Dust to Dust dffi-7

by Beverly Connor

  “I don’t get it. Are we talking about this being an archaeology-what do they call it-site, an archaeology site? A dig? Why are you telling me this?” he asked without rancor, but with a lot of curiosity.

  “No. There is no bone-tempered pottery in the prehistory of Georgia,” said Diane.

  She explained about what tempering is, how it gives a distinctive look and characteristics to pottery, and that in Georgia, common prehistoric tempers were fiber, shells, and grit.

  “But this is not prehistoric. We are talking about modern pottery here. Are you with me?” she said.

  “Not yet, but keep going,” said Hanks. “This is like watching the Discovery Channel. And I’m anxious to hear how your guy Hector got in the well. This is where all this is leading, right?”

  Diane smiled. The others had been silent throughout her narration. It was the first time they had heard all of it. Mike hadn’t heard any of it.

  “Marcella used a lab in Arizona to analyze her Texas pottery sherds to identify the species of animal bone used for the tempering. It’s a thing archaeologists like to know,” Diane said. “She sent samples of the pottery she found in her yard here to the lab to find out what species of animal was used in it. The lab called me at the museum when they couldn’t get in touch with Marcella. She was in the hospital. They were quite disturbed to discover that the species was human. I believe they faxed you a copy of their report.”

  “Well, yeah, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of the damn thing.” Hanks leaned forward, openmouthed. “Are you telling me those pots she found were made out of human bone? Now, that is spooky.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Diane could see the surprise on Mike’s face. Neva smiled at him and patted his thigh.

  “The clay used to make them had human bone mixed with it for temper. Yes,” said Diane.

  Hanks put his hands on his face and rubbed his eyes. “You people know how to do weird. I’ll give you that,” he said.

  “After discovering those two things-the sharp-force trauma and the human-bone tempering-it was incumbent on us to search for human remains on the property. I decided we would conduct a study David had been wanting to do. It involves developing quicker methods for finding buried human remains. Starting in the backyard, he and two technicians from the DNA lab were using stakes and string to grid the property into squares. They would then take soil samples at defined increments and analyze them for their chemical constituents. Decomposing remains leave chemical signatures. We don’t know the range of the affected area for soil conditions in this region. The study was designed to answer some of the questions we don’t yet have answers for, and to locate any remains that are here.” Diane stopped to let it all soak in.

  “Couldn’t you use cadaver dogs?” he asked.

  “We suspect the remains could be decades old. The context in which Marcella found the broken pottery suggested the 1950s,” said Diane.

  “Okay, so I take it your… experiment worked,” he said.

  “In a rather serendipitous way,” said Diane. “While they were putting up stakes and strings for the grid, Hector fell into an abandoned well. It had been capped with wood that was covered in dirt and vegetation and had rotted over the years. The bone he discovered was at the bottom of the well. We suspect there are more,” said Diane.

  “Couldn’t the bone be from a deer or something?” said Hanks. “People do throw dead animals down dry wells to get rid of the carcasses.”

  Diane was surprised at how often she was asked that question. Even Frank had made a similar query at one time. She wondered whether they really thought it was hard to tell the difference between animal and human or if they thought the skull was required in order to make a positive species ID.

  “No,” she said simply.

  “Seriously, should we get the medical examiner to take a look?” he said.

  “You can if you want,” said Diane. “But it’s a right human tibia of someone in their teens. Possibly female, but that’s not certain. What is certain is that it is human.”

  “I take it you’ve done this before,” he said.

  Diane found it hard to believe that he didn’t know. But he was relatively new to Rosewood and apparently knew her only as the director of the crime lab and the museum.

  “I’m a forensic anthropologist,” said Diane.

  He winced and saw that David, Neva, and Mike were grinning at him. “Okay, I wasn’t aware. Do you know how long it was in the well?” he asked.

