Dust to Dust

by Beverly Connor

  “See, Tyler, this isn’t you,” said Diane.

  But Tyler had passed out.

  Chapter 62

  When Diane looked back at Everett Walters, he was pointing a gun at her.

  Well, hell.

  “Now it’s time to pay the piper,” he said.

  “Oh God, Tyler,” yelled Wendy.

  She stood up and started toward her unconscious son. As she crossed in front of Everett, she didn’t see the blow from the pistol butt coming to the back of her head. Wendy reeled forward and fell, crashing into the table, rolling off it onto the floor at Marsha’s feet. For a moment, Diane thought Marsha was going to kick her. Wendy struggled to get to her feet. She looked seriously hurt.

  “Just lie there,” said Diane. “Until you get your breath.”

  Ross Kingsley stood and faced Everett. “This may seem like a good idea to you now, but you’re very angry. I understand that. Take a moment and think about this. It will do you no good to cut off your nose to spite your face,” he said.

  “It won’t be my nose I’ll be cutting off,” he said. “You and the woman are do-gooders. I know your type. You take care of people too yellow to take care of themselves. So this is why I’m going to tell you, I’ll be shooting these other folks first. I’ll shoot my worthless daughter-in-law right now unless you sit down. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

  Kingsley hesitated a moment, then sat down. Diane guessed he was trying to think of something else to say. Right now, Everett wasn’t in the mood to listen.

  All the guns were across the room with Tyler, except the one in Everett’s hand and the one under the sofa. Diane tried to think of a plan to get her hands on one of them. She didn’t see how she could do it fast enough.

  But maybe Wendy could. She was still on the floor and Diane could see her looking under the couch. She saw the gun; Diane was sure. But the coffee table was between her and the sofa. Everett would cut her down if she tried. Maybe if there was a diversion.

  “Apparently, it’s me you want to, how did you put it, chop up in little pieces? Why don’t you leave these people alone?” Diane said, standing up and facing him.

  “All full of piss and vinegar, aren’t you? Think you can make your move once we get away from these people here? I know how your mind’s working.” He tapped his finger on his temple. “It’s not going to go like that. No, I’m not going to drop my guard. You aren’t going to get off, not after what you’ve done.”

  “Don’t like being outed as a serial killer?” said Diane. She stepped toward him.

  “Shut up. When I tell you to shut that damn hole of yours, I mean it,” he said.

  He started backing slowly toward the entrance to the living room, pointing his gun at Diane’s head.

  “Any one of you so much as looks like you’re going to stand up is going to get it. I can shoot her and any one of you before you dive for the guns. Now, we are going out. You try and follow, she’s dead and I’ll take my chances. Are we all on the same page?”

  He looked back at Diane, who stood a few feet away from him.

  “Still got that mind working, don’t you, girlie? Thinking about doing a dive like Wendy?” he said.

  Diane was thinking of something like that. Diving at him quickly, knocking him off his feet before he could shoot. But he was too alert to a move like that now. If he was taking her to another location, he had to get her out of the house, across the yard, and into a vehicle. He would have to let his guard down at some point.

  “Don’t do it,” said Everett. “It won’t work. Now, very slowly, I want you to step—”

  Crash!

  Everett fell to the floor, a pink guitar careening away from the spot where his head had been a moment before.

  “That’s for my sister,” said Samantha.

  She hit him again on the head with the solid hardwood guitar.

  “That’s for making me ruin my Fender Stratocaster guitar. I’ll send you the bill.”

  She kicked him in the back.

  “That’s for ruining my family.”

  Diane grabbed the gun that had fallen from his hand.

  “Play much baseball?” Diane asked Samantha.

  “No, but I have a mean golf swing,” she said, and hugged Diane.

  Diane turned in time to see Kingsley on his feet, hitting Samuel Carruthers in the jaw with his fist. Kingsley knocked him against a hutch filled with china that crashed on the shelves. He picked up the guns and turned to face Carruthers, who was struggling to his feet.

  “What happened?” asked Diane, keeping an eye on Everett Walters as she spoke.

