Dust to Dust (16 page)

“That was Paloma,” said Diane. “Marcella is awake. We can talk on the way there.”

Marcella lay so still in bed, it scared Diane. Her skin was almost as pale as her pillow. Her head had been shaved and bandaged. There were dark circles under her eyes. Diane glanced at the monitor beside her bed. It was calming to see the iconic heart flash with the steady beat of Marcella’s pulse.

Paloma said her mother didn’t remember anything about the day of the attack. She didn’t even know why she was in the hospital. She did remember she wanted to speak with Diane. The original need to speak with Diane obviously occurred a day or more before Marcella was attacked.

Diane pulled up a chair by her bed. The nurse told Diane she had five minutes for the visit, no more.

“Hello, Marcella. It’s good to see you awake,” said Diane.

Marcella opened her eyes. “Strange,” she whispered.

“What is strange?” asked Diane.

Marcella moved her eyes to Diane. “Desk,” she whispered.

“We’ve seen the desk. The writing on the back of the drawer,” said Diane.

Marcella nodded. The movement of her head was barely perceptible. “The pottery. Bone.”

“Yes. Is that the pottery that was in your workroom?” said Diane.

“Yes. Sent samples,” she said.

“The lab called,” said Diane.

“What?” asked Marcella.

Diane didn’t quite know what to do. She knew Marcella was asking what species, but she was afraid the answer would be too disturbing.

“Species,” whispered Marcella. It came out as almost a command, even in her quiet voice.

“
Homo sapiens
,” said Diane. Somehow the genus and species designation seemed more academic and less disturbing than calling it human.

Marcella closed her eyes for several moments.

“Strange. Look in pitcher.”

“The ones that were hanging in the living room?” asked Diane.

Marcella closed her eyes again and shook her head. “No. Pitcher. Water. Face.”

“The piece of pottery you were gluing back together?” said Diane.

“Yes. Examine?” she said.

“Have I examined it?” asked Diane. “No. I packed up your work and took it to your office in the museum.”

“Good. Examine face inside,” she said.

“Look at the back of the face?” said Diane.

“Yes. Strange. Sherds too. Look at them,” Marcella said.

“You need to leave,” said the critical care nurse who had hovered nearby during what had to be a weird conversation.

Diane smiled at Marcella, squeezed her hand, and stood up. “I’ll come back,” she told Marcella. “Get better.”

Marcella smiled faintly and nodded.

Diane started out the door and Marcella called behind her. She barely heard her.

“Artist,” she said, and she drifted off.

Diane looked at the monitor of the vital signs. Everything was still steady and regular. She left the room.

“She seems to be doing well,” Diane said.

Paloma and Mark stood with Jonas, who had come while she was with Marcella. He looked as anxious as Marcella’s daughter.

“The doctor said he is hopeful,” said Paloma.

Diane wondered whether she knew she was wringing her hands.

“She made a lot of sense when she spoke to me,” Paloma said. She looked at Diane and Diane could see that Paloma desperately wanted her to agree.

“She did,” said Diane. “She was weak, but we managed to carry on a conversation. She gave me instructions.”

Paloma smiled and looked at Mark.

“See.” He hugged her. “You see. I told you she was going to be fine.”

“Jonas. I’d like you to help me look at some of her work tomorrow,” said Diane.

“Be glad to, but surely she doesn’t want to work on her sherds?” he said. His expression said that kind of dedication to work would be going beyond reason.

“No. She wants me to see something she found,” said Diane. “The desk was one of the things that concerned her, but the sherds she was gluing together are another.”

Diane decided not to mention that the pottery Marcella was finding around her home was bone tempered. She remembered she hadn’t told them about the desk either. She would put that off. They didn’t need to have on their minds what it all might mean.

“Does this stuff she wants you to look at have anything to do with what happened to her?” asked Paloma.

“I don’t know,” said Diane. “I wouldn’t think so, but it was something that seemed to concern her. Most of Marcella’s side of the conversation was one or two words.”