  “Probably more than fifty years. There is a particular smell the marrow leaves that lasts for decades in buried bone. That was gone. The bone had taken on the color of the surrounding soil, indicating it had been buried for most of its tenure in the well,” she said.

  “Where is it now?” he asked.

  “In my car, wrapped in newsprint. We’ll have to get someone out here to stabilize the sides of the well so we can get the remaining bones out.”

  “So, now you don’t have to complete your study,” he said.

  “Oh yes,” said Diane. “Just because we found bones in the well doesn’t mean the yard isn’t full of buried bodies.”

  Chapter 37

  “Oh, I see,” said Hanks. “So we could have lots more bodies?” He stared at Diane. “Are you serious? This could be a… some maniac’s burial ground?” He shifted in his chair, winced suddenly, and rubbed his shoulder. “Damn it,” he said. “Sorry.”

  David got up and went to a cooler he had tucked in a corner of the room and brought everyone a cold drink. Diane took a long sip. It was a cool evening, but the ice-cold drink still tasted good.

  “Any idea who this serial killer is? We are talking about a serial killer, aren’t we?” he said. “And as wildly interesting as this is, it looks like it all happened a long time ago. Does it have anything to do with the here and now?” He took a drink and held the cool bottle on his collarbone.

  “Some kind of killer,” said Diane. “At best, someone who illegally disposed of a body. I don’t know that we have a whole yard full of bodies. We may have only the one in the well. As for a player in this, we have a few ideas. We think the ceramic artist might be the same one who wrote the strange message on the bottom of the desk drawer, and the one who did the paintings that were stolen.” Diane pointed to the wall over the sofa. David, Neva, and Mike turned to look at the blank wall as if a shadowy image might remain.

  “Why the pictures?” he asked. “They were painted by this Mad Potter?” Hanks asked.

  “I don’t know for sure,” said Diane. “We do know the pictures were signed by the artist with a drawing of a bird. The paramedic’s grandmother-”

  “Wait, you lost me. The paramedic’s grandmother? What paramedic? The ones who came here?” said Hanks.

  Diane explained that the paramedic who tended to Hector was familiar with the place, and his grandmother had knowledge of the house from when she was a teenager.

  “Humph, small world,” Hanks said, and took another drink.

  Diane found that explaining the whole train of thought out loud, paired with what evidence they had and didn’t have, was helpful to her understanding. She hoped Hanks found it illuminating, but he seemed more entertained than anything else.

  Diane mentioned her thought that the initials MAG in the signature on the desk drawer might be symbolized by the picture of a bird. Hanks wasn’t impressed with that. She didn’t blame him. It sounded rather silly when she repeated it out loud to a skeptical ear.

  “I get that, because the thieves stole the old paintings, it looks like the attack on Dr. Payden and the theft could have something to do with the old bones-and where the bones came from. But, frankly, that bird thing is a stretch,” he said. “The whole past-present thing is a stretch.” He brought the hand holding his drink up to his face and rubbed his eye with a free finger.

  “There’s also Marcella’s pottery that was stolen,” said Diane. “We speculated the thieves thought they were taking valuable Indian artifacts. But c
onsider that Marcella’s pottery and the pieces found here on the property were all fired on a bonfire kiln, which gave all of them the same distinctive appearance. The thieves might have been after pottery made by the Mad Potter, as you so colorfully call him or her, and took Marcella’s pieces by mistake.”

  “Perhaps, but that connection is so tenuous, it really doesn’t bear spending time on, really. No offense. Not that we don’t need to find out who might be buried here, but, like I said, it looks like it was a long time ago and doesn’t have anything to do with the attack on Dr. Payden. And I’m more concerned about that. I’m sorry, but there it is,” he said.

  Diane smiled at him. “So it would seem. But here’s the kicker.” Diane leaned forward, resting her forearms on her knees. “Neva has been tracing the ownership and history of this house-retracing Marcella’s steps as she tried to discover the home’s pedigree. That search took them both to the courthouse and the historical society. Yesterday at the historical society, Neva met a volunteer named Mary Phyllis Lassiter,” Diane said.

