Dead Secret (29 page)

Chapter 40

Diane settled in her chair and picked up the phone.

“Sheriff Burns? What have you got?”

“First off, I’ve talked to all my people. Nobody’s given out any information, general or otherwise, about the cases. I went to see Deputy Singer. He’s covered in this rash. Your guy said it was urti something.”

“Urticaria,” said Diane.

“That’s it.” The sheriff laughed. “I shouldn’t laugh at the poor fellow, but it’s some kind of strange justice. Singer likes to scare the ladies by putting bugs on their desk and such. Anyhow, he knows nothing that’s been going on, and he can’t talk about anything but himself at the moment.”

“I’m sorry he’s so miserable,” said Diane. But she agreed with the sheriff: It looked like karmic justice had bitten him in the ass.

“But the reason I called,” said Sheriff Burns, “is that I’ve been investigating Flora Martin’s murder. Finding out her great-grandson was Donnie Martin, another victim, has been a big help. I talked to Donnie’s girlfriend. Up until about a week ago, he’d been in prison for the past three years. Been in some kind of trouble all his life—burglary, bar fights, you name it. His one virtue was that he loved his great-grandma. She visited him every visiting day, and when he got out, he was going to live with her.”

“I suppose everybody has some soft spot,” said Diane, wishing that the sheriff would hurry and get to the point.

“Maybe. That was his only saving grace. By the time he got out, his great-grandmother, Flora Martin, had already gone missing.”

“Why didn’t he report it?” asked Diane.

“It turns out, he did. But he was still a prisoner at the time, and Flora lived way over in Gilmer County, and the sheriff there didn’t take it real seriously. He said he looked for her. Told me he thought she knew Donnie was getting out soon and moved away. Frankly . . . Well, I won’t say anything about a fellow sheriff. The point is, Donnie’s girlfriend said she got a big envelope in the mail before he was released. Inside it was a smaller envelope addressed to Donnie and one to her. Hers was a letter from Flora Martin asking her to keep Donnie’s letter safe until he got out. Which is what she did. He read it and told his girlfriend that he had a family inheritance after all. Wouldn’t tell her what it was and kept his letter close to him all the time. We found no sign of it among his things.”

Diane perked up. So Flora Martin’s—formerly Jane Doe’s—great-grandson expected to come into money. “Did you get a look at their house?” she asked.

“By the time I got there somebody had ransacked it and the landlord had thrown everything out on the street.”

Diane was disappointed. “That’s too bad.”

“There were some old diaries, but they were ruined. Got rained on. I had a look; the pages were sopping wet and muddy and stuck together and the ink had run.”

“Where are they now?”

“My deputy put them in a sack. I’ll see what she did with them. But they were ruined.”

“We have people at the museum who specialize in bringing ruined items back to life. My conservator can dry out and clean the diaries and separate the pages.”

“Can he unrun the blurred ink?”

“The conservation lab and the crime lab have an ESDA.”

“What’s that?”

“Electrostatic detection apparatus. We can read what was indented on the page.”

“I think I saw something like that on TV. I’ll see what Sally did with them. That’s about all I’ve found out.”

“That’s a lot, Sheriff. Thanks for calling.”

“Sure thing. Tell me, is Singer going to get over that urti-whatever?”

“It can last a long time, and it can come back in spots and itch. It’s a nuisance, but he’ll be fine.”

“I think he’s going to rethink his attitude on bugs from now on. My secretary’s baking him a bug-shaped cake. She’s kind of looking forward to getting even.”

“Oh, how old was Flora, exactly?” Diane had estimated the bones as putting her between seventy and eighty.

“She was seventy-seven.”

“Do you know where she lived when she was a little girl?”

“No idea. I’ll see if I can dig that up.”

“Thanks.”

Diane sat thinking about what the sheriff had told her and did some figuring on her notepad. It seemed pretty evident to her that when Flora Martin was fourteen years old in 1942 she saw something, and whatever it was had to do with the submerged Plymouth. That was why her great-grandson Donnie was at the quarry with a scuba diver looking for it. Considering how things turned out, Diane guessed that Flora’s knowledge of what happened was the family inheritance, and it seemed likely that blackmail was how Donnie was going to collect that inheritance—unless there was something valuable at the bottom of the lake, he got it, and it was taken from him when he was killed.

Before Diane left her office, she called Mike’s number. She was about to hang up when he answered, out of breath. “Neva?” he said.

“No. It’s me, Diane.”

“Hey, Doc. How’s everything going?”

“Going well. I need a favor.”

“Sure,” he said.

“Don’t be so quick to agree. You aren’t going to like it.”

