Dead Past

by Beverly Connor

  “This is somebody we need to catch soon,” said Garnett.

  “You won’t get an argument from me.”

  “So, it’s your thinking that the Cipriano murder was a case of mistaken identity?” said Garnett.

  “I believe so. The perp was after the doll all along. The woman I think was the intended target is named Juliet Price, one of my employees. The doll belongs to her. She lives just around the block from Cipriano in the same apartment complex and has a very similar address, 131 H. They are both blue-eyed blondes of similar age—their descriptors are close enough that they could be mistaken for each other. Plus, there’s the Impala present at both crime scenes. The one used today was dark blue, so it’s likely to have a blue interior. If we can match carpet fibers found at the Cipriano murder, we’ll have him connected to both crimes.”

  “Napier said there was a doll involved. What’s that about?” asked Garnett.

  “I’m not sure. I think it’s a hunt for lost treasure,” said Diane.

  “Lost treasure? You’ve got to be kidding,” said Garnett.

  “I’m not kidding, but I may be wrong,” she said. “It’s kind of a long story. I’ll give you the complete rundown later.”

  “In your 911 call, you said there may have been two perps?” said Garnett.

  “Two or more. He told me not to move for five minutes while ‘we get out of here.’ ”

  “You may have found us the break we needed,” said Garnett.

  “I wish I could take credit, but he came to me,” said Diane as she walked across the museum in the direction of the crime lab.

  “That was a dangerous experience for you. Are you all right?” asked Garnett.

  “I’m fine. He got what he was after,” she said. “I was more mad than scared.”

  Diane walked past the lounge and across the dinosaur overlook and came face-to-face with Darth Vader. She stopped in her tracks.

  “I have to go,” she said. “Something’s come up. Let me know if you find him.” Diane flipped the phone closed.

  A life-sized cardboard cutout of Darth Vader stood holding a sign that read:

  STOP HERE MUSEUM PERSONNEL ONLY

  He stood just behind one of the museum’s velvet covered chains used for roping off nonpublic areas. Kids sometimes break away from their group and decide to make their own tour of the museum. Some get lost in the huge building and require rescuing. So, the docents post Authorized Personnel signs in various places. Today was an especially busy day for tours of schoolchildren. One of the docents must have wanted to keep the kids out of the west wing and thought this particular sign was a funny inside joke. Diane stepped over the rope past Darth Vader and went to the dark side.

  Jin and Neva, counting cigarette butts, were in one of the glassed-in rooms with their booty spread out on a long table.

  “Hey, Boss,” said Jin. “You all in one piece? We saw the video image of the guy with the gun on you.”

  “I’m fine. How are you doing here?” she asked.

  Jin gestured to a table full of evidence bags. “We got a lot of butts.”

  Also lying on the table was a large piece of white butcher paper with a map drawn on it showing the relative locations of the morgue tent, the coffee tent, the media tent, and where the onlookers stood. Jin and Neva wore gloves and were sorting through the butts looking for Dorals. Apparently they hadn’t found any yet, for there was nothing on their map.

  David entered the room just as Diane donned a pair of gloves to help with the sorting. It looked like hundreds of them.

  “I got the photos from museum Security,” said David. “That was a big gun he had trained on you. Must have been scary.”

  “Made me more mad than scared. All he wanted was the doll. Were you able to clarify the photographs?”

  “I got a partial plate. AXE and it looks like a Georgia plate.”

  “AXE,” said Jin. “You think that was on purpose?”

  “I doubt it. What criminal has vanity plates?” said Neva.

  David shook his head. “I also got the interior. The seats look blue. I imagine the carpet is, too.”

  “Garnett’s chasing down a lead to the car right now,” said Diane. “If he finds it and them, I’m going to need you guys to process the car and their clothes too, ASAP.”

  “Sure thing, Boss,” said Jin.

  “What about the face?” asked Diane. “Could you do anything with that?”