  “He was going after the gun,” said Kingsley. “He was planning on shooting one of them. I’ve been watching him.”

  “You’re crazy. I’m going to sue,” Carruthers said. He stood, scowling at Kingsley, his bathrobe askew, showing his gray boxer shorts and T-shirt. He rubbed his jaw and ran a hand through his uncombed hair.

  “I saw it,” said Kingsley. “You telegraphed your intentions. You’ve been sitting there stewing over your helplessness. And now that everything’s over, you were going to get a gun and shoot one of the people responsible for your daughter’s death. Now that they were helpless and you could do it in safety.”

  “How dare you,” began Marsha, retying her own robe. “You come in here and disrupt our lives.”

  Kingsley ignored her.

  “If you want to be a man, take care of your family. The two of you have been self-indulgent so long, you’ve forgotten that you have another daughter. Get out of the computer games and quit sitting staring at your dead daughter’s painting and drinking yourself into oblivion. Look at the two of you. Your daughter just came in and saved your sorry ass and all you can think of is how to make yourself feel like a man. Did either of you go to her just now? And while I’m at it, do you know she found Stacy Dance’s body? Do you know what that kind of thing does to a person?” said Kingsley.

  Marsha whimpered and looked at her daughter. “Samantha? How could she have found her? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “There’s going to be a lot in your world that doesn’t make sense for a while,” said Kingsley. “Start by getting sober and talking to your daughter like an adult. And thank her for saving us all.”

  “Well said,” whispered Diane.

  She started to say something, when she heard Kathy Nicholson yell at Wendy. Diane turned to find Wendy with a gun on them.

  “This is just too much,” said Diane. “Put down the gun.”

  Wendy had tears running down her cheeks and was rubbing the back of her neck with her free hand. She looked strange to Diane, uneasy on her feet. She tried to speak but collapsed on the floor.

  Diane ran to her and felt her neck. Nothing.

  “No pulse,” said Diane.

  “What?” said Kathy. “How?”

  Samuel Carruthers came over to her and felt for a pulse himself. Then he felt the back of her neck. “She’s gone,” he said.

  “The hit by Everett?” asked Diane.

  Samuel nodded. “I think it broke her cervical vertebrae. When she started moving, the bones cut through her spinal cord.”

  Diane put a hand over her eyes. “God, this is just an awful day,” she said.

  “What was she trying to do?” asked Marsha.

  “I think, save her son from us,” said Diane. “I don’t know.”

  “That man drove her crazy,” said Kathy.

  “Did anyone call the police?” said Diane.

  “I did,” said Samantha. “Before my big entrance.”

  Diane went back over to where Everett was stirring. “Just stay on the floor,” she said.

  “What are you doing here?” Marsha asked her daughter.

  “I came in through the window upstairs to get some of my things. I was trying to do it without your knowing. Then I heard some crazy stuff down here, so I crept down with my guitar. Good thing.”

  Diane heard the police sirens. It was a happy song. She
and Kingsley gladly gave long statements to the police that went well into the afternoon. It was dinnertime before she and Kingsley went to their vehicles.

  “We’ve got to quit meeting like this,” said Kingsley.

  Diane put a hand on the handle of her car door. “I’m giving up private work. Don’t call unless you want a tour of the museum. By the way, that was quite a lecture you gave the Carruthers.”

  “They needed it. It really pissed me off when he decided to do some man stuff after his daughter did all the rescue work,” said Kingsley.

  “Are they going to be all right?” asked Diane.

  Kingsley shrugged. “Samantha will be. I don’t know about her parents. Who knows? Sometimes near-death experiences can change people. Want to meet at the Olive Garden on the way out of town? I’m famished.”

  Epilogue

  Diane wrote up the final report on all the crime scenes her crime lab team was involved in relating to Everett and Tyler Walters. The police turned up more evidence than they needed executing the search warrants. Everett Walters thought he was being so clever not leaving any evidence. He never checked his feet. They found two more pottery pieces and two burgundy sequins under the floor mat of his truck. Part of the rope he used to truss up Stacy Dance was in the pickup toolbox. His boots were in his office closet at one of his places of business.

