Dead Secret (8 page)

“Yes. There’s no way he could have survived. I believe that.”

“Is that why you scan the parking lot every time you leave the museum? I’ve seen you. I do it too.”

“It’s a good habit to get into.”

“It’s just a thought I had, trying to figure out who could be so damn mad at both of us. You’re right, though—he’s probably dead. I can’t imagine how he could have possibly escaped the cave, wounded like he was and with no light.”

“I’ll mention it to Garnett.” Diane stood. “I need to let you get some rest.”

“Wait. There’s something else I’d like to talk to you about while I’m laid up here looking pitiful and after having saved your life two weeks ago.”

Diane laughed out loud. “This sounds like you’re going to ask a really big favor.”

“It’s a proposal.”

Chapter 12

Diane’s eyebrows rose a fraction. “A proposal?”

“Business,” Mike added.

“Okay, shoot.”

“It’s a job proposal, a rather unusual one. I’ve got it written out, but I don’t have it here. I’ll ask Neva to drop it by your office. However, I’ll tell you about it.”

Diane moved the chair closer to Mike’s bed and sat back down. “I’m listening. What is your unusual proposal?”

“Can I have a drink of water?”

A glass of ice water was sitting on the stand next to his bed. She helped him take a sip from the straw.

“Can I do anything else for you? Get you an extra pillow?” She felt helpless watching him lie there.

“I’m okay, really.”

But Diane had seen him push the button that gave him his intravenous painkiller. She sat back down and leaned forward.

“I’m listening,” she said.

“I’ve been asked by a biotechnology and pharmaceutical research company to search out and collect extremophiles.”

“Extremophiles?”

“Organisms that live in the most extreme environments on earth, conditions that would kill other creatures. Some grow in very cold or extremely hot temperatures, some in very high- or low-pH environments, and some live under high pressure or in high salt concentrations, and others have very limited nutrient needs.”

“And they want you to find these . . . organisms? What does this company want with them?”

“Extremophiles have some very interesting characteristics. For example, you know that polymerase chain reaction test you guys do for the DNA in blood?”

“Uh-huh. It replicates small samples of DNA to increase the amount we have to work with. We don’t do it here. We send our samples to the GBI lab in Atlanta, but sure, I know what it is.”

“Did you know the Taq DNA polymerase used for the reaction originally came from
Thermus aquaticus
, a bacterium found in the hot springs of Yellowstone National Park?”

Diane blinked. “Really? I had no idea,” she said, feeling oddly abashed. “Jin is more up on this than I am. He has a particular interest in DNA testing.”

“Does he know that for some other PCR applications, Taq DNA polymerase isn’t as useful because it lacks proofreading? It doesn’t have the ability to detect and remove replication errors.”

Diane shrugged and smiled at Mike, who was clearly having fun. “I’ll ask him.”

“The DNA polymerase from
Thermococcus litoralis
has an enzyme that has very promising proofreading capabilities. The point is that some of these extremophiles are like little engines that do really cool stuff.”

“It sounds to me a lot like nanotechnology.”

“Interesting you should say that. Some researchers are looking at extremophiles as a model for nanotechnology. Extremophile research has a lot of branches—medicine, environmental cleanup, food preservation and lots more. The characteristics that allow them to survive in extreme conditions are sometimes very useful for other kinds of work.”

“Fascinating, I agree. But your Ph.D. is in geology. What do they want with a geologist?”

He gave her a lopsided smile. “Some extremophiles live inside rocks.” He laughed. “I think I’m getting silly. This painkiller is feeling really good. Is my speech slurred?”

“Not much more than usual,” said Diane.

Mike clasped his chest with both hands. “Oh, now I’ve been stabbed through the heart. Seriously, sometimes locating extremophiles in their natural habitat is a geologic problem. That’s part of what geomicrobiology is about. But it’s mainly my skill set they are interested in—caving and rock climbing. Extremophiles live in remote, hard-to-get-to places—like ice caves and inside volcanoes. They need someone like me. I’ve climbed a five-fourteen rock face.”

The surprise must have shown on Diane’s face, the way Mike grinned broadly at her. She knew Mike was good, but they always had relatively easy climbs in the caves they visited. She could do a five-seven, a five-eight or -nine in a pinch. Only a handful of elite rock climbers could handle a rock face with a five-fourteen degree of difficulty—it required an enormous amount of skill and strength.

“Have I impressed you, Doc?”

“You’ve impressed the hell out of me, Mike.”

She didn’t think it possible, but his grin got even broader and a little more lopsided.

