Dead Past

by Beverly Connor

  “Then why don’t you get your sorry self out to where the tent city was and look for cigarette butts?” she said. “In the tent where we were, I noticed several people stepping out to smoke. I’m sure that was true where the coffee tent was also, and where the crowd of onlookers waited, and where the media were set up. If you’re lucky, the cigarette butts you found at the warehouse will be distinctive or uncommon in some way. If you find a match at the tent city, then at least we will be on a trail of clues again.”

  “Boss, that’s a good idea. But they will be trampled by now; the DNA will be degraded; they will be mixed in with the butts thrown out by the people dismantling the tents.”

  “Right now we are just looking for clues that might point us somewhere; we are not necessarily looking for evidence we can take to court.”

  “I’m with you, Boss, but still, there’s a possibility that everyone will have been smoking the same brand.”

  “Not necessarily,” said David. “If the brand is Marlboro you’re in trouble; about half the smoking population smokes them. However, that diminishes with age. You get in the twenty-six-plus age group and the percentage falls considerably. Look at your photographs and see if you can figure out what brand you have and go from there. Diane’s right. Get off your sorry butt and do some old-fashioned detective work.”

  They all stared at David. Neva spoke first.

  “You have a cigarette database, I take it?”

  “Of course, I do. Do you know how may perps smoke?” said David.

  “But you’ve memorized it,” said Neva.

  “No, I looked it up while Diane and Jin were talking.”

  Jin jumped up and fetched his photographs and sat down by David. He took a magnifying glass and began examining the images.

  “Here’s something. Is that a logo?” asked Jin.

  David looked at the picture.

  “OK,” he said and clicked through his screen. “I was just looking at these. You’re in luck. Those are Dorals. They’re generic brands—as opposed to the premium brands. They’re smoked mostly by the age group twenty-six and older, and then only by about 5.4 percent of them. You find a Doral smoker at tent city, and they’re definitely someone who needs to be looked at more closely. To qualify as your possible attacker, they will also have to be physically fit. Probably someone who is addicted to tobacco. Look for someone who has to watch their budget or is just frugal by nature—but not so tight as to have to buy the cheaper value brands. And is most likely white.”

  “How in the world do you know all that stuff?” said Neva.

  “Both the smoking interests and nonsmoking interests keep reams of data on the demographics of smokers,” said David.

  “Wow,” said Jin. “This might work. I’ll get on my deerstalker and go collect some more butts.”

  “I’ll help,” said Neva.

  They left, Jin obviously in a happier frame of mind.

  “Good idea,” said David. “It’s a place to start, and something might actually come of it.”

  “At least it will get Jin to thinking again. He hates feeling that he made a mistake,” said Diane. “Now, I need to call Garnett. I just found out something that might change our thinking yet again.”

  Diane called Garnett from David’s workstation. David sat listening to her as she explained about Shawn Keith and his quick departure from his job.

  “I can’t pick him up simply because he’s changing jobs,” said Garnett. “But he did witness a crime and called 911. We interviewed him once as a witness. I’ll bring him in for a reinterview.”

  “I know it’s a long shot, but if he was the one helping Blake Stanton steal from the university, he had a motive for killing him.”

  “Would Shawn Keith really kill the Stanton kid over a matter of petty theft?” asked Garnett.

  “Keith was a faculty member in the History Department. If he were linked to theft from the university, his career as a college professor would be over. He could never work at a college or university again. He had a lot to lose.”

  “I guess you’re right about that. So, you’re changing the theory of the crime again?” said Garnett.

  “I’m not changing anything. This is a process. I’m looking at all possibilities,” said Diane.

  “OK, I’ll see if I can find him. You say he lives in your building?”

  “In the basement,” said Diane.

  “Well,” said David, after she had hung up with Garnett, “that’s interesting.”

  “It is, isn’t it? We’ll see what Garnett comes up with. In the meantime, I was on my way to Aquatics.”