  Marcella Payden recovered and went back to Arizona for an extended visit with her daughter and son-in-law. She and Jonas Briggs were writing a paper on serendipitous archaeology. Marcella kept her house, even though David, Scott, and Hector turned up remains of nine more bodies. Marcella wasn’t scared away. It was a home with history and she was an archaeologist. As far as she was concerned, it was the house and property that outed the villains.

  Jin had gotten DNA samples from all the skeletons recovered—mostly from the roots of teeth, but some from inside the bones. Neva reconstructed all their faces. So far, they hadn’t gotten any hits on who the victims might be. They had been dead well over sixty years. Diane didn’t hold out much hope they would be identified.

  Kingsley and his bosses went with Harmon Dance to take his son home from prison—and had a press conference there in the parking lot. Kingsley told Diane that Darley, Dunn, and Upshaw wanted to hire her. She said no.

  Maybelle Agnes Gauthier celebrated her ninety-eighth birthday at her retirement home. The authorities were still trying to figure out what to do with her. They no longer considered her a threat, but Diane told Hanks she was not so sure. He agreed.

  Kathy Nicholson moved with her son to California. She wrote Diane that Colton was considering transferring to the University of Hawaii and they might move there. Diane guessed that the coast wasn’t far enough away from their bad memories in Georgia. Kathy Nicholson had to come to terms with the fact that she had not seen Ryan Dance drive by, but her own neighbor, Tyler Walters. Tyler told the police in his statement that he and his grandfather knew Kathy would be working in her garden and all Tyler had to do was be in Ryan’s car, wearing Ryan’s hat, and hanging his arm out the window for her to see the fake tattoo—and never turn his face to her.

  Tyler Walters recovered and was tried and convicted for raping Ellie Rose Carruthers, murdering Stacy Dance, which he finally admitted to, kidnapping Diane and the others, and conspiring with his grandfather to kill Mary Lassiter and Marcella Payden, and framing Ryan Dance. He received life in prison, and was given the possibility of parole after twenty-five years because he testified against his grandfather. Tyler’s father decided not to run for office. Jonas Briggs said it was a good thing. With the potential candidate’s father, son, and late wife—not to mention his aunt—in his bio, no one but Jeffrey Dahmer would vote for him, and he was dead.

  Everett Walters went to prison for life without possibility of parole for killing Ellie Rose Carruthers, Mary Phyllis Lassiter, Ray-Ray Dildy, Stacy Dance, and Wendy Walters, and for framing Ryan Dance, and kidnapping Diane and the others, and trying to assassinate Diane. He confessed to none of it. Tyler said his grandfather shot Ray-Ray to tie up a loose end and liked the idea of using a policeman’s gun to do it. Ray-Ray was a day worker at one of Everett Walters’ businesses. Everett learned about his cousin, Emory, from him. Tyler said that Ray-Ray and Emory were the only two people his grandfather had hired to help with the dirty work and that he had planned to kill Emory after he’d killed Diane in the home invasion.

  The authorities were still uncertain whom to charge with killing the eleven people from sixty years ago. The resolution was still undergoing legal wrangling. Everett Walters’ lawyers were saying that because his fingerprints were only on sculpting tools and clay, the state had no basis on which to charge him. His lawyers also claimed that his sister’s testimony was unreliable, since she had been diagnosed on several occasions as being of unsound mind.

  Oran Doppelmeyer, Gainesville’s medical examiner, was let go by the city, much to Lynn Webber’s delight. Diane suspected that if Lynn had the opportunity in the future, she would mess with his life again.

  Diane didn’t know what Samuel and Marsha Carruthers were up to or how they were coping. But she and Frank went to hear Samantha and the band one evening. They weren’t too bad and Samantha seemed to be doing well. She was still in school and she had dyed all of her hair pink. Kingsley had bought her a new guitar. Frank told Diane it was a very expensive guitar.

  Diane sat in her office going over the budget reports when the phone rang.