  “Not really,” said David. “He had on sunglasses. My face recognition software needs to see the eyes. But I cleared it up as much as I could and sent it to the police department. They can use it to show around. Someone might recognize him.”

  “OK, I’m going to finish the facial reconstruction. David, do you mind helping Jin and Neva sort the cigarette butts?”

  “Not at all,” said David, putting on a pair of gloves. “By the way, why did the guy steal a doll? Was it valuable? And what did it have to do with Cipriano?”

  “Because of what was inside the doll,” said Diane. “Cipriano, I think, was a mistake. I’ll tell you more later. Right now we’ve got evidence to process.”

  Diane left them sorting cigarette butts and went to her lab where the bones were still waiting for her. She had already pieced together most of the face the last time she worked on them. There weren’t that many pieces left. She made quick work of it, and when she finished she had two complete skeletal faces.

  She took them both to her vault, put each in turn on the pedestal, and scanned each with the laser scanner. She asked the software to reconstruct the unknown victim first, then do another construction of the first victim. Now that she had a more complete face, there would be fewer extrapolations and a more accurate rendition of the face. Even though the first reconstruction was already identified, a more accurate picture would be helpful to the police in tracing the guy’s steps before he got blown into tiny pieces.

  As the software worked its magic—growing a face— she went back out to the bones and began the tedious task of trying to separate the two skeletons. She accomplished that through measurements and articulated surfaces. The task was made easier by the fact that the two individuals were of different heights. One had been athletic, as indicated by large muscle attachments on his arms and legs and pelvic bones. The other individual had been more sedentary.

  The athletic individual was about ten years older than the other, as shown by the sternal end of his ribs, various epiphyses, and the condition of the pubic symphysis. He had a healed wound in his scapula—probably a gunshot wound. It would have reduced the range of motion in his arm and shoulder. From the size of the muscle attachments, he compensated by strengthening his arm and shoulder within the range of motion he had. Gradually she separated out the two skeletons until each lay on a separate table.

  She went back to have a look at the faces. The image on the screen when she walked in was the re-scanned face of the identified victim from the basement. It was similar to the first version, but looked more realistic. Faces aren’t actually symmetrical. There are always slight variations from one side to the other. Duplicating one side and flipping it to substitute for missing bones creates a rather strange looking facsimile. This face no longer had that odd appearance.

  She flipped it over and looked at the next face—and sat stunned. He could have been Marcus McNair’s brother, he was so similar.

  Chapter 45

  Diane stared at the reconstructed face on the computer screen. Was this what Marcus McNair didn’t want them to find? A relative? Why wasn’t he reported missing? Didn’t he have other family who missed him? Parents, wife, children, girlfriend, friends?

  She reached for the phone and called Garnett.

  “I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed,” said Garnett, answering her call. “We found the car down a ravine ten miles outside of town. It’s been burned out. No bodies.”

  “I’ll send David out,” said Diane. “Maybe he’ll find something useful.”

  She wa
s disappointed, but not surprised they ditched the car. She was willing to bet it was a stolen car, anyway. She wrote down the directions to it before she addressed the reason for her call.

  “Did McNair have a brother or cousin, midthirties, who was shot in the shoulder, and looked a lot like him?”

  Garnett was silent for a few seconds. “He has a cousin Eric McNair who fits that description. Why are you asking?”

  “I finished reconstructing the skull on the second basement skeleton. Imagine my surprise when I looked at the computer-generated face and saw a facsimile of McNair.”

  “Hmph. Kind of puts a new light on things,” said Garnett. “I imagine that was a shock. So, that’s where Eric got to.”

  “Who is he and what’s his story? And why didn’t anybody report him missing?” asked Diane. She stared at the face rotating on the screen as she spoke with Garnett.