“I’ve sure been working hard at it.”

Diane suddenly felt a pang of sadness. Mike was an extremely talented and intelligent individual, and a genuinely nice guy. All that would be gone had he died. Twice now he’d almost been killed when they were together.

She fingered the locket that hung on a chain around her neck. It contained a photograph of her and her daughter. Diane wondered what Ariel would have become had her bright light not been extinguished so soon. Her eyes filled with tears.

“You okay, Doc?”

Diane blushed and hoped that Mike didn’t notice that as well as the tears. “Yes . . . it’s . . . I was just thinking about my daughter. Now you—twice—and Frank getting shot last year, too. It seems I’m not a lucky person to be around.”

“Doc, none of what happened to any of us was your fault. This time we were at a funeral, for heaven’s sake. Who knew?” He reached out his hand and Diane took it. “Thanks for riding with me in the ambulance. I have to tell you, I was scared.”

“Me too.”

She squeezed his hand, let it go, took a tissue from the box on his nightstand, and blotted the tears from her eyes.

“I’m sorry. Please tell me more about your proposal. Where does the museum come into it?”

“That’s the unusual part. The company wants me to work for them on a job-by-job basis—kind of open-ended contract work. This proposal is really an application for a job in the museum—an official job. Right now I work there because of my assistantship in the Geology Department at Bartram, and that won’t last forever.” He took a deep breath, and it looked to Diane like his eyes were drooping. “In the written proposal, I’ve got several ideas for exhibits for the museum.”

He stopped for a long moment and closed his eyes. Diane was about to leave when he spoke up suddenly.

“What I was thinking is that I could work part-time at the museum with enough hours to get insurance and benefits. I would continue to do the duties I do now. When I’m off working for Extreme Research, I can also collect rocks, minerals, fossils, whatever, for the museum, and make videos of some of our explorations. I think an exhibit on extremophiles, for instance, would be popular—I outlined a plan in the paper.”

“It’s an intriguing proposal.”

“Does it work for you?”

“I like it. I’ll need to think about it. When do you need to know something?”

“No deadline, but sooner rather than later, if possible.”

“I’ll give it serious thought, Mike. It’s a good idea,” she said. “But now I really should let you get some rest.”

Diane stood just as Neva came in the door bearing flowers and a bright smile. She set the flowers across from Mike’s bed and went to his bedside.

“You’re looking good. How do you feel?” She bent over to kiss him on his cheek, but he turned his head and kissed her on the lips.

“Thanks for the flowers. They are for me, aren’t they?”

“No. Your doctor’s really cute. They’re for him.” She kissed him again.

Diane was relieved to see Mike’s interest in Neva. His attraction to Diane had become more of a joke between them than anything serious, but seeing that he genuinely liked Neva put her at ease.

“How’s your arm?” Neva asked Diane.

“Sore, but that’s all. I’ll see you guys later. I’m going to the museum.”

As Diane was leaving, three young women came into the room and gathered around Mike. They looked like graduate students, she thought. She noticed that Neva started to back away, but Mike held on to her hand.

Diane met Korey coming into the museum along with a throng of visiting children and two tour buses. It was good to see the museum crowded and noisy.

“Begging you’re pardon, Dr. F.,” said Korey. “Why aren’t you at home taking it easy?”

“If I get to feeling bad, I’ll go home. There’s just so much to do in the museum and the crime lab.”

“That’s why you have all those people working for you.”

“I know, but I’ve been gone for a couple of weeks. . . . I get uneasy leaving things that long.”

Korey grinned and waved as they parted company at the stairwell and he went up to the conservation lab on the second floor. Diane continued on through the double doors to the private office of the museum. Several of her staff gathered around when they saw her, and expressed their concern about her and asked about Mike. Diane held out her arm to show them that it was still functional and that she would live, and she gave them a short briefing on Mike’s condition.

Her chair felt good when she finally sat down behind her desk. The first thing she did was call Kendel and Andie to her office.

“Andie, Neva is bringing by a proposal from Mike. Make a copy and give it to Kendel.” She turned toward Kendel. “I’d like your opinion on it as soon as you have a chance to evaluate it.”

Kendel nodded. “Sure. Mike always has good ideas.” After catching up with Kendel and Andie, she walked upstairs to the labs. Her arm was throbbing, but she didn’t want to take painkillers if she could get by without them.

