Dust to Dust dffi-7

by Beverly Connor

  As she was about to lay the mandible aside, Diane’s eye stopped on a disfiguration showing through the dirt stains. It was a healed fracture-a disturbing sign, evidence of an older severe injury. She laid the young girl’s mandible on the table and turned the skull over in her hands and looked at the back of it. The cut extended vertically across the parietal and occipital of the skull. It looked to have been made by a heavy bladed weapon, most likely an axe or a hatchet. From the size and depth of the cut, it was clear the sharp edge of the weapon would have gone into the brain. There was no doubt this wound would have killed her.

  Diane picked up the broken pieces of pottery containing what appeared to be an impression of the head wound. Accounting for the thickness of the skin and tissue on the skull at the time the clay was applied to the head, the mold looked to be a fit. At this point she could not say with certainty that the pottery sherds were or were not impressions of this skull wound. A microscopic examination of the pattern of the mold and the wound would be more definitive.

  She photographed the skull and the mask to show the direct comparison. Next, she photographed the healed fracture on the mandible. After that, she did the measurements of the skull at all the craniometric points, recording each. Doing the measurements provided some momentary relief to Diane. The math helped her keep the objectivity and emotional distance she needed in the face of the terrible cruelty she saw in the bones.

  When she finished examining the skull, she placed it on the table with the rest of the brown-gray stained skeleton. These bones had a sad story to tell, aside from the terrible trauma of the fatal head injury and the severed limbs. There was the healed fracture of the mandible. Three ribs had been broken and healed. Both the left and right radii of the arms contained healed fractures caused by the young girl’s arms being twisted. The femur had been broken and healed in her lifetime. The femur was a big strong bone, not easy to break. If it was broken, it was because it met with a sizeable force. The young teen had been abused for years before she was murdered. Diane wondered whether she ever had any joy in her life.

  As Diane finished and packed up the first set of bones, David, Neva, and Scott came in with the remaining contents of the well.

  “You doing okay?” David said.

  The three of them gathered around her as if there were something they could discern in her appearance if they looked closely enough.

  “I’m fine,” said Diane.

  “I heard the other guy’s not doing as well,” said David.

  Diane frowned.

  “I see Garnett sent guards,” said Neva. “They’re downstairs in the lobby.”

  Diane nodded. “Until they find out who sent him-and why-I’m using the office here,” she said.

  “Good idea,” said David. “It’s more defensible.”

  “David said the guy last night is related to what’s his name-that Dildy guy,” said Neva. “Why are you being targeted?”

  “I don’t know,” said Diane. “It makes no sense. But I intend to find out. I just don’t know how, right now.”

  “If the answer lies in Marcella’s well,” said David, “I think we may be able to crack it.”

  “Oh?” Diane pulled off her gloves and washed her hands. “Come into the office and tell me what you found.”

  Diane’s osteology office was more spartan than her museum office and it was a good deal smaller. The walls were painted an off-white cream color that she had hoped would give the room a warm glow. It hadn’t. The floor was green slate. She hadn’t wanted the static electricity or fibers that a carpet would generate. The desk and filing cabinets were a dark walnut. The comforts in the room were a long burgundy leather couch that sat against one wall, a matching chair, and a small refrigerator in the corner. A watercolor of a lone wolf hunting was the only decoration.

  Scott looked around the room. “This is nice,” he said, sitting down on one end of the sofa. David sat on the other end and Neva took the chair.

  Diane got everyone a drink from the fridge before she sat behind her desk.

  “How’s Hector doing?” she asked Scott.

  He bobbed his head up and down. “He’s doing okay. He’s learning to maneuver on crutches and thinks he can now come back to work. I think he needs a few more days’ healing. They had to put a pin in his leg.” Scott screwed his face into a painful-looking grimace.

  “The tibia is a long, thin bone,” said Diane. “It needs the support. Tell him we are all thinking about him.”

  “He sure hates to miss all the work,” he said.