Paloma nodded. “That’s the way it was with us. Still, she made sense.”

That was a concern for Paloma, Diane could see—that her mother would still have her brain function and that she would still be her mother.

“Yes, she did,” Diane agreed. “She seems very coherent.”

Mark drove Diane home. She hated for him to leave Paloma in the hospital, but they both seemed better now that Marcella was awake.

Frank’s car was in the drive when Diane arrived. She said good-bye to Mark and went into the house. She was too tired to eat much. She drank a handheld soup and took a warm shower. When she came out she lay on the bed and Frank massaged her back—something he did very well. She was enjoying his hands on her bare skin when the phone rang.

“Don’t answer it,” she said.

Frank did anyway. “She’s here,” he said, and handed the phone to her.

She turned her head and made a face at him. He grinned and continued stroking her back.

“Diane, I thought we were beginning to have a good working relationship.”

“Detective Hanks?” she said. “I thought we were too.”
So why are you calling me this late?
she thought. “What’s up?”

“Why didn’t you call me when Marcella Payden woke up?” he asked.

“I thought you had left word with the hospital to call you. I assumed you were informed.”
It’s not my job to inform you
, she thought.

Her muscles must have tensed, for Frank increased the pressure on her back, kneading her muscles with his fingers.

“If I had been thinking, I would have called,” she said. “But I’ve had a long day and was tired.” Making efforts to soothe over Hanks’ hurt feelings was a lot easier when Frank was there to rub her back.

“What did she say? The doctor wouldn’t let me in until tomorrow,” Hanks said. “Her daughter told me that Dr. Payden didn’t remember anything about the attack.”

“She was concerned about the pieces of pottery she’d found on her property. As we figured, she recognized they were bone tempered. Marcella was letting me know she had sent samples off for analysis. She also wanted to tell me about the desk. I told her I’d seen the message. Marcella told me to examine the pottery myself, but she didn’t say what I was to be looking for. Her side of the conversation was mostly just one or two words at a time.”

“Do you think this pottery business has anything to do with her attack?” asked Hanks.

“I don’t know,” said Diane. “I wanted to ask her how old she thought the pottery was, but she was very weak and not up to it. Her nurse ran me out.”

“I suppose she has no idea who attacked her, or why?” said Hanks.

“She didn’t even know why she was in the hospital. Tomorrow when you speak with her she may be more clearheaded. But she probably will never remember the events surrounding her attack.”

Hanks seemed mollified when Diane hung up. She was trying to keep a good working relationship with the police and detectives, but sometimes they didn’t make it easy.

She turned over to face Frank. “No more answering the phone.”

“Absolutely not,” he said.

Next morning, Diane met Jonas in his museum office. Together they pulled out the boxes from Marcella’s that Diane had packed. She gently took the ceramic mask out and set it on the desk facedown, cushioning it with batting. She twisted Marcella’s work lamp over the piece of pottery and began examining the back side with a magnifying glass. She saw immediately what had disturbed Marcella. She turned the mask over and looked at the front.

“What?” said Jonas, who had pulled up a chair beside her.

Diane turned the mask over and looked again. “Marcella told me to look at the sherds with it too. We need to pull out the other boxes. Damn.”

“What are you seeing?” said Jonas, bending over and peering at the mask.

“The inside of the mask has the imprint of eyelashes, eyebrows, blemishes. This was made on a human face,” said Diane.

“That’s not really all that unusual,” said Jonas. “Why is that a big deal?”

Diane turned the face around. “The nose and mouth area is solid, no breathing holes. I know they could have been sculpted shut afterward, but Marcella would have realized that too. There was some other reason she wanted me to look at this. She also said to look at pieces she hadn’t put together yet.”

“Are you saying this might be a death mask?” said Jonas. He put his hands on his hips and looked at her with a great deal of skepticism. “You know, she may have just been worried about preserving her work. Marcella is very dedicated.”