  “Diane Fallon,” she said.

  “Dr. Fallon. My name is Clara Chandler. I hope I have the right place. I copied the number off the TV screen and, well, my eyesight’s not too good anymore.”

  “What can I do for you?” said Diane.

  “My sister, Patsy Chandler, went missing fifty-six years ago and she looked just like the picture I saw on the news of a girl you found down in a well. You said her name might be Patsy. I hope it’s her. I’d like to take her home. We thought our daddy kilt her and buried her somewheres. He was mean like that.”

  “Would you come in and give us a DNA sample?” asked Diane.

  “What do I have to do?” she asked.

  “Let us take a cotton swab and rub inside your cheek,” she said.

  “Oh, like they do on those crime shows?” she said.

  “Yes,” said Diane.

  “I can do that. My son can bring me down there right now. That would be wonderful if it’s my Patsy. We were twins and I have missed her all these years.”

  “I hope she is your sister too,” said Diane. “I would like to see her claimed by her family.”

  Diane hung up the phone and looked at the mask of Patsy Doe, as they had called her, that Marcella had completed. It sat on a shelf and stared into infinity with empty eyes. Diane was uncertain what to do with it. Marcella said to have it buried with Patsy’s remains—after all, it was made with dust of her bones. Maybe Marcella was right: remains resting, reunited, in peace. Dust to dust.

  Turn the page for an excerpt from

  the next Diane Fallon Forensic Investigation,

  coming soon from Obsidian.

  The gray sky grew darker as Diane watched. The storm was coming fast. She tried not to show her unease as she listened to Roy Barre going on about his grandfather’s collection of Indian arrowheads that he was loaning to the museum. The two of them stood beside the museum’s SUV, the four-wheel-drive vehicle she had driven to his mountain home. Diane had the driver’s-side door open, key in hand, ready to get in when he wound down, or at least paused in his narrative.

  “So, you going to put a plaque up on the wall with Granddaddy’s name?” Barre said. “He’d like that. He picked up arrowheads from the time he was a little boy. Found a lot of them in the creek bed. That big pretty one I showed you of red flint—he was crossing the creek, looked down, and there it was, big as life right there with the river rocks.”

  Diane had heard the story several times already.

  “Yes,” she said, “there will be a
plaque. Our archaeologist, Jonas Briggs, will oversee the display.”

  Roy Barre was a tall, rounded, cheerful man in his mid-fifties, with a ruddy face, graying beard, and brown hair down to his collar. In his overalls and plaid shirt, he didn’t look as though he owned most of the mountain and the one next to it. Even with the oncoming storm, had she consented, he would at this moment be showing her the property and the crisscross of creeks where his grandfather had found his arrowheads.

  “Granddaddy didn’t dig for them, even when he was a little boy—he knowed that was wrong. You know, some people look for Indian burials and dig up the bones looking for pottery and nice arrowheads. Granddaddy didn’t do that. No, he didn’t bother anybody’s resting place. He just picked up arrowheads he found on the ground or in the creek. A lot of them was in the creek, washed from somewhere. He never knew from where. He just eyed the creek bottom and, sure enough, he’d always find something. He sure found some pretty ones. Yes, he did.”

  The trees whipped back and forth and the wind picked up with a roar.

  “Roy, you let that woman go. I swear, you’ve told her the same stories three times already. A storm’s coming and she needs to get off the mountain.”

  Holding her sweater close around her, Ozella Barre, Roy’s wife, came down the long set of concrete steps leading from her house on the side of the hill.

  “Listen to that wind,” she said. “Lord, it sounds like a train, don’t it?”

  “Mama’s right, Miss Fallon, you need to be getting down the mountain before the rain comes. The roads can get pretty bad up here.”

  “Thank you for your hospitality and the loan of your grandfather’s collection,” said Diane. “I’m sure our archaeologist will be calling to ask you to tell him your stories again. I hope you don’t mind.”

  Mrs. Barre laughed out loud and leaned against her husband. “How many times would he like to hear them?”

  “You know how to get back to the main road?” asked Roy.