Dead Past (11 page)

The kid’s eyes glittered with excitement. Diane was willing to bet he was used to this—setting his parents off against people, or each other, then sitting back to watch the fireworks. A disturbed kid with clueless parents who apparently had more money than sense. Diane said nothing.

“He was asking for help, damn you. You know he found that gun in your car. It was your damn gun, yours. He didn’t have it until you lured him into your car. He was just trying to break the window to get out. How dare you accuse him of trying to hijack your car.” His mother was speaking through gritted teeth now and her voice was a low growl.

“So you are the director of the museum,” his father said when his wife ran out of breath. “I hope you aren’t too attached to your job. I know several members of the board and I serve on three charity organizations with Vanessa Van Ross.”

And you couldn’t know any of them very well,
thought Diane,
or you would know that particular threat is empty.

Diane watched as her silence irritated them. The mother’s eyes were dark slits, her mouth turned down in a deep frown. The father’s mouth was a thin straight line. His dark eyes were full of malice.

“Well, what have you got to say for yourself?” his mother said. Diane expected her to stamp her foot.

“Nothing,” said Diane. “I have said everything to the police. Anything else I’ll say in court.” She turned her back and walked out the door.

“Don’t you turn your back on us,” screeched his mother, so loud that Diane was sure she cracked the windowpanes.

Diane continued walking down the hallway, but soon heard high-heeled footfalls behind her. The woman was following her! Diane didn’t know why this astonished her. She stopped and turned.

Before Diane could say anything, the woman came at her with long red fingernails on hands formed into claws. Diane dodged, but was hit with a fist in the shoulder and knocked flat against the wall. Before she could take more evasive action, the policeman who had been guarding the son was putting cuffs on the mother.

“What the hell are you doing, you oaf! You can’t do this!”

“Let go of my wife. I’ll sue you, the police department, and the city. Get those handcuffs off her.”

Through all the yelling, Diane could hear the policeman reading the woman her rights. By the time he finished, not only were several hospital staff gathered at the scene, but hospital security had shown up, along with another policeman.

“What are you arresting me for? You stupid jerk,” she spat at him.

“Attacking Dr. Fallon here.”

“I didn’t attack her. She attacked my son.”

“Lady, I saw you hit her. She’s not just the director of the museum, she’s the director of the crime lab, and that makes her a member of the Rosewood police department. So you just struck an officer to boot, and I’m taking you to jail. You can call a lawyer from there.”

“We didn’t know she was a police officer,” said her husband.

“Sir,” said the policeman, “is it your belief that it’s OK to assault private citizens who are not police officers?” He turned to the other policeman. “Jackson, go watch that Stanton kid. Make sure he hasn’t run off. I’ll be back after I book Mrs. Stanton.”

“You aren’t going through with this,” said Mr. Stanton. “This is ridiculous.”

“Louis, do something,” she said. “Pay the man or something.”

“Now, you wouldn’t be trying to bribe me, ma’am,” said the policeman who Diane now remembered was Mickey Varner. “I’d hate to be adding charges.”

Mickey looked over his shoulder at Mr. Stanton. “You can see her down at the station.”

He hauled her off, protesting all the way. Diane wouldn’t be surprised if by the time they got to the police station, resisting arrest would be added to the charges.

The son, Blake Stanton, was standing in the doorway, looking at Diane with black hatred. She suspected that this was not the fireworks he had anticipated.

 

Before going into the morgue tent, Diane walked across the adjoining yard to the crime scene to see how David and Neva were doing. The sky was overcast with gray-white clouds, and the temperature was below freezing. She could see her breath every time she exhaled. Diane thought she heard on the radio that the forecast was for another ice storm this evening. It must be really hard living in Siberia, she thought as she trudged through the show. But from her experience she knew that as hard as it was working in the cold, working in the heat would be worse. The cold mutes the smell—though it’s still bad enough.

Between her crew and McNair’s arson team, they had made significant progress clearing away debris. In over half the area she could see the burned floor where piles of charred rubble had been before. David and Neva met her as she approached.