“I’ll do it anyway.”

Diane smiled at his eagerness to please her. “We called MacGregor. He’s been getting the same crazy phone calls about rabbits and the food chain.”

“You’re kidding. What you think that’s about?”

“I think it has something to do with the cave, but I have no idea what. It’s just that a lot of things have been happening since we found that body in the cave.” She paused and took a breath. “MacGregor’s cousin’s trailer burned down.”

“Damn. Was anybody hurt? Is that connected with the calls, you think?”

“No one was hurt, but I understand they lost everything. I don’t know if that is connected to the calls, but I told MacGregor to stay in David’s condo for a few days.”

“Oookay.” Mike was sounding cautious now.

“I told him you would be staying there too. Presumptuous of me, I know.”

“Sure. I’ll do it. Is Neva staying at Frank’s?”

“She’s decided to stay in the museum. All the crime unit are. I’ve sent the rest of the staff home until next week.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone for several moments. “Look, Doc, I need to know if Neva is in danger. I should be with her.”

“Neva is a police officer, as well as a criminalist, and she’s doing her job. She’ll be fine. We have an army of security, I assure you.”

“Are you expecting a raid or something? What the hell is going on?”

Diane could hear the frustration in Mike’s voice. She was tempted to confide in him. But she thought it better that as few people as possible know what she was up to. “Mike, I need you to trust me.”

“I do, Doc, but you know, this sounds like it involves me too.”

“It does. I won’t lie to you. I’m not giving you the cover story that I gave the rest of the staff. The danger is why I’m trying to get you and Mac both out of harm’s way. Please, Mike, trust me.”

“When you put it that way . . .”

“Thank you.”

“Either Frank or David will be by to pick you up. As I understand it, David’s condo’s a fort. He’s inclined toward paranoia.”

“It sounds like an exciting evening. I’ll collect some books and some DVDs. He does have a player, doesn’t he?”

“Oh, yes. I think you and Mac will enjoy his entertainment system.”

“You know this is weird, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do. Just try to make the best of it.”

The museum was clearing out. The restaurant owner was not happy when Diane told him he had to close for two of his busiest days. Fortunately, the contract with them specified that sometimes the museum would have to close and so would the restaurant. When she had had that clause put in, she’d thought of things like fumigating, but nothing like this.

In a few minutes, the museum would be completely empty except for her security personnel and her crime scene crew. Diane sat down to collect her thoughts. Neva was digitizing her drawings. She looked up from the scanner and smiled at Diane.

“David’s gone to take care of MacGregor and Mike. I talked to Mike. He says you owe him big-time for making him room with Mac.” Her grin turned into a chuckle. “Poor Mike.” Neva seemed much happier now that Mike was taken care of.

Diane looked at her watch. It would be about an hour before Garnett and his crew arrived. She decided to pass the time by looking at the Moonhater Cave bones.

“I’ll be back in the osteology lab seeing what the witch has to say.”

“I thought I’d get my drawings ready to transfer to the newspaper when we decide to advertise them. When I finish, I’ll come back and map the witch’s skull.”

“I think John Rose will be tickled to see what she looked like.”

In her lab, Diane opened the box from the Rose Museum of Antiquities. The bones were carefully protected in bubble wrap. The small pieces were in separate boxes. Diane took the fragile bones from the box and laid them out on the table the way they would have been in her body. If it was a
her
. Diane never took on faith what people said about a skeleton’s gender until she could verify it. Diane looked at the pelvis as she put it in position on the table. She was indeed female.

An amazing number of the bones were present. More than Diane expected from a set of bones handed down with only an oral provenance that could be mythical. There were a couple of vials of dirt packed with them. Diane smiled as she thought of Gregory and his wife surreptitiously collecting the dirt from the cave. She took the dirt samples and set them aside. She’d ask Mike to analyze them when the museum opened again.

She surveyed the bones laid out on the table. They were fragile but in good condition. She’d ask John Rose if he wanted her to have Korey stabilize them. They were an amber color—a sort of mottled gold-red-brown—and had a patina that, though it wasn’t shiny exactly, did have a vague sheen. Around the skull and some of the bones was a crust of minerals—probably salt.

The first thing Diane did was to take samples. She scraped the mineral deposit into a separate vial and labeled it. She looked inside the skull and other orifices and found samples of dirt, which she put in another labeled vial.

Rose had given her permission to take samples of the bone and teeth for testing. She would take a piece out of a long bone and a couple of teeth. Isotope analysis of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, strontium and lead from her teeth could give interesting results about where she was actually from. These elements were taken into the body through the food that was eaten, the air that was breathed, and the water that was drunk as a person was growing, and became a fixed part of their chemical makeup. The proportions of the chemicals deposited in the teeth were different in different locales throughout the world. The chemical analyses would tell where she grew up.