  “That name sounds familiar,” Hanks said.

  “You may have heard it on the news. Neva and Izzy processed her crime scene today. She was strangled in her home overnight,” said Diane.

  He looked startled. “Okay, I’ll grant you, that’s an interesting coincidence,” he said.

  “More than coincidence. Izzy called just before you arrived,” said Diane. “He’s working late at the crime lab processing the evidence. At the Lassiter crime scene they found the same expensive hiking boot print that we found here when Marcella was attacked-not just from the same kind of boot,” said Diane. “The same boot.”

  Detective Hanks sat in stunned silence for a moment.

  “You know, you could have started out with this information,” he said.

  “Perhaps,” said Diane.

  “Did the Lassiter woman live in Rosewood?” he asked.

  “Hall County. Just over the line. You’ll need to speak with Sheriff Braden,” said Diane.

  “You say Izzy Wallace is processing the evidence now? Can I see it?” he asked.

  Diane shook her head. “Telling you about the boot print is a courtesy. The sheriff gets to see his evidence first,” she said.

  Hanks nodded. “I can respect that.” He paused, staring at the blank wall behind the sofa, looking deep in thought. He shifted his position again, and again winced in pain. “Then what do we have here?”

  “I don’t know,” said Diane.

  Hanks looked at Neva. “What did the Lassiter woman say to you?” he asked.

  “Nothing to me.” Neva explained the interchange at the historical society. “I think you need to speak with Marcella and find out if she met Ms. Lassiter when she was there.”

  He nodded. “Are there any other surprises you have to spring on me?” he asked Diane.

  “No. That’s about all we know,” she said.

  He laughed. “I hope we aren’t dealing with a league of Mad Potters trying to keep their ceremonies and history a secret.”

  “That would surprise me,” said Diane. “I have no explanation. It could be that, unknown to us, the paintings are valuable, and the attack on Dr. Payden was simply about money. I have no idea if anything was stolen from Lassiter’s house, but if it happens she had paintings by the mysterious artist… Well, it would be worth finding out. In the museum we have paintings by an unknown artist and we were unaware for a long time that they are extremely valuable. So it’s not unheard of.

  “Or,” suggested Diane, “Marcella’s attacker could be trying to prevent us from uncovering an old crime. The perpetrator could still be alive, though up in years, I would imagine. Or it could be a big coincidence, and what we first thought about Marcella’s attack was correct-they just didn’t know she was home, and got caught in the middle of a robbery.”

  Hanks flexed the hand that was in the sling back and forth, exercising it. “You’ve given me a lot to work with, I’ll give you that. I haven’t made any headway talking to Ray-Ray Dildy’s associates. He was just a two-bit petty crook. No one I’ve spoken with knows what he was up to lately. But, basically, he was a loser to the end.”

  Diane saw the subtle frustration in Hanks that he hadn’t been able to solve this crime-the eye tic he had frequently rubbed, the clinching of his jaw. He needed to prove himself. She understood that. Rosewood’s previous chief of police had been murderously corrupt, and Hanks had been one of his last hires. Even though Hanks wasn’t known to have done anything wrong, there was the taint of association. For the chief of police to have hired him, he must have thought him corruptible. How did anyone fight that? Hanks wanted to solve this, and do it himself. The fact that he had shared a little of his investigation tonight was a sign that he might be mellowing a bit where Diane was concerned.

  “Do you know Sheriff Braden in Hall County?” asked Diane.

  “We haven’t met,” he said.

  “I’ll call and tell him you’re coming, if you like,” said Diane. “I can send Izzy over with the evidence at the same time.”

  Hanks nodded. “Sometime tomorrow, late morning would be good.”

  “I’ll give him a call in the morning,” said Diane.

