Dead Past (10 page)

“Me too—and I’m glad you’re home. I missed you.”

 

Diane got only three hours sleep but felt refreshed when she awakened at eight o’clock. Finding Star had rejuvenated her as much as a full night’s sleep. She showered, dressed, and made a call first thing to Chief Garnett.

“Diane, I tried to find you last night. I was told that you and Frank went looking for Star. Did you find her?”

“Yes. Yes, we did. She was studying in the Student Learning Center with another missing student. It was a good end to a very bad day.”

“Good. Good. It’s bad enough when it’s people you don’t know. . . . Everyone around here was worried.”

He paused and cleared his throat. “Uh, McNair’s been on the phone to the commissioner. He’s trying to have you and your team removed from the recovery. Says you are tampering with evidence and compromising the investigation.”

“That son of a bitch. I hope you know better than that. McNair was the one breaking the seals on the evidence bags. He’s the one who compromised evidence. I called him on it. He and I had words.”

“I’m not at all surprised. But he does have pull with the commissioner—at least his uncle does.”

“Well, you know how paranoid David is.”

“Uh, you’ve said that before, but what does that . . .”

“David was pretty worked up about it—as he had a right to be. It would not surprise me if he documented McNair’s misconduct by snapping some incriminating pictures with his cell phone camera. We at the crime lab are prone to that behavior. I don’t know that he did; he didn’t say, but I know David.”

“I see. I’ll be sure to smile from now on whenever I look in David’s direction.”

“If a pic does exist, I’d want to use it only as a last resort. I’d hate to expose us as the sneaky people we are.”

She heard Garnett stifle a laugh. “I’ll have a long talk with the commissioner.”

“There’s another thing. It may be perfectly innocent. . . .” She told Garnett her thoughts about possible drug trade at the student center and about the two girls she had seen.

“When you think about it, that would be a likely place to deal. You didn’t happen to get the girls’ names, did you?”

“Yes, I thought you might want to talk to them. They’re Jessica Davenport and Jamie Dempsey. I also have their picture.”

“Their picture? Where did you get . . . ?”

“Yes, I, well, I took it with my cell phone.”

“I see,” he repeated. “You people in the crime lab
are
prone to sneaky cell phone behavior, Jeez. I’ve never even used the camera feature on my phone.”

“Well, what can I say? We all grew up watching too many James Bond movies—or Rocky and Bull-winkle. As I said, what I saw may have been perfectly innocent.”

“And it may be a lead. I’ll put a detective on it. And I’ll talk to the commissioner. McNair’s uncle has the commissioner spooked, but the commissioner doesn’t like him, and he does like us, so . . .”

“I’ll leave all that to you.”

After she hung up with Garnett, Diane called her assistant, Andie, to check on the museum.

“We’re doing OK. Did you find Star?” She sounded subdued. Diane guessed everyone in Rosewood did. She could picture Andie’s usually bright, happy face masked with concern. They all knew Star, and Rosewood was a small town. They were all probably waiting to find out who among their friends were dead.

“Yes, we did find her. She’s fine. She was studying on campus. She’s home with Frank now.”

“Whew, that’s so good. I can’t tell you how worried we were here.”

“We all were, but she’s fine.”

“You know Darcy Kincaid?” asked Andie.

“Sure. One of our exhibit planners,” said Diane. “Why?”

“She was at the party.”

 

“Oh, no. Oh, Andie. Not Darcy. Not anyone from the museum.”

“She survived the explosion and the fire, but she’s in a coma. They don’t know if she’ll come out of it. We’re all kind of bummed out around here.”

“Do Darcy’s parents know?”

“They flew in from Arkansas late yesterday. Kendel met them at the airport and I found them a hotel room near the hospital. If they have to stay in Rosewood for very long, several of the museum staff have offered them a place to stay for as long as they need.” Diane loved the museum and the people in it. She wasn’t surprised they were so forthcoming with help for Darcy and her family.