Diane could see the appeal of archaeology. There was something satisfying and calming about looking at the bones of the ancient dead, trying to figure out not just how they had died, but what their lives were like.

I really should have Jonas Briggs here with me while I’m doing this,
she thought.
When the museum is cleared, I’ll bring him in on the analysis.

Time was short, so Diane decided to look over the bones quickly and go back for a more thorough examination later. She focused on the ribs—on something she had spotted when she laid out the bones.

The right eighth rib was in two pieces that had been glued back together. She would ask Korey the best way to dissolve the glue. The seventh and ninth ribs on the right side were a quarter and a half cut through, respectively. The cut on the seventh was on the bottom of the rib. On the ninth the cut was on the top. She did a quick calculation on her notepad. That would encompass a width of about two inches.

A glance at the sternum—the breastbone—revealed about a half-inch chunk missing on the left side. Diane looked again at the cuts in the seventh and ninth ribs. The cuts were V-shaped, and the bone displacement went from back to front.

It looked like she had been stabbed in the back with a double-edged sword. The blade had cut through the eighth rib, slicing the edges of the two adjacent ribs, passed though and nicked a chunk out of the breastbone. The sword would have gotten the heart and liver, and possibly several other organs. It was a blow that killed instantly.

Diane didn’t know much about swords, but a two-inch-wide blade struck her as a rather sizable weapon. She would measure the width of the cuts and other variables that the bones showed and come up with a rough facsimile of the blade. Maybe John Rose could discover what kind of sword it was.

“Finding anything interesting?” Neva came in from the crime lab smiling. “I just talked to Mike. He says you really owe him.”

“MacGregor wearing thin already?”

“Sort of. He says David has a great home theater system, though.”

“I think Mike’s feeling like he should be here protecting you, rather than hiding out in David’s condo,” said Diane.

“I know. It doesn’t help that I can’t tell him what’s going on.”

“I feel bad about that too, but hopefully it’ll all be over soon.” Diane looked at her watch. “Garnett should be arriving any minute now. I’m going down to meet him. Why don’t you stay here and work on our witch’s face?”

Chapter 41

David ushered Garnett from the loading dock into the Pleistocene room. Behind them followed men from the bomb squad with their dogs. Each officer had a map of the museum from subbasement to attic.

The dogs, German shepherds and Labrador retrievers, stood quietly and looked around the room expectantly, wagging their tails. If they were surprised at the sight of the huge Pleistocene animals, they didn’t show it.

“I appreciate this, Chief Garnett,” she said.

“It’s important that we get this settled. We can’t have this kind of threat to the crime lab—or the museum. However, I think you’re dead wrong about Emery. He’s a decorated marine. I know him.”

“I hope I am wrong,” said Diane. “I don’t want it to be anyone connected to the crime lab or the museum.”

Garnett nodded curtly. “Okay,” he said, “let’s get started.”

“Don’t you worry, Miss Fallon; if there’s something here, the dogs will find it.”

“Thank you, Sergeant . . .”

“Remington, ma’am.”

“Good name for a police officer.”

“I think so, ma’am.”

“Everyone should be gone except for my crime lab staff.”

“And they will be going shortly?”

“We thought we would stay.”

“No, ma’am. No one can be here except us. That’s the rules. If we have to get out in a hurry, we can’t be hunting for civilians.”

“I understand. But we—”

He was shaking his head. “No, ma’am.”

“There’s an experiment that has to be attended to every four hours.”

“I’m real sorry about that. I hope it wasn’t one that was going to cure cancer.”

“No.”

“Good.”

Sergeant Remington was good-natured throughout, but Diane could see he was going to win this argument. And he was absolutely right.

“I have to get a few things. It should take about twenty minutes. Is that okay?”

“That’ll be fine. After that, I want everyone out.”

One of the security guards came in, escorting Frank Duncan. Diane smiled when she saw him.

“Detective Duncan,” said Garnett, holding out his hand. “Good to see you. Come to offer assistance?”

“It looks like your men have everything under control. I borrowed my neighbor’s RV. I thought we could watch the grounds a safe distance away.” Diane looked at him, amazed. He smiled at her. “You thought they were going to let you stay and work, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Now see, this guy has the right idea,” said Remington.

“I’m working on a set of bones. I need to get them from my lab,” said Diane. “I also need to get my computer and a few tools. It won’t take long.”