“How’s McNair acting?” asked Diane in a low voice.

“About the same,” said David. “The talk you gave him didn’t do a bit of good. He’s still looking in the evidence bags. I tell you what I’d like to do . . .” He didn’t finish the sentence.

“David, did you happen to take pictures of him tampering with the seals on the bags?”

David stared, frowning at her for several moments. “Diane, it worries me when someone knows me that well.”

“That would be a yes,” said Neva.

“It’s good that you did. McNair is telling the commissioner we’re compromising the evidence. I just want to make sure when push comes to shove, we have some leverage to shove really hard. I knew I could count on you.”

“You should talk about me. Who took photographs on her cell phone—from her closet, yet—just a few months ago of her ex-husband sneaking into her bedroom?”

Diane smiled. “David, I like you the way you are, paranoia and all. I wouldn’t change a thing.”

“Why is McNair doing this?” asked Neva.

“It’s a control thing. Why do control freaks like to control?” She shrugged. “In this case, probably because it’s such a high-profile crime. He must think it will launch his career or his fortunes or something.”

“The guys who work for him really aren’t that bad when he’s not around,” said David. “They know their business and I get the sense that they don’t like him very much.”

“Do the best you can. I’m having Garnett work on the problem. That’s all I can do at the moment. If he comes back and starts pawing through sealed evidence again, call me.”

“Will do,” said David. “We’ve sent you a truckload of bones. The nearer to the heat of the blast, the more loose bones we find.”

Diane sighed. It still surprised her that someone who is alive and vital one minute can, in a moment, be reduced to bones.

“Then I’d better get back to work,” she said.

 

The morgue tent looked just as it had when she left—blackened bodies on every table. Jin was at her table laying out bones. Archie was at his table sorting through boxes of objects and medical information collected from parents of missing children. It frightened Diane to think that with the slightest change of fate, he might have been filing Star’s identifying information. She shivered. All of them looked up when Diane walked in.

“We were all so glad to hear that you found Star,” said Lynn Webber. “It was as if she belonged to all of us.”

“I appreciate that, guys. I can’t tell you what a scary night it was until we found her. She was doing what she should have been, studying for finals with a friend.”

She paused a moment as she took her place at her metal table. “Her friend, Jenny Baker, was asked to go to the party by Bobby Coleman. She decided to study instead.”

“Bless her little heart,” said Lynn.

“I know the Bakers, too,” said Archie. “I’m glad I won’t be going to her funeral as well as Bobby’s.”

“You know,” said Rankin, “maybe they should have brought outside people in to identify the bodies. We’re going to know so many of these students. I know the parents of one of the kids in the hospital. They’re trying to save his arm.”

“I know,” said Diane. “One of my museum staff is in the hospital in a coma.” Diane put on her lab coat and latex gloves. “But who could do a better and more careful job than we can? If it’s hard on us, just think of the parents and relatives who are our friends and colleagues.”

“You’re right about that,” said Rankin. “I guess it’s what we do.”

“Is there anything new here?” asked Diane.

“They found another charred body in the basement rubble,” said Lynn. “That brings the total to thirty-three. Garnett assigned priority to all the basement bodies. He wants to know who was found in proximity to the lab. Brewster identified two more bodies of students from their dental charts.”

Another body. Diane hoped that was the last one. She looked at the bones in front of her. Jin had laid them out on labeled trays.

“I thought this might be the best way,” said Jin. “Each tray represents the grid they were found in. When you have examined them, I’ll pack them up and take them to the lab to extract DNA.”

Diane nodded and picked up a charred triquetral—one of the carpal bones in the wrist—and began her measurements.

“I understand you had a row at the hospital,” said Rankin after several minutes.

“Who are you talking to?” asked Pilgrim.

“Diane,” Rankin said. “Tell us about it.”

“Not much to tell. I was visiting Darcy Kincaid, the museum staff member I told you about.” Diane described for them the events that transpired in the hospital.

