Scattered Graves dffi-6

by Beverly Connor

  Diane set her cup down. She hadn’t taken a sip either. Hot chocolate just didn’t fit her mood.

  ‘‘Look, Frank, do you really expect an answer to that? I did what I thought was right at the time. Was it the best thing? I don’t know. We’re all alive, no shots were fired, but we don’t have the perp, so I guess it’s just half and half.’’

  ‘‘Diane, I know the directors of several state crime labs, and none of them ever have the . . . the incidents that you do. Why is that?’’

  ‘‘I don’t know, Frank. I really don’t. Do you think it’s my fault Delamore attacked me?’’

  ‘‘Is that what you think this is about?’’ He wrinkled his brow. ‘‘Do you feel guilty over his death?’’

  ‘‘He died. Of course I feel guilty.’’

  ‘‘Don’t. The only difference between Delamore and a murderer is success. He was going to kill you.’’ Frank hesitated a moment. ‘‘It’s not Delamore you’re feeling guilty about, is it? It’s Ariel. It’s this time of year in particular; you feel like you have to save every one. Even if it means killing yourself. Isn’t that it?’’

  Tears came to Diane’s eyes at the mention of Ariel. ‘‘I have no desire to die,’’ she said vehemently. ‘‘None.’’

  ‘‘But you do feel like you always have to take action. To stop things before they get worse,’’ said Frank.

  Ariel was Diane’s adopted daughter. Actually the adoption

  progress,

  hadn’t gone completely through. It was in stuck in the slowness of bureaucracy. But the feelings Diane had for Ariel weren’t stuck in the process. Ariel was her daughter. She was her heart.

  Ariel had simply shown up at the mission where Diane and her human rights team were staying in South America. She had walked out of the jungle—a toddler, dirty, but unhurt, nameless. All efforts to find parents or relatives were fruitless. It was a surprise to Diane that she decided to adopt Ariel. She never thought of herself as particularly motherly, but Ariel had brought that out.

  She didn’t take her usual leaves of absence, but lived at the mission with Ariel, working out of there on her job with World Accord International. They had a good life until Diane became too successful at un covering the evil deeds of a particularly vile dictator. He retaliated by killing everyone at the mission while Diane and her team were away. She blamed herself for not just taking Ariel away, smuggling her out if the papers weren’t ready. She had the contacts to do it. But she was so involved in doing things the legal way, she didn’t even consider it. This month was the anniversary of the massacre, and it always made both her and David ache with the pain of their losses.

  Frank was probably getting to the heart of why she did things the way she did. She didn’t take action then, but she would now. Always take action before things get worse—a subconscious code she lived by. Not so subconscious. Diane wanted to make her corner of the world safe for people to live in.

  Tears ran down her cheeks. She looked up at the picture on the mantel of herself and Ariel in their mother-daughter outfits she’d ordered from the States. Frank took her hand, then pulled her to him.

  ‘‘Sometimes you have to let other people fix things,’’ he said.

  ‘‘Sometimes they don’t,’’ said Diane. ‘‘I waited for the government to issue Ariel’s adoption papers; they never did. Sometimes you have to do things yourself.’’

  ‘‘Let’s go to bed,’’ he said.

  ‘‘Good idea. I’m very tired.’’

  Frank got up, closed the fireplace screen, and turned out the lights.

  Diane dreamed of changing lightbulbs. All over the house she was changing out the bulbs one after the other. Even if they didn’t need it, she changed them anyway. She woke up with a start.

  That was perhaps the stupidest dream I’ve ever had, she thought.

  She looked at the clock. It was early. Frank was still asleep. He wasn’t driving into Atlanta until the cybergang case was concluded. His bosses were ex cited by the discoveries about the mayor and the gang. They smelled a big case about to burst wide open. They, like everyone else, wanted what was hidden on the computer. Diane was lying there thinking that maybe it was a red herring. She had heard by way of Izzy— Janice was talking to him—that nothing was found on the computers of Edgar Peeks. Just business. It was the mayor’s computer everyone had pinned their hopes on. It was the one that had the serious encryption.