She had taken Darcy to dinner, as she did all her employees, to get to know her, and they had consulted and worked together on planning and building museum displays. She remembered Darcy liked dolphins and worked one summer with them at an aquarium in Florida. She wore a silver dolphin charm on a chain around her neck. In all of her worry, the thought had not occurred to Diane that anyone from her museum might be among the victims.

“I’ll stop by the hospital to check on her this morning.”

“I heard someone tried to steal your car,” said Andie. “With all that’s going on, I forgot to ask. Is that true?”

“It’s true. I don’t know who he was. Someone running from the fire, apparently. It ended well. He’s under arrest in the hospital. I’ll tell you all about it later. I’m glad you asked. My car is impounded as evidence. I need to use one of the museum vehicles. Would you have one parked out front in my space?”

“Of course,” said Andie.

“I’m calling a taxi and will be over shortly. Call on my cell if you need me, but it looks like you all have things well in hand.” Diane hurried to get off the phone, but Andie still seemed to need debriefing.

“How long . . . ,” she asked. “How long will you be out there—at the scene?”

“I don’t know, Andie.”

“I guess it’s pretty bad.”

“It’s worse than that.”

“Nothing like this has ever happened in Rosewood.”

“I hope nothing like this ever happens again.”

Diane wished there were some way she could make sure that it would never happen again. Although she believed what Rankin said about not being able to stop the drug trade, maybe there was a way to stop it in her corner of the world.

When Diane arrived at the museum, one of the museum’s SUVs was waiting in her parking space. Before she went back to the circus—as she thought of the tent city—she headed for the hospital. She stopped at a toy store on the way and bought a stuffed dolphin.

Diane was becoming an all too familiar face at the hospital—visiting Frank, Star, Mike, Neva, not to mention her own time in residence as a patient. Too many hospital visits, too many violent injuries. Maybe someone she knew would have a baby and she could come for a happier visit. She rode the elevator to Darcy’s floor and walked down the stark gray corridor to the ICU waiting room. She recognized Darcy’s parents right away because Darcy looked just like her mother—dark hair, dark eyes, and dimples in her cheeks and chin. The two parents sat together on a small crimson sofa. Both were looking at the clock. Waiting for another of the timed visits to ICU, Diane guessed.

“Excuse me, are you the Kincaids?” asked Diane.

“Yes, we are.” Her father stood up, his wife after him. They looked to be in their fifties, fit, and terribly worried. “This is my wife, Edwina. I’m Jesse Kincaid.”

“I’m Diane Fallon. Darcy works for me at the museum.” She held out her hand.

“Yes, she’s told us all about you,” said Mrs. Kincaid. Each took her hand and shook it in turn. “Darcy just loves working for the museum. She says it’s her dream job.”

Her father put his hands on his belt. “You folks at the museum have been so good to us. We sure do appreciate it.”

“Not at all. Anything we can do to help, just ask. How is Darcy? Do you know?”

“They won’t tell us anything,” said Mrs. Kincaid.

“They don’t know anything, Edie,” he said. “They said we might know something in forty-eight hours.”

“It’s just this waiting,” Mrs. Kincaid said. “And they only let us in for fifteen minutes at a time. Darcy looks so swollen, I wouldn’t even recognize her.”

“I know the waiting is hard. It’s all hard. Do you have a car to get you places?” she asked.

“Yes, we have a rental car,” said Mr. Kincaid.

“We have a restaurant at the museum. It’s not that far from here, and if you get tired of eating hospital cafeteria food, please come to the restaurant as my guest. Just tell them who you are.”

“That’s so nice. Are you sure?” said Darcy’s mother.

“It’s a small gesture in a very trying time,” said Diane. She didn’t say, “I lost a daughter and the kindness of good people pulled me through.” She removed the stuffed dolphin from the sack she was carrying and handed it to them.

Her mother took it and held it to her chest. “Darcy just loves dolphins. You all have been so kind. We don’t know how to thank you.”

“You don’t need to. We all pray for the best for Darcy.”