She left Garnett and the others to do their work and walked with Frank up to her lab.

“How are things going here?”

“I’m hoping the dominoes are falling.”

“Closing in, are you?”

“Maybe. I also may be completely wrong and we have nothing. Jin is in Atlanta. They did get some usable DNA. If I’m lucky, the two thugs will be in a database. I’ve been toying with the idea of asking the prosecutor to get a John Doe indictment based on the DNA. Striking at a crime lab . . . ” She shook her head. “It’s too lawless. It has to be stopped.”

“I agree completely.” Frank put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. It felt good. “You said you’re working on some bones?” he said.

“Yes. The witch—I think you were there when Gregory called.”

“Ah, yes, the witch that was supposed to be stolen, but was really a roe.”

“That’s the one, only this is the real one.”

Neva was busy working on the face of the Moonhater Cave skeleton when Diane got back to the lab. She’d finished with the skull and had replaced it on the table.

“Neva, pick up your things. We have to get out of the museum.”

Neva turned around in her seat. “Oh, no, they found something?” She looked more disappointed than frightened.

“No. They just don’t want anyone here while they search. Frank brought an RV.”

She looked up at Frank. “You think of everything. I’ll gather up my stuff and go out to the parking lot. I guess they’re running David out too.”

“Yes, everyone.”

Diane packed up the bones, her measuring devices and her field computer. When she had everything, she left the building, with Frank helping her carry her things. It would be like doing forensic anthropology out in the bush again. They met David and Garnett at the door.

“Remington seems like a really competent officer,” said Diane.

“He is,” said Garnett. “Very serious and safe. He’s also my godson, so I’m partial.”

“We’ll be in the RV at the edge of the woods if you need me,” said Diane. Garnett nodded. He still wasn’t pleased about her suspicions of Emery.

David helped them carry their boxes of equipment and bones.

Diane looked at the huge RV as they approached. This would be much more comfortable than camping in the jungle, she thought.

“Thanks, Frank. This is great.”

“I knew you would want to stay, and I knew they would run you out of the building.”

Diane looked around the grounds and saw the distant flashlights of her museum guards as they patrolled the grounds, two at a time, watching for anyone who might be sneaking up to set fire to the museum. She looked back at the huge Gothic structure and tried to think whether she had done everything she could do to protect it. She wished she didn’t feel so guilty for putting it in danger.

Diane invited Garnett to share the RV with them, but he said he needed to go to the office and that he might drop by later. David, Neva, Frank and Diane climbed into the luxury vehicle and settled in for the evening.

The inside was a combination of oak cabinets and gray and blue textiles. Everything was compact and efficient. On one side was a small kitchen, on the other side a dining table and couch. The motor home had a small bedroom and a bathroom on one end and a bunk over the cab on the other. All the comforts of home.

“This is great,” said David. “You Atlanta guys know how to do a stakeout.”

“I wish,” said Frank. “This belongs to my neighbor. He’s trying to sell it, and I’m thinking about buying it. I thought it’d be good to take my son Kevin and Star on vacation sometime.”

“You can take me too,” said David. “I don’t suppose it came with food?”

“I’m sure Frank brought enough for a week,” said Diane.

“We can start with Chinese and go from there,” said Frank.

Diane didn’t realize she was so hungry until she smelled the hot food. After they ate, she claimed the bedroom, spread butcher paper on the bed and laid the bones out. Neva sat at the table and worked on the drawings. David sat in the cab, watching the museum and listening to music. Frank watched Diane work with the bones. She showed him the sword wound.

“Poor girl,” said Frank.

“Girl is right. She was young. No wisdom teeth; her epiphyses have just started to unite. Some have been glued on by the people who’ve had the bones. The pattern pubis symphysis is very rough, sternal end of the ribs barely scalloped—everything points to between fourteen and eighteen.”

“How old are the bones?” Frank asked.

“I don’t know. I’ll have to sample a piece of bone and have it dated.”

“Her teeth look pretty good,” he said.

“They are. I see only one cavity and it’s very small. Not like our poor mummy, who probably died of bad teeth. Our girl was healthy too. I don’t see any sign in her bones that she was undernourished or suffered from any disease, at least none that affects the bones.”

Diane began the measurements of the skull. She liked this part, particularly feeding the data into the computer. She set her laptop up on a tiny table in the corner of the bedroom.

When the measuring started, Frank lost interest and went in to watch Neva draw.

Diane finished all her measurements, and repacked the skeleton before putting the data into the computer. “Okay, let’s see what the database says about where she’s from,” she said aloud to no one in particular.