  Diane started out the door, then suddenly turned back to David. “I need to find out if there was a mass murder in either Glendale-Marsh, Florida, or Scottsdale, Arizona, in the summer or fall of 1987. The victims may have been wrapped in clear plastic.”

  “What’s this about?” asked David. “A new case?”

  “Something private I’m working on,” said Diane.

  “Will do,” he said.

  Diane left the crime lab and went back down to the first floor and across to Aquatics. When she arrived, there was a commotion going on. A thin older woman with tanned leather-looking skin and blond brown hair up in a bun was arguing with a security guard in front of the fish exhibits. Fortunately, there were only a few people in the room.

  “I’m not giving you my package, young man. I don’t even know you.”

  Diane recognized her voice.

  “Ma’am. I just need to look at it.”

  “Mrs. Torkel?” said Diane. “Are you Ruby Torkel?”

  The woman and the guard turned around at Diane’s voice. The guard looked relieved.

  “Yes. And who are you? How do you know my name?” she said.

  “I’m Diane Fallon. We talked on the phone yesterday. Did you come all the way from Florida?”

  “I’m here, am I not? You said you wanted to see the doll.”

  Diane motioned for the guard to leave. “Is that the doll?” asked Diane.

  “It’s not my lunch,” she said.

  “I didn’t mean for you to have to bring it,” said Diane.

  “If I sent it, there’s no telling how long it would take, and I thought, I haven’t seen Juliet in a while, so I’ll just bring it. But this building is so big.”

  “Yes, it is. I was on my way to see Juliet myself. She’s probably in the lab.”

  “Gramma, is that you?” Juliet had just come out of the shell room into the fish room. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come to see you. This woman—Diane Fallon—wants to see that doll.”

  “The doll?” said Juliet, looking confused.

  “You know, when you were a little girl. The one I took away from you,” said her grandmother.

  “You brought it all the way from Florida?” said Juliet. She guided her grandmother out of the way of tourists and toward a corner.

  “Of course, from Florida. I didn’t come from Europe. Aren’t you glad to see me?” Juliet’s grandmother said.

  “Of course, I am, Gramma.” Juliet gave her grandmother a hug. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. How did you get here?”

  “I took a bus. It wasn’t that bad. I slept most of the way. Changing in Atlanta wasn’t fun.”

  “Well, I’m glad to see you,” said Juliet. “Have you had anything to eat?”

  “Nothing to speak of,” she said.

  “Why don’t you take your grandmother to the restaurant?” said Diane.

  Juliet nodded. “I’ll do that.”

  “First,” said Diane, “I wanted to ask you something. Actually, I came to tell you that I talked with your grandmother and asked her to send the doll. But there is something else I’ve been meaning to ask. When we had dinner the other day you said you are afraid of certain things like new dolls and certain words. What words?”

  “It’s silly, really. One of them that absolutely fills me with anxiety is a word I ran into quite by accident in my museum wo
rk. It’s the word palim . . . palim . . . I’m sorry, it’s very difficult for me to even say it. It is the word . . . palimpsests. How strange is that?” Juliet laughed nervously.

  “Palimpsests? That’s the second time I’ve heard that word lately—where?” said Diane. Then she remembered, that’s why the alliteration of p’s kept tickling her brain. “I remember. The making of palimpsests was possible even with papyri.”

  Juliet’s eyes grew round in a look of sheer terror; her face drained of color, she backed up against the wall and screamed before she slid down and held her knees, sobbing.

  Chapter 40

  “What in the world did you say to her?” said Mrs. Torkel as she hurried over to her granddaughter.

  “I’m not sure,” said Diane. She knelt beside the stricken girl, who now seemed to have fallen into a trance or a seizure. “Juliet, can you hear me?” No response. Juliet was breathing very fast.

  “My husband, God rest his soul, did this sometimes. It was after the war and I’d find him out in a field hiding from the enemy, he said. He’d pull me down with him and we’d both hide there in the weeds,” said Mrs. Torkel. “She’s having a flashback. That’s what it looks like to me. God in heaven, we thought she’d just forget and it would be all right.”

