and her family.”

  Kingsley looked at her with an expression of puzzlement. “You’re serious? He did that?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “It sounds like the Carruthers are using their neighbors to put pressure on you to stop the investigation,” said Frank. “A little late for that.”