Frank and Neva came to watch. Neva perched on the bed; Frank stood behind her and rubbed her shoulders.

“What you doing now?” he asked.

“I’ve got a couple of databases that I can plug information into, and it will give me a probability of her ancestry, among other things.”

“Really, it’ll tell you where she’s from in the world?”

“To a point. It’s only as good as the sample contained in the database, but yes, it’s pretty good. I back it up with other kinds of tests—oxygen and strontium isotope analysis, for example. Different regions of the world have various oxygen isotope ratios in the water. That same ratio will be in the teeth and bones of a person who grew up there.”

Frank looked at Neva and grinned.

“I know,” said Neva. “Mike talks like that too—only about rocks. You know you can use the same damn test to find out where rocks come from? Who knew?”

Diane gave them a look that was halfway between a grimace and a smile. “Let’s see what it says.” She looked at the data that showed up on the screen. “Female. That’s good. Five feet tall, that’s what I estimated. Caucasoid, that’s good. Okay, now this is interesting—good thing I’m backing this up with other tests.”

“What does it say?” asked Neva.

“Mediterranean. I was expecting England.” Diane thought a moment, picturing a map of the Mediterranean countries in her head. “I bet she’s Roman.”

“Roman?” said Neva.

“I’ll have to look at the other tests, including dating the bones, but she could be. Romans were in England for a time. I don’t think Mr. Rose was expecting this.” Diane liked the unexpected—at least in bones. Unexpectedness in the museum was another matter.

“Interesting,” said Frank. “A young Roman girl stabbed through with a sword. I wonder what her story is.”

“Do you have a drawing?” Diane asked Neva.

“I just finished building the computer face when we left the building. I’ve been working on the drawing.” She went back to the dinette table and grabbed the picture and handed it to Diane. “I didn’t know what to do with her hair, so I made it dark and long. If it turns out she was Roman, I could look up how they wore their hair back then.”

Diane looked into the heart-shaped face of a young girl with wide-spaced eyes and a small, straight nose. She looked so young.

“Did I hear you say she was killed with a sword?” asked Neva.

“A rather large sword.”

Neva grimaced. “Well, didn’t the story say that her husband killed her with a sword after luring her to the cave? I guess that part of the story is true.”

“According to Charlotte Hawkins. John Rose’s version has her being killed by the boyfriend of the maiden whom she turned to salt.”

“So she was either the good witch of the north or the wicked witch of the east,” said Neva.

Diane shook her head. “She was such a small thing, I can’t see her being a threat. Her bones don’t show that she was particularly muscular. And the thrust came from the back.”

“So you’re thinking they called her a witch to cover up a murder?” said Neva.

“I’m not saying anything now. I don’t even know yet that she is from the same cave.”

“So you won’t be able to tell if she’s a witch?” asked Neva.

“There are no osteological characteristics that I am aware of that indicate witchiness in an individual—so no, I won’t be able to do that,” Diane said with a smile.

“But then,” said Neva, “her body wasn’t found for hundreds of years, right? So they didn’t need a story. Besides, it wouldn’t have worked anyway, since the Romans were in charge. Witch or not, the Romans would have arrested them . . . or worse.”

“We’ll probably never know what really happened,” said Diane. “But we’ll know something about her. And at least the general height of her killer.” She handed the drawing back to Neva. “You did a good job. I’m anxious for Gregory and Mr. Rose to see your drawing.”

Just as Diane spoke she heard someone knocking on the door. As Frank was about to answer, David entered the RV with Garnett.

“Do you know if they have found anything?” asked Diane.

Garnett shook his head. “Nothing yet. I really don’t think there’s anything there. I know you’re on the wrong track about Emery. I’m betting he won’t show up tomorrow night to steal the evidence, and I don’t believe he is in league with those guys who kidnapped you.”

Diane didn’t address her hunch about Emery. There was a good chance she
was
wrong about him. “I’ll be just glad to clear the museum and crime lab of any threats.” She shook her head. “They knew just how to scare me.”

In the wee hours of morning just before dawn, Diane heard a telephone ringing. She reached for her cell, then realized that it wasn’t hers that was ringing. She and Neva were on the bed. Frank was on the sofa, and David was in the bunk. The phone sounded like it came from the bunk.

Diane raised herself up and slipped out of bed, trying not to wake Neva. She heard David answer it in a sleepy voice. She went over to his bunk.

“Jin’s ready to upload the DNA profiles,” said David. “Can we do that here?”

Frank roused to wakefulness and stretched. He was much more of a morning person and was wide-awake by the second stretch. Diane was still trying to focus her eyes. Sometimes she envied Frank.