  “Eric’s one of those family members you kind of hope will go off and not come back. Always in trouble. Spent time in jail for dealing, assault and battery, spouse abuse, you name it. He was shot in a drug deal that went sour. His family had hoped that cured him, but he was a hard case. I guess he’s cured now.”

  “Must have been what McNair was trying to hide,” said Diane.

  “Probably so. Discovering Eric’s involvement with the meth lab would definitely have implicated Marcus. They were tight. Marcus was the only relative Eric was close to.”

  “How did Marcus get to be arson investigator?” asked Diane.

  “Marcus kept out of trouble himself. He also had a benefactor,” said Garnett.

  “Who?” asked Diane.

  “Guess.”

  “Adler?” answered Diane.

  “First try. It’s looking worse and worse for Adler. The more we find on McNair, the more we have on Adler. I don’t know if you’ve seen the news. He’s been trying to distance himself from McNair. But his political career is circling the drain. I’d love to arrest the bastard. That would be icing on the cake.”

  What did David say about payback being a bitch? thought Diane. Adler had no friends in the police department. He should have thought of that. You’d think a politician would have.

  “Can I get dental records on Eric McNair or x-rays of his shoulder?” asked Diane.

  “The guy may never have gone to a dentist. The hospital should have x-rays from the shooting injury. I’ll get them sent over to you,” said Garnett.

  “That’ll confirm the identification,” said Diane. “I don’t guess there’s any line on where the occupants of the Impala went,” she said, jumping subjects.

  “None. They obviously ditched the car. They’re probably in another vehicle by now and long gone.”

  “They’ll hang around,” said Diane.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because they didn’t get what they wanted,” said Diane.

  “You mean the secret code thing you were talking about?” asked Garnett.

  From the tone of his voice and the ambiguity of his understanding of what the secret code thing represented to the gunman, Diane could see that Garnett wasn’t buying the looking-for-treasure motive. It didn’t matter. She bought it. And she knew they would return to get the coded message.

  “You’ll let me know if he’s sighted?” she said.

  “You know I will,” replied Garnett. “But I think you can relax.”

  She hung up with Garnett. The face of Eric McNair rotated in three dimensions on her screen. What a tragic life to have gotten as far as his midthirties and have no one miss him. She printed out both faces—the two men who died together in an instant in the basement of the house—and saved them to a portable memory stick.

  Jin, David, and Neva had made significant progress sorting through the cigarette butts. The map was full of small x’s, each representing a Doral. But she didn’t like what she saw. The vast majority of the x’s clustered near the morgue tent and the coffee tent.

  “Doesn’t look good, does it?” said David.

  She looked up and caught him watching her.

  “We’ll need to find out what the people at tent city smoke,” said Jin.

  What the people at tent city smoke, thought Diane. None of them wanted to say that who they were looking at as a murder suspect was one of the medical examiners, their assistants, or a policeman. Those were the only people allowed in the area.

  “I hate this,” said Neva, “but I’ll find out what the policemen smoke.”

  “I’ll do it,” said David. “They’re your friends.”

  “Neither of you will do it,” said Diane. “We’re going to give the information to Garnett and let him investigate. That’s what we do: We supply objective information from the scene and he uses it to investigate the crime.”

  “Since when?” said Jin.

  “I’m not willing to alienate the police department any more than I have to. I’m taking the coward’s way out of this one. It’s up to Garnett now.”

  “That works for me,” said Neva.

  Diane didn’t hear Jin or David objecting. Good.

  “This is something for you to mull over,” said Diane. She laid down the printout of the face she had reconstructed.

  “Why did you have the computer draw Marcus McNair?” said Neva. She looked at Diane with a puzzled frown.

  “Yeah, Boss,” said Jin. “You testing your software?”

  “Is this McNair?” asked David, picking up the page and examining the printed picture.

  “We’re waiting for confirmation, but it appears to be Eric McNair, Marcus McNair’s cousin,” said Diane.

  Jin grabbed the page out of David’s hand to look at it again. “His cousin? Was he the second guy in the basement?”