  “Can we help?”

  Diane glanced up briefly and several of the tourists were gathered around. She didn’t know which one had spoken.

  “Thank you, but no. Please go ahead and enjoy your tour of the museum.”

  Juliet sat there for several minutes with no change. Diane and Mrs. Torkel said nothing. Juliet’s breathing slowed and Diane thought she was coming around from wherever it was she had gone. After another couple of minutes, she tried to stand. Diane and Mrs. Torkel got on each side of her and helped her up and into the lab, away from the tourists. Mrs. Torkel, Diane noticed, elbowed a few of them out of the way.

  The two of them guided Juliet to a chair where she sat and put her head down. Diane got her some water from the fountain in the corner. As she handed it to Juliet she caught sight of Whitney Lester in the doorway of her office with a satisfied smirk on her face.

  “Don’t just stand there; call the nurse,” said Diane. Lester’s smile faded, and she disappeared into her office.

  “What’s the matter, child?” said her grandmother. “Where were you?”

  “I don’t know. I was just suddenly running through the brush and a man was chasing me to your house, Gramma. It was so real.”

  Mrs. Pierce, one of the museum’s nurses, arrived quickly, and Diane explained what had happened. Mrs. Pierce had a motherly bedside manner with a knack for comforting hurt and sick children. She took Juliet’s pulse and felt her skin.

  “Your pulse is a little rapid, but your skin isn’t clammy.” She shined a light in her eyes. “You’re OK. It looks like an anxiety attack. Have you had these before?” she asked.

  Juliet nodded.

  “Are you seeing someone about them?” she asked.

  Again Juliet nodded.

  “Good,” said Mrs. Pierce. “I recommend you take a rest for the remainder of the day. You’ll be fine. Be sure and call the person you’re seeing and tell him or her.”

  “I will, thanks.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Pierce,” said Diane.

  “That’s what you pay me for.” She smiled and left the aquatics lab.

  “This is just so stupid of me,” said Juliet.

  “No, it isn’t,” said Diane. “Can you answer some questions?”

  “Sure.”

  “Did you see what the man chasing you looked like?” asked Diane.

  “He was mean. He had a black goatee of a beard and straight black hair.”

  “Do you know why he was chasing you?” asked Diane.

  “No. That thing you said, why did you say it to me?” She looked up at Diane in anguish, as if Diane had done it on purpose.

  “You mean the sentence with the word you feared?” Diane was careful not to say the words again. “I heard it while I was looking for a friend in the library. Students were studying and it was just a phrase I heard. It stuck with me, I suppose because it was a kind of tongue twister. That word is so unusual, it was odd to hear it twice in so short a time. Why did that throw you into a flashback?”

  “Flashback . . . like Grampa? I don’t know.” She looked confused. “The man said it,” said Juliet.

  “To you?” Diane thought that would be an odd thing to say to a seven-year-old.

  “No, but . . . I don’t know who he said it to. I just heard him say it. It was scary when he said it. I don’t remember anymore. I’m sorry,” said Juliet.

  “Did he just say the word, or the whole phrase?” Diane thought that highly unlikely, but why did she freak out so when Diane repeated the sentence.

  “The phrase. He said the whole thing the way you said it, and he was looking at me,” said Juliet.

  “Looking at you? Directly at you?” asked Diane.

  “No, I’m not sure . . .” Juliet looked like she might panic again.

  “That’s all right. Why don’t you take your grandmother to the restaurant? Sit in a quiet booth, have something cool to drink, get some nourishment,” said Diane. “I’ll walk with the two of you.”

  “I think we both could use some food,” said her grandmother. “I’ll bet you’ve been skipping meals, haven’t you, dear?”

  Diane walked them to the elevators and they all went down to the restaurant. Diane told the hostess to seat them in her place, which was her code for the bill to be put on her tab as well.

  “Have a good meal. When you finish I’ll have someone drive you home,” said Diane.

  “I can drive. I’m fine, really,” said Juliet. “It’s just that darn word.” She tried to smile.