Diane started to leave and Mrs. Kincaid laid a hand on her arm. “We heard that the explosion was from a drug lab. Darcy wasn’t into drugs; we would have known.”

“She probably didn’t know the lab was there,” said Diane. “The house was divided into student apartments. There were lots of people going in and out. It’s in my neighborhood. It’s a good neighborhood. I live a street over and heard the explosion when it happened. No one knew.”

“When I first heard, I thought it was a gas leak or something,” said Edwina. “This . . . this is just so much worse.”

“Have they arrested anybody?” asked Darcy’s father.

“They’re investigating,” said Diane “The people in the lab were killed. We’re concentrating our efforts right now on treating the injured and identifying all the victims. But believe me when I tell you, right now in Rosewood, getting to the bottom of this has top priority.”

The Kincaids were decent people, but Diane was glad to take her leave. The tragedy of this event was weighing down on her and she had too many burned body parts to process. She needed to find her way back to her objective anthropologist self.

Leaving the hospital, she took a shortcut through the sunroom. Even though there was no sun shining through the windows, the room was warm and cozy. With its open feeling and warm golden brown walls and an abundance of plants, it was one of the more pleasant rooms in the hospital. Several patients were there. Some sitting, some with their IVs, some just milling around.

One patient looked familiar, a young man sitting with two people who were probably his parents. The realization hit her who he was. The one-handed carjacker. Then she noticed the policeman standing a few feet away. The kid was looking much better than the last time she saw him.

“Why do you have to stand so close?” the mother scolded the policeman. “Can’t you see how injured my son is? I don’t know why you are treating him like a criminal. He is innocent.”

She was a thin woman with a tan complexion, honey brown hair, and Gaultier clothes. The father—she assumed he was the father—clothed himself in a similar expensive fashion.

“I ought to have your badge,” the mother said.

“Lady, I don’t think you would like the job,” said the policeman.

Diane tried to recollect who he was.

“Don’t you get smart with my wife.”

The man stood up and marched over to the policeman. The boy just smirked and looked on. Not a nice kid, Diane thought, but she had come to that conclusion much earlier when he held his gun on her.

“When I find out who that stupid bitch is who accused him of trying to hijack her car, there’ll be hell for her to pay, and you’ll pay it with her for that smart mouth.”

“Yeah, yeah, they all say that right before I turn the key and lock their cell. Look mister, I don’t care who you are or who you know. You take one more step toward me with that attitude and you are going to be under arrest along with your son.”

“What is your badge number?” The father balled his fist by his side, but didn’t take another step toward the officer.

“It’s on my badge here.” He pointed to it pinned to his shirt. “I assume a man of your standing can read numbers.”

Diane thought he was laying it on a little too thick. It would have been her advice to keep a professional attitude. But he must have had to listen to these folks smart off to him ever since they arrived. She decided that this was not a good shortcut to take. She started to retreat when the kid recognized her. She was shocked; she didn’t think he could possibly remember her face, given the condition he was in.

“That’s her. The director of the museum here in Rosewood,” he said.

Suddenly Diane had two angry people bearing down on her. She really didn’t have time for this.

 

Diane held her ground as she watched the two angry people coming toward her.

“Stop right there,” she said when they approached her comfort zone. “If you come any closer I’ll call the police. Speaking to me personally is inappropriate under the circumstances.”

They took several steps forward before stopping, Diane guessed to show that she couldn’t tell them what to do.

“So you’re the lying bitch who got our son in trouble,” the mother shouted at her. They now had the attention of all the patients and visitors in the sunroom. “Look at him, he’s maimed for life, and he’s not receiving the sympathy he deserves because your lies have the police believing he had something to do with the explosion. He’s the victim here.”

Diane didn’t say anything. She merely folded her arms across her chest and let them talk.
“Sometimes when you remain quiet and just let people talk,”
her old boss from her human rights investigation days told her,
“they will reveal all sorts of things. There’s a whole set of people out there who really want to confess.”

“Blake told us how you lured him into your car.” The father said this as if it were some brilliant piece of evidence he had uncovered against Diane.