  Diane could see he meant it. Hector and Scott apparently loved work.

  “So,” she asked David, “what have you found? Smoking gun? Fingerprints?”

  “Funny you should mention that,” he said. “Under the remaining bones we found several items of interest. You know how there were two hammers-a large one and a smaller one? There were two axes, actually an axe and a hatchet.”

  “Possibly the murder and dismembering weapons,” said Diane.

  “That’s what we think,” said Neva.

  “They are rusted, and the wooden handles are mostly rotted away, but we may be able to do something with them,” said David. “But what was under the axes is really great,” he said. “We found a zippered case with sculpting tools in it. Because they were closed up, the wooden handles are in better condition. They have dark stains that I think are blood and-drum roll, please-there are fingerprints in the blood.”

  Diane opened her mouth in surprise. “Fifty-year-old fingerprints? Are you serious?”

  “It gets better,” said David. “They also threw unused clay down the well. You know how clay is. Think about those little bull figures from Çatal Höyük in the Old World archaeology section of the museum. They have those ancient fingerprints all over them. Clay is really good for that.”

  “That’s a gold mine,” said Diane. “That’s amazing.”

  “We think so,” said Neva. “They just threw all the incriminating evidence down the well and covered it over. We can do a lot with it.”

  “Well-done,” said Diane.

  “The credit goes to those who tried to get rid of the evidence,” said David. “I wish all our perpetrators were so accommodating.”

  “It’s almost as if they put the evidence in a time capsule,” said Scott. “We’re going to try to get DNA from the blood. No guarantees, but if we do, it will be a good paper. Speaking of which, there is just no DNA in the pottery sherds. Even in a bonfire kiln, it’s just too hot,” he said.

  “I didn’t think it would work, but I appreciate your trying,” said Diane. “You never know until you try.”

  Just as she was about to heap more praise on them, the phone on her desk rang.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Diane, this is Ross. I know this is short notice, but Detective Fisher from Gainesville, who was the detective in charge of the Stacy Dance case, wants to come over and have a look at the evidence. He wants to bring the medical examiner, Doppelmeyer, and he wants Dr. Webber to be there.”

  “Is that all?” said Diane. “Does he want dinner?”

  “Just about. He’s bringing his supervisor and he wants your supervisor to be there too. I tried to explain that this doesn’t have anything to do with Rosewood, but he wouldn’t listen.”

  “I see. I wonder if Vanessa’s free. She would find it interesting,” said Diane.

  “Funny. I’m sure he meant Garnett,” said Ross. “Is that a problem?”

  “No problem. He’ll just have to be disappointed. Garnett has nothing to do with it. I won’t have the mayor or the parks director here either, because they didn’t have anything to do with the Stacy Dance case either,” she said. “I will ask Jin to join us. He’s analyzed all the trace evidence.”

  Kingsley laughed. “Okay. I can handle that. I hope Detective Fisher can.”

  “He’ll have to,” said Diane. “Have you called Lynn?”

  “Yes, she’s willing. A little too willing if you ask
me,” he said.

  “When do they want this to take place?” said Diane.

  “This evening, they said. After work.”

  “Good, I’ll be able to get some more work done before then.”

  She had already hung up before she remembered that she didn’t tell him that Frank had translated the diary pages. She could tell him later when she saw him.

  She called the restaurant and ordered steak dinners to be delivered to the lobby of the crime lab for her two security guards. Then she dialed the DNA lab and asked for Jin.

  “Yo,” he said.

  “What is the status of the Stacy Dance evidence?” she said.

  “Done. I put it in the evidence vault in the crime lab. We ready for a transfer?” he asked.

  Diane explained about the meeting. “Can you attend?” she asked “Sure, Boss. Glad to,” he said.

  She looked at her watch. She’d have time to get started on the other set of bones before the meeting.