In her osteology lab two boxes sat on a metal table. The tag on one told her it was from Lynn Webber, the Hall County medical examiner. That would be Caver Doe. Lynn had autopsied the mummified body and had her diener strip the bones of the dried flesh so that Diane could examine them. Lynn’s report said the probable cause of death was infection from a compound fracture of the tibia exacerbated by kidney damage consistent with a vertical-height fall. Lynn noted that at this point the manner of death looked like an accident, but she couldn’t be sure.

The second box was from England—the Moonhater Cave bones. On top of the box was a large envelope with photographs of the bones, the cave, and the so-called salt maiden. The salt maiden was obviously a carved stalagmite. She wondered if the part of the story about turning a woman to salt was added much later, when someone saw what looked a little like a face in the cave formation. It would be interesting to hear all the various stories about the cave and the bones.

She took the Moonhater photographs and the Caver Doe medical examiner’s report into her office and sat down behind her desk. This office, unlike her other one in the museum, was stark, almost bare of personal items. The pale off-white walls and green slate floor did little to warm up the room. She had hoped the burgundy sofa and chair and walnut desk furniture would add something to the atmosphere, but it was a room much like the watercolor of a wolf hunting in the wild she had hanging on one wall—lean and efficient-looking.

Diane picked up the phone and called the crime lab a few doors away and asked David and Jin to bring her up to speed on what they’d been doing while she was on vacation—and whether they had discovered anything at Mike’s crime scene. She didn’t look forward to that part. Her arm continued to throb.

Chapter 13

Jin bopped into her office, pulled the burgundy stuffed chair up close to her desk and sat down. David sat down on one end of the sofa and propped his feet up on the other end. He rubbed the top of his bald head as if that would make his hair grow back.

“How come I don’t have one of these in my office?” said David.

“Because you don’t have an office,” said Diane.

“Oh, yeah, that’s right. I have a cubicle with maggots.”

“You are welcome to use my couch if you leave your maggots behind.” Diane flashed him a grin, then took a deep breath. It was time to get started. “Where are we with the cemetery stabbings? Do we know anything about the perp? Were there any more vics?” She said it as if she didn’t know the victims, as if she herself weren’t one of them.

“We’ve kept in touch with Garnett. As far as we know you and Mike are the only two,” said Jin.

Why?
wondered Diane.
Why the two of them?
“Did you find anything at the site?”

“Nada,”
said David. “Not a damn thing. If he was lurking behind one of the monuments or a tree, he wasn’t drinking, eating, smoking, chewing gum or tobacco, spitting or spewing blood—or at least he left no evidence if he was doing any of those things. We found a bracelet with a broken clasp, but it turned out to belong to one of the mourners, and Garnett cleared her. She was eighty-seven and not given to homicidal mania.”

Diane smiled briefly. “So where does that leave us?” she asked.

“As far as the crime scene, nowhere,” said David. “Neva brought us Mike’s clothes and your jacket. We’ve processed them. The fibers that we found on Mike’s clothes are from the museum van. Your coat only had fibers from your office chair, Mrs. Van Ross’s clothes and the limo.”

“So that’s no help,” mused Diane. “Do we have anything?”

“The doctor said that the weapon you and Mike were stabbed with was as sharp as a scalpel, had a double edge and was at least six inches long,” said David. “My guess is it’s an expensive knife—or rather a dagger, since it was double-edged.”

“Why do you say it was expensive?” asked Diane.

“Because you can’t sharpen cheap steel as sharp as the knife that stabbed you and Mike was.”

“So that’s something.”

“He’s probably proficient with it,” said David.

Diane raised her eyebrows and leaned forward. “How so?”

“Because, relatively speaking, he did minimal damage,” said David. “An unsteady hand could have been much worse on the two of you. The doctor said Mike’s cut showed no evidence of rocking inside the wound, and it came out on the same plane that it went in. That’s a steady hand.” David made an underhanded stabbing gesture. “The angle was slightly upward—about five degrees from a level plane. He wasn’t taller than Mike. I’d say about the same height, maybe slightly shorter, but not by much.”

Diane pinched the bridge of her nose, forcing herself to visualize Mike being stabbed, trying to get an image of the event. David was right: The guy had to be proficient to do it quickly and not be seen.

“You okay with this, Boss?” asked Jin.

“Yes. I’m all right. Go on.”

“Your jacket had a slice almost equal to the length of your wound,” said Jin. “The knife went in; he sliced down and withdrew. All very neat.”

Diane winced at his description. She saw both David and Jin grimace as well.

“So what can we infer—he’s proficient with a knife and had no intention of killing, just maiming?”