“I know she is, and I’m not saying this is a death mask. I’m just saying Marcella wanted me to take a look,” said Diane. “If she were concerned only that her work was being cared for, she would not have asked me to take a look. I know nothing about pottery. I do know about other things, and I believe that’s why she wanted me to look at it.”

Diane began pulling out all the boxes that held the pieces she assumed belonged with the mask. Jonas helped her clear space in the office to work, piling some of Marcella’s books and papers on the floor beside her desk.

“I called it a mask,” said Diane, “but according to her notes, Marcella thinks the piece might be a stylized pitcher—the liquid would be poured out of the eyes. Not a functional use, I imagine.”

“But interesting symbolism,” commented Jonas. “Especially if . . .” He let the sentence hang.

Diane carefully lifted out the potsherds still resting on their backing of paper.

“These single pieces were surrounding the face in the sandbox on her worktable. Marcella placed them on this paper and drew an outline around each piece. Presumably they are all part of the same set,” she said, looking at Jonas.

“Okay, let’s see what we have here,” said Jonas. “She’d have sorted and examined all of them first. You may find more information in her computer. She has a pretty sophisticated three-dimensional program she uses to assist in reconstructing pots.”

“Do you know how to use the program?” asked Diane.

“You want me to take a look?” he said.

“Would you?”

“Sure,” he agreed. “I imagine you guys have one similar to it up there.” He looked up with his eyes, indicating the crime lab on the floor above.

“I have one in the osteology lab for skull reconstruction,” Diane said.

As she conversed with Jonas about the merits of computer programs, Diane examined the sherds. A few had imprints reflecting irregularities similar to what might appear on the back of a shaved human head.

In the second sample she unpacked were three pieces that immediately caught her eye—broken fragments, each with a protrusion. She picked them up and examined them and then fit them together. Diane had made many casts of skulls for her forensic cases and she recognized what she was looking at—the cast of a sharp-force-trauma wound.

“Well, damn.This is what Marcella was concerned about.” Diane showed it to Jonas and explained what it was.

He examined the piece under the light and with the microscope, then stood up. “This is terrible, just terrible. Couldn’t it be something else?” he said.

“I don’t know. Maybe,” said Diane. She looked at all the broken pieces laid out on the table. “It looks like the potter sculpted the clay around a head. How did he get it off?”

“Cut it in half,” said Jonas. “Artists sculpting in clay will often create a work, then cut it in half so they can scoop out the center clay. Thick pieces of clay tend to blow up or crack in the kiln, so they scoop out the inside to make it hollow and then they put the pieces back together and sculpt over the seam. This artist could have sculpted the clay around the head to get the form he wanted, then cut the clay into pieces to remove it from the head, and then put the pieces back together to make the piece whole again.”

“I see why this was on her mind,” said Diane, almost to herself. “It may not be involved in what happened to her, but it still needs to be looked into.”

As Diane was leaving the hospital room, Marcella had said the word
artist
. Diane assumed she meant “Find the artist.” She wondered now if Marcella meant she had already found the artist? Could these pieces be younger than they thought? She would get Hanks to ask Marcella.

“Do you think you could reconstruct the whole pot—pitcher—whatever it is?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said.

“First, let me take some photographs,” said Diane.

She studied the face again. Even up close and even speckled with the bone inclusions, it was a beautiful face. She traced her finger along the curve of the lips and chin. The clay represented the elastic skin of youth, nothing sagging, nothing lined.

“I asked Jin to try to extract DNA from the bone in the pottery fragments. Hector and Scott suggested some strands might have survived in a very thick piece of the pottery. Could you select a piece that can be destroyed and is thick?” asked Diane.

“I can, but a bonfire kiln heats up to about thirteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Can DNA withstand that kind of heat?” asked Jonas.

“No, it can’t. I’d probably just be wasting their time,” she said.

“What exactly did they have in mind, if you don’t mind my asking?” said Jonas.

“They were hoping we might luck up and get a piece that was in a cooler place in the fire, and look to see if any DNA strands in the middle of the fragment were protected. They were going to use a protocol some friends of Jin worked out for analyzing the DNA of shed hair.”