  Chapter 45

  The teenage male skeleton looked similar to the female skeleton as it lay on the paper atop the metal table. It was stained the same earth-toned colors. It had similar wounds in the skull-sharp-force trauma to the back of the head. His limbs had been removed from his body, not with any surgical precision, but with an axe, and evidenced all the clumsy damage that came with a coarse instrument.

  Looking at the arms that had been severed, the sliced head and trochlea of the humeri, Diane wondered whether the woman, MAG, could have been the artist who created the bone-tempered pottery. Could she have dismembered these bodies by herself? No, she would have needed help. Lynn Webber needed a diener to grapple with the cadavers, put them on the table for autopsy, arrange them for photographs. Most medical examiners did. The deadweight of a human body would have been extremely hard to move around. There had to be at least two perps-or one burley man. It would have been next to impossible for one woman to do this. Especially at a time when women were not as buff as they are now.

  Perhaps it was a true artist colony and several people lived in the house. Maybe the message on the desk drawer meant MAG knew what was going on and she was afraid for her life. She or her mother was the landlord. Why didn’t she move in with her parents? Or get them to throw the others out? But sometimes it isn’t that easy. Bullies can intimidate some people into emotional paralysis. And the writing on the drawer came from an emotionally distraught person.

  Diane had finished with the measurements of the skull when she heard raised voices coming from the crime lab. She took off her gloves, washed her hands, and went out to see what was happening now.

  David, Neva, and Izzy were at the round debriefing table with Jin. David was pointing to evidence envelopes laid out in front of them. He was arguing with Jin, gesturing to a report he had in his hand. Neva stood by with a frown on her face. Izzy just looked puzzled.

  “What’s going on?” Diane asked. Her people rarely argued.

  “Jin has mixed up the evidence,” said David. “It’s all compromised. Marcella’s and the Dance case from Gainesville you are working on.”

  “What?” said Diane. She did not want to hear that, not with a crowd of law enforcement and forensic people on the way to examine the Stacy Dance evidence. “Jin?”

  “I didn’t, Boss. I don’t know what he’s talking about. You know I don’t mess up,” he said.

  Diane turned to David. He looked tired.

  “What’s this about, David?”

  “This evidence he’s about to give away to Gainesville. Some of it is the evidence we collected at Marcella’s. I don’t know how, but somehow when he was working on the Gainesville stuff, it got mixed up. I don’t see how we can use any of it now.”

  “No, Boss, I’ve been trying to tell him,” said Jin. “I don’t know what he’s talking about. I worked on the Dance evidence in my lab. You know that.”

  Jin stood with his arms crossed, glaring at David, who glared back.

  “Let me see,” said Diane.

  She read the Stacy Dance evidence report, flipping through the pages, looking at the photographs Jin had taken of the evidence.

  “What’s the problem?” said Diane.

  David tapped the paper in her hand. “The evidence Neva and Izzy collected from Marcella’s is mixed in with the Dance evidence. Jin must have been working here when we were, and he grabbed the wrong evidence.”

  Diane had collected much of the evidence from the Stacy Dance crime scene, and she recognized it in Jin’s report and photos.

  “Are you saying this is the evidence collected at Marcella’s? Have you looked in Marcella’s container?” said Diane.

  “I was about to get it to see what kind of damage has been done,” said David.

  Diane looked at the jumble of shoe prints Jin had separated out using the computer software. “The shoe prints too?”

  “Yes,” said David, “especially the shoe prints.”

  “You’re saying this is the boot print collected at Marcella’s?” Diane asked David again, pointing to a photo.

  “I had to work on it to get it clear,” offered Jin. “There was a jumble of shoes on the electrostatic lifting film. I had the software separate out some of the prints from one another.”

  David pointed at the photograph. “This is the hiking boot print from Marcella’s. Yes.”

  “In that one, the heel was showing good,” said Jin. “I tried to filter out the other overlapping shoes from the rest of the print, but the heel is really clear.”