  Ruby Torkel turned to Diane. “You keep the doll. Don’t let anybody take it away from you.”

  “I won’t.”

  Diane didn’t even try to explain to her that the security guard was just making sure that nothing dangerous was being brought into the museum.

  “Is that the doll you said I stole?” asked Juliet. She touched the package with her fingertips. “I don’t even remember what it looks like.”

  “Do you want to see it?” asked her grandmother.

  Juliet grabbed her hand back as if the package had turned into a snake. “No . . . I think I’ve freaked everyone out enough for one day. Maybe when the museum is having a slow day.” She smiled again.

  “Do you remember anything Juliet said when she showed you the doll?” Diane asked Mrs. Torkel.

  “Oh, she didn’t show it to me. I found her playing with it. She said it had something . . . a secret, that’s what it was. You know how kids are, making stuff up. I asked her where she got it and she wouldn’t tell me; she just said it was a secret. I told her she had to give it back, but she said her friend gave it to her. That’s when I took it away and told her she couldn’t play with something that wasn’t hers and people just didn’t give away toys that nice.”

  Juliet stood listening to her grandmother with a frown. “I don’t remember any of that.”

  “Well, honey, you were seven,” said Mrs. Torkel.

  “I’m going to leave the two of you to eat and catch up on news. Juliet, you can have the rest of the day off,” said Diane. “Oh, would you mind if I open the package in my office?”

  “Go ahead,” said Juliet. “I don’t care.”

  Diane left them and, carrying the package, went to her office.

  “Hey, Andie. Anything going on?” asked Diane as she walked through Andie’s office.

  “Usual stuff. Someone said there was a commotion in Fish?” she said.

  “News travels fast. It was nothing. I’m going to be in my office for a while.”

  “MOF?” asked Andie.

  MOF was Andie’s abbreviation for Museum On Fire, which meant she would only disturb Diane in a dire emergency.

  “Not that drastic, but field everything you can,” said Dia
ne.

  She sat down at her desk and looked at the package a moment before she unwrapped it. The doll was in almost-new condition. It was a pretty doll with a porcelain head, feet, and hands, and a soft body. It had a head full of black finger curls and an ornate green satin bonnet and satin green dress trimmed in white fur. Her feet were covered in high-top patent leather shoes and white stockings. She carried a white fur muff in one hand, attached by a piece of elastic sewn into the muff and looped over the wrist. It was a nice doll, but not an expensive one. Diane’s sister collected dolls, so Diane had a passing familiarity with them.

  Diane leaned back in her chair and focused her eyes on the table fountain and the water running over the rocks. The making of palimpsests was possible even with papyri. That was such an odd phrase. What exactly did it mean—other than the obvious literal meaning? Diane knew what a palimpsest was, but she grabbed her Webster’s dictionary anyway and looked it up:

  Palimpsest: writing material as a parchment or tablet used one or more times after earlier writing has been erased.

  Diane knew that it was a practice in ancient times to erase the work of an earlier author and reuse the parchment to pen another piece of work. Sometimes the earlier work can still be deciphered. Korey Jordan, her head conservator, had revealed the earlier writing on a medieval parchment that was a palimpsest.

  Why would a kidnapper or killer use a sentence like that? What was the meaning in that context?

  But the more important mystery in her mind was why had she heard it in the library—apparently the exact sentence. Was it actually more common than she thought? She got on her computer and flipped over to the Internet and Googled the sentence with quotations. No hits whatsoever. She removed the quotations and tried again. She got a lot of hits, but none that contained the words in any combination even close to the sentence she heard. She clicked on her bookmark of the Gutenberg project and searched the offerings. Nothing.

  So, it didn’t seem to be a common quotation. Then who in the library said it? She closed her eyes and tried to remember the voice. Female? That’s what she thought she remembered.

  It seemed to stretch the imagination that it could be the same person who had said it in Florida twenty years ago, here now—in the university library. But it was quite a coincidence. Her thoughts were interrupted by her intercom.