“I can’t say he had no intention of killing Mike,” said David. “He could easily have died.”

Diane cast her eyes upward to stop the emotion that was threatening to spill tears into her eyes. If David and Jin noticed, they said nothing.

“So all we know for sure is that he had an expensive knife and knew how to use it.”

“That’s about it,” said Jin.

“It’s a help. Did you tell Garnett all this?”

Jin nodded. “We keep him up-to-date.”

Diane was surprised at how much they had gotten done in just a few hours. “Good work. Okay. How about the other cases you processed while I was on vacation?

One by one, Jin and David reported on all the pending cases and where they were in the process. When they finished, she complimented them on their thorough work and then asked about Caver Doe.

“He’s not a priority, but did you have time to work on his effects?”

Both David and Jin bobbed their heads. “Oh, yeah,” said Jin. “He was wearing a plain green plaid flannel shirt, but some really cool jeans. Levi’s, pre-1936.”

Diane could see that Jin was dying to tell her about them. She waved a hand at him. “You have the floor,” she said, knowing he’d certainly take it.

Jin stood. “Caver Doe’s jeans had a back cinch.” Jin turned and pointed to the back of his jeans—which did not have a cinch—and looked over his shoulder at Diane. “The back cinch was a little minibelt that tightened the waist. They were called waist overalls back then, not blue jeans.”

Jin turned to face Diane. David sat up on the sofa, resting his forearms on his thighs and leaned forward, listening.

“His jeans also have a crotch rivet.” Jin started to point, but stopped as a flush crept over his face. “Well, never mind. The crotch rivet and the back cinch were removed during World War Two to save on metal and fabric and never used again. That dates them to before the Second World War.

“In 1937 the company changed the way they sewed the back pockets, so the material would cover the rivets. That was because the cowboys complained that the metal rivets scratched their saddles—they were marketing to cowboys, and cowboys were particular about their saddles. Caver Doe’s jeans also had suspender buttons. All that puts them before 1937. Now, what Caver Doe’s jeans didn’t have was a red label.”

Jin turned and pointed to his left rear pocket, where a red Levi’s label was sewn, then faced her again, and for a minute Diane didn’t know if he was going to sit back down or break into a dance. Instead, he walked closer to her desk and looked earnestly at her.

“I checked and there was never a red label sewn on Caver Doe’s jeans. The company started sewing the red label in 1936 so Levi’s could be recognized at a distance. Caver Doe’s jeans did have belt loops. Those were first added in 1922.”

“So the time line for the jeans is between 1922 and 1936,” said Diane.

“Yep.” Jin sat back down and leaned forward in the chair. “I found a lot of animal hairs on the jeans.”

“That’s interesting. . . .” Diane winced in pain. Her amusement at Jin’s demonstrative explanation of Caver Doe’s jeans had relieved Diane from some of the pain in her arm, but it was back—sharp pains, as if the knifer were stabbing her over and over again.

“What’s wrong?” asked David. “You don’t look well.”

“A little pain. I didn’t want to take any medication until I got home tonight.”

“Take a pain pill. Jin and I’ll take you home when you want to go.”

“I wanted to start on Caver Doe’s bones this afternoon.”

David got up and went around to Diane’s small refrigerator hidden behind a walnut cabinet, took out a bottle of water and handed it to her. “Take a pill.”

Diane fished out the bottle of extra-strength Tylenol rather than her prescription Percocet, took out a pill and downed it with a long drink of water. “David, it’s a good thing you are a friend.”

“I know,” he said. “It lets me get away with a lot.”

“What kind of animal hairs did you find on the jeans?” Diane asked.

“Sylvilagus floridanus, Sciurus carolinensis, Equus caballus
and
Canis familiaris,”
said Jin.

Diane wrinkled her forehead. “So we have rabbit, squirrel, horse and dog. What color horse?” asked Diane, smiling at Jin.

“Brown,” said Jin, grinning back at her. “The dog was black. The horse hair was clustered on the seat—looks like Caver Doe rode bareback and didn’t wash his jeans before going caving.”

“We think he hunted squirrels and rabbits,” said David. “I suppose those were his all-purpose jeans—hunting, riding, caving. The lantern’s kind of nice too. It’s circa nineteen-thirties or -forties. We’re still looking into that.”

“You’d better tell her about the book,” said Jin.

“It was a perfectly reasonable purchase. We’ve bought many more expensive things,” David protested.

Diane looked from Jin to David. “You bought something?”