  Diane remembered she hadn’t asked Frank about the latest on his Black Light hacker. Who was he? It was a fragile link—a message they could see only with a black light. But it was a good one, a good circum stantial clue to add to all the other circumstantial clues they had stacking up but couldn’t verify.

  Diane got out of bed and went to the kitchen to make pancakes. They were a favorite of Frank’s. Maybe they would make up for almost getting herself killed—repeatedly.

  She had to call Vanessa. Diane wasn’t looking for ward to that. She had just got the crime lab back and already the ‘‘danger’’ clause of the contract was violated. Would it always be a risky venture? Frank was right. None of the other crime labs attracted so much danger. Was it because it was in the museum and not at a police station that perps felt safe trying to break in? Maybe she should move it away from the museum and resign as crime lab director.

  She started mixing the ingredients for the pancakes. As the griddle was heating up, she walked back to the bedroom to see if Frank was waking up. He was in the shower.

  ‘‘I’m making pancakes,’’ she said and heard him mumble something like, ‘‘Great... won’t be long.’’

  She poured batter on the griddle—always a messy operation for her. As the pancakes were cooking, she opened a drawer to dig for a spatula. Frank kept all his kitchen utensils in one big drawer. Diane kept meaning to straighten it out but had never gotten around to it. She searched for the particular spatula she liked to use. She pulled out a pair of ice tongs and put them down on the counter. She saw the spat ula she wanted, pulled it out, and flipped the pancakes.

  She looked down at the tongs. Great. She had laid them in pancake batter she had dribbled on the counter. She picked them up and stared at the pattern the batter made on the counter. She had seen a similar pattern before, and she knew why she had dreamed about lightbulbs all night.

  Chapter 39

  After breakfast, and after explaining her epiphanybad-dream idea to Frank, and after she downloaded crime scene and autopsy photos, and after Frank drove her to the museum to get her SUV, Diane went to the police shooting range and asked to see the logbook.

  The sergeant on duty was reluctant, even with Di ane’s freshly minted ID. He was torn, she could see. He liked Garnett and he knew that even though Diane was back at the crime lab and officially neutral, she was working in Garnett’s favor. But he also had liked Harve Delamore.

  Diane smiled in the friendliest manner she could muster and said if he needed it for his paperwork, she could call the chief of police for authorization. Grudgingly, he showed her the book. Diane wanted to ask him why he and others who felt the way he did thought it was all right for Delamore to try to kill her. Why was that okay with them? She didn’t understand it, even accounting for the male-bonding thing. Surely morality should kick in and tell their conscience that Delamore was wrong to try to do what he did. Obvi ously it wasn’t rational. It was just their feelings. They liked Delamore and now he was dead and Diane had something to do with it.

  Diane examined the logbook and found something, though it was not exactly what she was looking for. It only added another link in the chain, but at least it didn’t destroy it. She had to do a little rethinking of the sequence of events. Obviously, if she was right, there had been a change in plan along the way, a change in the intended target. Who could it have been?

  Diane thanked the sergeant sincerely and drove to the city jail, where they were keeping Garnett. She didn’t have any trouble seeing him. Odd, thought Diane, one would think he would be better guarded
than a logbook at the gun range.

  Garnett didn’t look good. There were dark circles under his eyes and his whole body seemed to sag under the weight of his situation. Then again, he prob ably looked better than she did.

  ‘‘There’s something wrong.’’ He began talking be fore Diane could say what she came for. His reticence with Janice apparently didn’t roll over to Diane. His feelings poured out of him.

  ‘‘Something’s wrong. I didn’t kill Edgar Peeks. I don’t know who to trust. These are people I’ve known for a long time, and I can’t believe they would be part of a conspiracy. But they have to be. I didn’t shoot him. Not even my own lawyer believes me. Even my family is doubting me. This is a nightmare.’’