  “Yes, he was. I’m having x-rays sent over for confirmation,” said Diane.

  “What does this mean exactly?” asked David.

  “Garnett believes that it connects Marcus McNair to the meth manufacturing. He’s hoping that proving McNair was involved will mean he can prove Adler was involved. Failing direct proof, I suppose Garnett hopes the insinuation that Adler was involved will forever ruin Adler’s political career,” said Diane.

  “You sound like you don’t approve,” said Jin. “I wouldn’t waste any sympathy on Adler.”

  “I’m not,” said Diane. “I have no sympathy for him. I . . . It’s just that . . .”

  “You like a clean kill,” said David.

  “Blunt way of putting it, but I suppose that’s true. Anyway, that’s not our problem. Our problem is to recover the best evidence we can from the crime scenes. Speaking of which, David, I need you to go meet Garnett at a crime scene. Here are the directions. He found the Chevrolet Impala in a ravine and burned to a crisp.”

  “Were the suspects in it?” asked David

  “No, it looks like they just got rid of the car. Probably got another one. It’s my feeling they’re still in town.”

  “Why would they hang around?” asked Neva.

  “Because they were after the coded message, and I removed it from the doll before they got it.”

  The three of them gave her a blank stare. “Coded message?” said Jin.

  “I think you skipped a chapter,” said David.

  “I guess I did. The doll had what may be a coded message inside.” She briefly told them the story of Leo Parrish and the missing loot.

  “And these guys are looking for it?” said Jin.

  “I’m guessing,” said Diane. “I don’t know for a fact.”

  “That’s just a weird story,” said David, as if it offended his sensibilities. “How did Juliet get involved?”

  “That I don’t know. I have only vague guesses.” Diane didn’t want to give them Juliet’s life history just yet. She turned to Jin. “I have a job for you. I know how you like to solve puzzles.” Diane pulled the printed copy of the code from her pocket and handed it to Jin.

  “That was in the doll?” said David. “How did you know to look?”

  “Long story,�
�� said Diane.

  “It must be,” he said. “It just keeps getting longer.”

  “This looks like a cryptogram,” Jin said. “I can do these in my sleep. See, all you have to know is the frequency with which each letter of the alphabet occurs in everyday language—a few other things too—but it’s easy.”

  “Good. Do it tonight when you get home. Right now, you and Neva get the cigarette information to Garnett. And David . . .”

  “I know, I’m going,” he said. He grabbed his case and headed for the elevator.

  “I’ll meet you out there,” she called after him. “I have some things to do here first.”

  “I can do it myself,” he said.

  “It’ll be faster if I help,” she said.

  The elevator door opened and David stepped in.

  “When you guys finish your report, go home,” Diane said to Neva and Jin. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Diane left them and walked downstairs to the conservation lab. She met Korey on the Pleistocene overlook near his lab.

  He grinned and his eyes twinkled when he saw her. “I have your forgery, Dr. F.,” he said.

  “That’s great. I was just coming to get it. I’m going fishing and I need bait for my hook.” It was in a glassine envelope. She took it out and examined it.

  “This looks just like the original,” said Diane.

  “I went down to the thrift shop and bought some old books,” he said. “I tore a piece from one of them—they weren’t valuable, I checked. I wrote the message with vegetable ink. It all looks pretty old.”

  “Thank you, Korey,” said Diane. “This is excellent. If I decide to go into a life of crime, you’re my man.” She slipped it back in its envelope and put it in her pocket.

  “I’m glad to know that’s not what we are doing,” he said still smiling. “Tell me, the jobs you gave to Kendel and Beth, are they related to this?” He gestured to her pocket.

  “Yes,” said Diane smiling.

  “I really can’t wait for this,” he said.

  “I’ll tell you when it’s over, all three of you,” she said and left by the overlook elevator and rode down to the main lobby.