  “I appreciate that.” Hanks rose from his seat. “Well, I’ll say this. This has been interesting.” He finished the rest of his drink and looked around for a garbage can. David got up and took the bottle from him.

  Diane left shortly after Hanks. On the way home she tried to call Frank on the home phone. No one answered. His car wasn’t in the drive or in the garage when she arrived. She opened the front door and went inside. On the answering machine she found a message saying he wouldn’t be home at all. He and his partner were going to Nashville, Tennessee, on a case-but only for a day-he thought.

  She felt a little dispirited as she listened to the message. She had looked forward to seeing him. She wondered whether he had found time to look at Ellie Rose Carruthers’ diary pages. Probably not.

  She took a shower and got into bed. Tomorrow was going to be a big day. She had to excavate a well.

  Chapter 38

  The well was simply too unstable and dangerous for Diane to work in without structural reinforcements to hold back the crumbling walls. Mike called in an engineering consultant from Bartrum University who designed a liner for the well consisting of ten-foot steel chain-link fencing reinforced by steel posts, straps, and bars. It took two days for Mike to locate a contractor, collect the materials, and get the job done.

  Thick cotton batting and wire mesh were laid over the debris in the bottom of the well and a temporary wooden platform was built over that to protect the remains lying beneath the rubble. The entire steel structure was assembled aboveground and lowered with extreme caution into the well by use of a construction crane. Inside the well, the liner was expanded outward against the stone wall and locked in place with reinforcing steel braces. All this was done without ever touching the bottom of the well or the delicate matter that lay there.

  Mike attached a ladder to the side of the reinforced well. He and Scott strung the wiring for the work lights and removed the temporary platform, the wire mesh, and cotton batting from the bottom of the well. On the surface, the crew used wooden posts and beams to build a hand-operated winch above the well. They wrapped Diane’s rescue rope around the hoist and attached a five-gallon bucket to the end of the rope for lifting debris out of the well.

  Paloma said her mother was greatly frustrated not to be there. An excavation in her own backyard and she, an archaeologist, was stuck in the hospital. Andie came up with the idea of using a webcam down in the well. Marcella could watch the excavation, the crew at the top of the well could keep track of what was going on down below, and Andie herself could watch from her office. Andie saw it as an opportunity to conduct research for the webcam project she was working on with the curators. Diane thought it was a great idea. She got permission from Chief Garnett. David helped with the technical part. The webcams were at
tached to the wire liner near the work lights that illuminated the bottom of the pit.

  “I love it,” Mike said with obvious pride, looking down into the well at the finished construction. “I would trust my life with that, Boss.” He grinned at Diane.

  “Well, that’s certainly reassuring,” she said. She looked into the lighted well. “I’ll have to give you credit. It does look safe and functional.” But what she was thinking was how foreboding it was. She had the feeling she was looking into the mouth of something very dark and evil. She put on her caving hard hat with a light on it and lowered herself down the ladder.

  Before she started excavating the bones, Diane had to clean out a lot of debris-pieces of the rotted wooden well cap, rocks, leaves, and surface vegetation that had fallen in with Hector. She filled the bucket time and again and the top crew hoisted the bucket loads out of the well using the winch. It didn’t take as long as she feared to clear the bottom of the well. But it was tiring.

  So now Diane was at the bottom of the well, kneeling over her real work. Marcella, Andie, Garnett back in his office, and her crime scene support up top were watching via Web video as Diane’s hands brushed debris off the dome of a skull.

  The rule of excavating is to work from the known to the unknown-start with bone you can see and follow it into the debris, inch by inch. Diane’s tools were a trowel, a brush, and wooden tongue depressors so as not to harm the bone. It was slow work, but the ground was relatively soft clay, silt, and sandy soil. Fortunately, it was a dry well and had been for many years. Otherwise, they would be dealing with a whole other problem-a body that had decomposed in waterlogged soil. If she were dealing with a body that had become adipocere rather than skeletonized, it would be another whole level of unpleasantness.