  ‘‘I know,’’ said Diane. ‘‘I believe you and I’m work ing on proving it. Let me tell you what I think happened.’’

  There was more surprise on Garnett’s face than re lief. He stared at Diane, not speaking.

  ‘‘I shouldn’t be speaking to you, but just in case you may be able to remember something that will help, you need to know what’s going on. You also need to have some hope. It must be like you’ve entered the Twilight Zone, or fell into a Kafka novel.’’

  ‘‘You can explain this?’’ he said after a moment.

  ‘‘I think so,’’ said Diane. ‘‘The main problem you have is that a bullet from your gun was in Peeks’ head. Janice and Izzy, both good, reliable witnesses, saw Shane Eastling remove it from Peeks’ brain. And when they ar rested you, you had your gun with you,’’ said Diane.

  ‘‘In a nutshell, yes, that’s my problem. But they’ve made a mistake—’’

  Diane held up a hand. She wasn’t sure where to start. She couldn’t really tell him that she got the idea from fiddling with a loose rock in her fountain, or changing a lightbulb. But that was what triggered her idea: taking something out and putting something back in.

  ‘‘I think someone got hold of one of your spent bullets when you were qualifying at the gun range. They killed Peeks with their gun, dug out their bullet with a pair of forceps, and replaced it with your bullet.’’

  Garnett looked surprised and disbelieving, even though this would show him to be innocent. It was too far-fetched, he was probably thinking. And it was far-fetched. But he said nothing. He just waited for Diane to explain herself.

  ‘‘I wondered why your bullet wasn’t a through-and through. Your gun has enough power to shoot a bullet all the way through the head at the close distance from which Peeks was shot. It didn’t—but that can happen. Then I thought, what if he was really shot with a much smaller-caliber gun—something like a .22 would be powerful enough to pass through the skull bone and lodge in the brain, but would not be strong enough to break through the bone on the other side of the head. And there was the question of why there was so much damage to the brain tissue. There was no ricocheting of the bullet inside the skull cavity, just one straight path, with more damage to the brain tis sue than you would expect. That can happen too.

  ‘‘But all that got me to thinking. I began with the assumption that everyone around here is telling the truth. If that’s the case, what happened?’’

  ‘‘Do you have any evidence?’’ said Garnett.

  The wistfulness in his voice was pitiful, thought Diane.

  ‘‘Jin and David found a bloodstain on the floor under the chest in the foyer where Peeks’ body was found. It had a pattern in it. I think the pattern was made by a pair of bloody forceps.’’

  She didn’t mention that ice tongs and pancake bat ter make a similar pattern.

  ‘‘Pendleton told me he saw Rikki Gillinick pocket something shiny at the crime scene. I think she found the forceps. Either she killed Peeks and was re claiming evidence she left behind, or Bryce did it and she collected the forceps for him, or perhaps to keep and hold over him. If that’s the case, the forceps are somewhere and we can find them. The forceps in our crime scene kits have a nice solid, shiny, flat place at the top that is great for fingerprints. And they would leave a pattern like the one Jin and David found in the blood.’’

  Garnett looked a little less skeptical. In fact, he seemed to be warming up to the idea.

  ‘‘How did they get one of my spent bullets?’’ he asked.

  ‘‘At the shooting range,’’ said Diane. ‘‘The logbook at the range shows that the last two times you were there, the only other person shooting was Edgar Peeks. Both of those times were before Jefferies and Peeks were killed. I think Peeks retrieved your bullets from a target after you left because he and his fellow conspirators were planning to kill someone and to frame you. Somewhere along the line the shit really hit the fan and the plans changed.’’