  “The heel is all you need for an identification,” said David. “That’s how I know it’s the same. See these two chips in the heel?… Wait. Are you saying this isn’t a mistake?”

  “I don’t see how it could be,” said Diane. “You think Jin took the evidence out of the bags and relabeled them?”

  “No,” said David, “but I thought he was here when we were processing Marcella’s, and-”

  “You had already processed Marcella’s evidence before we collected the Stacy Dance evidence,” said Diane. “I collected these shoe prints at the Stacy Dance scene. David, you owe Jin an apology. It’s the same print as the one from Marcella’s because the same boot was at both places.”

  “What?” at least three of them said in unison.

  All four of them looked at Diane as if she had said Kendel had just returned from her trip and had brought them a unicorn skeleton.

  “What are you saying?” said David.

  “She’s saying you need to apologize,” said Jin. “Hey, you mean it’s the same guy, don’t you? Jeez, Boss, that’s weird.”

  It had taken a few seconds for it to dawn on all of them.

  “But this would connect with the Lassiter crime scene too,” said David. “The same boot print was there. I don’t understand it. The MO is too different. They don’t look anything like crimes done by the same perp. Wasn’t there a lot of postmortem staging and cleanup in the Dance murder? Didn’t it have a definite sexual aspect to it?”

  “Yes,” said Diane. “So it appeared. That’s what drew the Gainesville detective to the wrong conclusion.”

  “Well, the attack on Marcella and the murder of the Lassiter woman had no sexual component. And not much evidence of planning at all. They look like crimes by an amateur looking for loot.”

  “They would appear that way,” said Diane.

  “Do you think the Gainesville guy may have thrown away the boots by the side of the road or something and the Rosewood guy found them?” said Jin.

  “This makes no sense,” said David.

  “I agree,” said Diane. “It doesn’t seem to. We also collected evidence of rope and other fibers in the Stacy Dance murder. The rope is the same too?”

  “According to Jin’s report, it’s made of the same material,” said David.

  Diane again read through portions of Jin’s evidence report on the Stacy Dance crime scene.

  “I’ve read Marcella’s evidence report,” said Diane. “I’ve seen the blowup photog
raphs of the fibers and read the chemical analysis of them. These fibers from the Stacy Dance scene are the same-the same dyed black wool and Manila hemp fibers. Granted, there are lots of ski masks like that and lots of rope. But you said, David, it was as if the masks and the rope were stored together. Could it be that…” She threw up her hands. “I can’t explain it. But this evidence described in Jin’s report is the evidence I collected at the Stacy Dance crime scene. He did not make a mistake.”

  “You going to apologize?” said Jin.

  “Sure,” said David. “Jin, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have jumped all over you like that.”

  “I understand. I would have thought the same thing,” said Jin.

  Neva rolled her eyes.

  “I’m not sure I’m getting this,” said Izzy. “Did the same guy do all three crimes? Or are we looking for somebody who fished clothes out of the trash in Gainesville and used them in two more crimes down here? Or are we looking at some bang-up-big coincidence?”

  “I don’t know,” said Diane. “But if we can find Marcella’s attacker, or the Lassiter murderer, we can ask them where they shop. In the meantime, I guess I need to ask Hanks to come to the meeting too.”

  Diane set up the meeting in the basement conference room near the DNA lab. She was holding it away from the crime lab to distance her involvement in Kingsley’s case as far as possible from the jurisdiction of Rosewood. The conference room had a large round table with a white quartz top and comfortable chairs. Jin had picked out the furniture for the room. She wasn’t sure why he wanted white, but it was a pretty table-one that King Arthur would have liked.

  Diane asked her policemen bodyguards to be present. She didn’t quite trust Oran Doppelmeyer to remain civilized. There must be more to their history than Lynn Webber had told her. The policemen seemed pleased to actually be involved in what was going on, rather than just sitting on the sidelines in case something should happen. They were also pleased with the food Diane had sent them. The way to a policeman’s heart.