“A used dog-eared book on railroad-spike collecting, for seventy-five dollars,” Jin said.

“Seventy-five dollars?” said Diane. “For a book on railroad spikes?”

“We didn’t have a database of railroad spikes,” said David. “It was perfectly reasonable to get a book to start one. I couldn’t help it if the only one was out of print and rare.”

“Do we really need a database of railroad spikes?” asked Diane.

“We have two spikes in this case.”

“And he read where last year someone used one as a murder weapon in Nevada,” said Jin in a mock defense.

“I’ll admit there’s not a lot of call for it, but you never know what information a case will hinge on.”

Diane shook her head. “Okay. So what about the button? We do have a database on buttons, as I recall.”

David’s grin was so big that both Jin and Diane laughed at him.

“Our button, it turns out, is rare. And it gives our time line a new date—provided the button actually has some connection to Caver Doe, which is really a long shot, because there were no fingerprints and nothing whatsoever to connect it to the caver, except that they were both in the cave.

“Although our jeans may date from the thirties, our button dates from the forties. It’s a silver-plated plastic officer’s-uniform button specially commissioned for the newly authorized Army Specialist Corps. The buttons were never used because the secretary of war unauthorized—or whatever it is they do—the ASC before it went into effect. The only people to have them besides the manufacturer were the Philadelphia Quartermaster’s Department and a few colonels.”

“I’m surprised,” said Diane. “I had no idea you would get that much from the button.”

“How much is it worth?” asked Jin.

“Couple hundred, maybe,” said David.

“Damn,” said Jin.

“It’s very rare.”

“Tell her about the backpack,” said Jin.

“The backpack was rare?” said Diane.

David shook his head. No. It’s a World War One U.S. Army backpack. It’s what was in it. He had a lot of candles and matches, of course, and get this—a Mickey Mouse flashlight.”

“A Mickey Mouse flashlight?”

“Made by USALite. Shows Mickey Mouse walking in the dark with a flashlight. It dates to 1935. About ruined, though. It used two D-cell batteries, and they leaked all in it. It’s a shame; it was a cool light. He had extra batteries and they leaked too. The battery acid got all over a couple of handkerchiefs, the matches, and some candles.”

“What about the picture?” asked Diane. “It was pretty soaked with blood and body fluids, as I remember.”

“We photographed it in different kinds of light. I’m working on cleaning it,” said Jin. “Did you know that Korey has some of the same document-cleaning agents that we use?”

“Yes,” said Diane. “The museum occasionally does the same kind of restorative work that we do here in the crime lab.”

“I just thought it was kind of interesting,” said Jin.

“Anything else?” asked Diane.

“Caver Doe had a wad of cash in his pocket,” said Jin.

Diane raised her eyebrows. “Oh?”

“They were stuck together. I’m cleaning them. The bills I can see are ones, so I don’t think it’s going to be a lot of money.”

“He also had a pencil and a key in his pocket,” said David. “The key looks like it belonged to something small, like a box. Didn’t see any strongboxes while you were in the tunnels, did you?”

“No. I guess we’d better keep an eye out when we go back. Is that it?”

“That’s all we know so far,” said Jin.

“You know,” began David, “Jin, Neva and I thought we’d like to have a crime scene section in the museum with displays on what we do . . . like the bottle reconstruction we did at the bar fight crime scene—how it’s like the potsherd analysis the archaeologists do.”

“A crime scene section in the museum? You’re joking, aren’t you?” The medicine hadn’t kicked in yet and her arm was still throbbing. It was too early in the day for her to feel so bad now. She took another sip of water.

“No, Boss,” said Jin. “You’re always getting flak because we’re housed in the west wing here. Why not show people what we do? It doesn’t have to be gruesome.”

“Frankly, I’d never thought about that,” admitted Diane. She had always worked hard to keep them completely separate—with the exception of occasionally using the museum staff as consultants to the crime lab.

“Jin’s right,” said David. “People would find trace analysis interesting, and they wouldn’t be so averse to our being here.”

“I’ll give it some thought.”

“And we could make some of our more innocuous databases available on a computer,” added David. “Not AFIS, CODIS or anything like that, of course.”

“Some of David’s databases that we don’t use that often,” said Jin, “like buttons and railroad spikes, maybe feathers. Feathers are nice. You know, makes us not look so . . . gruesome—just really weird.”

“We would only be able to use the databases that are ours,” began Diane, when there was a muted knock on her door.

“Yes?”

Neva entered. She nodded at David and Jin, but the uneasy look on her face worried Diane.