  ‘‘I see where you’re going with this,’’ Garnett said. ‘‘Let’s suppose they did need bullets fired from my gun. If it were me doing it, I’d find a way to get into the reference collection that’s kept by Ballistics. They keep spent bullets from every officer’s gun on file for comparison with bullets fired during a police action.’’

  ‘‘Good idea,’’ said Diane. ‘‘I should have thought of that.’’

  ‘‘All this is plausible,’’ he said. ‘‘But how can we prove it?’’

  ‘‘Bryce and Rikki are the keys,’’ she said. ‘‘We have to find out from them somehow.’’

  Garnett was silent a moment, quietly nodding his head. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.

  ‘‘At least this gives me some hope,’’ he said. ‘‘I know how paranoids feel now. I was thinking that Izzy and Janice were in on some plot against me, along with everyone else.’’

  Diane smiled. ‘‘Just keep the faith. We’ll figure this thing out.’’

  Garnett looked better when she left than when she had arrived—a good sign. Diane went to find Janice Warrick.

  Janice was at her desk going over some of the same crime photos that Diane had pored over earlier. Diane pulled up a chair and sat down.

  ‘‘Do you know what this is?’’ Janice showed her a picture of the bloodstain under the hallway chest.

  ‘‘I think so. That’s why I wanted to talk with you.’’

  Diane went over the scenario again. It was received better each time she presented it. Frank thought she was nuts at first. Garnett

  Janice was excited about

  was cautiously optimistic. it. Either she was getting really good at explaining her theory or Janice knew something Diane didn’t.

  ‘‘I hope this is helpful,’’ said Diane, silently urging her to share.

  ‘‘It is.’’ Janice leaned closer. ‘‘One of the things we found in Peeks’ apartment was a small jar of spent bullets. We gave them to Ballistics, but they weren’t a priority. It just looked like he collected used bullets. But now . . . I’ll check the Ballistics reference collec tion for anything missing.’’

  Diane felt a remarkable sense of relief. Secretly, she herself had thought she was a little nuts.

  ‘‘I spoke with Garnett,’’ said Diane. ‘‘I thought he needed a boost, and I know you have to walk a pretty fine line. Actually, I do too, but they watch you more closely.’’

  Janice’s grin surprised Diane. She was all geared up to defend herself for meddling.

  ‘‘I was also hoping Garnett would remember some thing. We’ll see,’’ added Diane. ‘‘Did you get a chance to speak with Curtis Crabtree?’’

  ‘‘Haven’t been able to find him. We have an APB out.’’ Janice grinned again. ‘‘I feel this coming to a good end.’’

  Diane could see that a good end included commen dations to Janice for solving Rosewood’s case of the decade. Diane hoped it came to pass.

  ‘‘I need to talk to Chief Monroe. Do you think he’s in?’’ said Diane.

  Janice looked a little suspicious. Diane was sure Ja nice didn’t want her thunder stolen. Diane didn’t blame her. Janice had to work hard in a sometimes hostile male-dominated police force to get to where she was. She needed credit when credit was due her.

&n
bsp; ‘‘I think he is,’’ said Janice. ‘‘He’s been fielding calls from reporters. Having two leaders killed within a couple of days has brought us a lot of attention. It’s very high profile. The chief is thinking about letting the FBI take a look at Jefferies’ computer.’’

  ‘‘Anyone who can crack it will be good,’’ said Diane. She didn’t say that it would piss David off, not to mention Frank.

  Diane went upstairs to the office of the chief of police. Acting mayor Edward Van Ross was with him.

  Chapter 40

  ‘‘I’m glad you came by,’’ said Mayor Van Ross. ‘‘I was going to call.’’

  Even though it was Chief Monroe’s office and the chief was sitting behind his desk, it was Edward Van Ross who motioned to a chair and indicated for Diane to sit down.

  ‘‘I haven’t spoken with Vanessa yet,’’ said Diane, taking a seat. ‘‘Already, the ‘Danger, Will Robinson’ part of the contract has been violated.’’