“What?” said Lynn. “You’re kidding. She just attacked you right there in the solarium?”

“In the hallway. She hit me one good lick, but didn’t do any harm. The policeman guarding the son arrested her.”

“Why did she attack you?” asked Jin, who seemed to find it funny, judging from the grin on his face.

“They’re saying their son is the innocent victim and for some unknown reason, I’m trying to frame him or something. Anyway, their story is that I’m the culprit and they are going to have me fired and sue the police department.”

“I think they are going to have to adopt another attitude,” said Brewster Pilgrim. “People aren’t in the mood right now for that kind of nonsense.”

“Amen,” said Archie.

Diane wanted to get off the topic of her misadventure, so she tried to make light of it. “It was a minor event. I’m sure when their lawyers see the evidence they’ll recommend abject contrition.”

After seeing Blake Stanton’s parents, she felt oddly sorry for him; then she looked at the blackened bones in front of her and her sympathy evaporated.
If he had anything at all to do with this . . . ,
she thought.

She went back to work examining and measuring. There were several wrist bones found together, suggesting that they were from the same wrist. All were from the right side. She put the bones together like a three-dimensional puzzle and found that they fit as though they belonged, and they had complementary wear patterns in the articulated surfaces. She noted a healed fracture on the hook part of the hamate.

“The size of the bones falls within the male range,” she said to Jin as she recorded the information on the form. “That doesn’t exclude larger boned females, of course. I think he—or she—might have been a baseball, racquetball or tennis player.”

“Why is that?” asked Jin.

She showed him the healed fracture. “This kind of fracture is not uncommon among athletes in sports that involve the swinging of a club.”

“Really?” said Jin. “You can take a handful of wrist bones and say this is a male baseball player? That’s so cool.”

“I didn’t say that. I said it could be. It’s suggestive. And I don’t know what kind of club was swung. Could’ve been an ax and he cut firewood for a living.”

“Anyway, it’s really neat what you do with bones.”

Archie shuffled through one of the boxes. He brought her a large envelope. He was limping slightly; she recalled a policeman getting shot last year and she wondered if it was Archie.

“I remember this,” he said, “because Marjie, the policewoman who brought this batch in, said he’s a neighbor, and the son of a Rosewood policeman. He’s on the university’s racquetball team. She told me this is an x-ray of his hand.”

“You have a good memory. Thank you, Archie,” said Diane. “This is a big help.”

“Any little thing I can do.” He went back to his seat just as Marjie brought him more packages containing information on more missing children.

Diane took the x-ray from the envelope and put it on the light box. There it was, a small fracture line like the healed one in the bones in front of her. She took each of the wrist bones in turn and compared it to the x-ray. There were no more fractures, but the relative sizes and wear patterns matched. She was satisfied that these were the bones of—she looked at the name on the x-ray—Donald Wallace. Now, if she could just find the rest of him.

Wallace? She looked back at the name. Then picked up the envelope and read the label. Just as she feared. His father was Izzy Wallace, a policeman, as Archie had said—and a friend of Frank’s.
Damn.

Diane dreaded telling Frank. He was so overjoyed at finding Star. Now his friend will have this dreadful news. Izzy Wallace wasn’t one of her favorite people and she certainly wasn’t one of his, but she would wish this on no one. She looked forlornly at the other bones in the trays and set about seeing if she could match them up.

It looked as if most of the bones found along the adjacent grid squares belonged with these wrist bones. But Jin would have to take DNA samples anyway to confirm.

As if reading her mind, Jin spoke. “We’ll have to use mitochondrial DNA on most of these remains. The nuclear DNA will have been too degraded by the fire.”

Diane nodded. “I think for most we’ll have dental records and x-rays to go along with the DNA. There’ll just be a few that we’ll need to rely only on DNA.”

“You know, boss,” began Jin.

“I know, Jin. If we had our own DNA lab, you could have all these done tonight and we’d have everyone’s identity tomorrow.”