One Grave Too Many (34 page)

“They say stuff to me, like I’m going to hell.”

“Are they doing anything else mean? Hitting you, withholding your food?”

“Withholding the food would be a kindness around here. No, they don’t hit me or anything. They shove a little, that’s all.” She looked at her lawyer. “Can’t you get me out of here?”

“I’m going to try again today. But you have to have a place to go.”

Star looked like she would cry.

“She can stay with me,” said Diane. Probably too rashly, but the grateful look on Star’s face was worth it.

“That’ll be good. Now Star, don’t get your hopes up about getting out today or tomorrow. Most likely they won’t grant bail, but they might, and I’ll keep trying,” said Serena.

“The important thing,” said Diane, “is that you take care of yourself. I’ll come see you as often as I can, but I don’t know how often that’ll be. I’m making progress with the case, and Frank’s getting better. Hold on to that.”

Star nodded.

“And be polite,” said Serena. “It won’t kill you. If you act hard, they’ll think you’re hard and treat you that way.”

“When I get out of here, can we sue them?”

“We’ll see,” said Serena. “Let’s take care of one case at a time.”

It was hard to watch Star being led back to jail, and Diane was glad to be rid of the place when she left. She could only imagine what it must be like to not be able to leave. She thanked Serena Ellison and headed to the museum.

When Diane saw her office upon her first arrival at the museum, she thought her private bathroom was nice, but a little extravagant. Lately, she’d been using it as much as her apartment bathroom and was glad to have it. She showered, changed clothes and put on enough makeup to look presentable.

She told Andie to screen her calls, and she settled in to work on her backlog of paperwork. If she didn’t get caught up, her detractors wouldn’t have to resort to pranks to try and remove her; she’d sabotage herself. First, however, she called the hospital to check on Frank. “Critical” was all they would tell her.

Diane worked on museum business and found it to be a nice break from the past few days.
That’s great,
she thought, thinking of her main job as a break. . . . She shook her head as she signed a requisition form.

It was almost two o’clock when she heard raised voices in Andie’s office. Andie was trying to tell someone Diane couldn’t be disturbed. Diane rose as the door burst open. A woman stood in front of her desk. She was in her early thirties, Diane guessed. Her light brown hair was pulled back into a severe french twist. She wore a brown pantsuit, crisply pressed. Her brow was furrowed into an angry expression.

“Can I help you?” said Diane, sitting back down.

“You can help by minding your own damn business.”

Diane’s gaze shifted from her desk, filled with piles of paperwork, and back up to the stranger. “I am.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t. I don’t even know who you are.”

“Detective Janice Warrick.”

“All right, Detective Warrick, what is your complaint?”

“Who are you to mess around with my cases? I doubt you’d appreciate it if I came here and started setting up my own exhibits.”

“What cases are you referring to?”

She leaned forward. “Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. The Boone murders.”

“As I explained to the mayor, I’ve been engaged to help the defense. I didn’t go into your crime scene until it was released. And I did so with permission of the owner. So what are you referring to?”

“The reports in the media about me botching the case and arresting the wrong person—that’s what I’m referring to.”

“I haven’t been watching the media, but surely you aren’t denying the defense the right to have its theory of the crime?”

“No. It’s the character assassination, the lies. Do you know how hard it was for me to rise to detective in this town? We have the killer behind bars, and she’s going to stay there—despite your efforts to free her. In case you haven’t heard, the judge denied her bail again. At least some people aren’t buying your hokum.” Her lips thinned into a grim smile. “I heard you offered to take her home with you. I guess you can’t help taking in strays.”

Diane’s face hardened. She locked her gaze with Warrick’s as she rose to her feet. The image of the mayor came into her mind, as did his mean-spirited insinuations. This woman was like him, even though separated by two levels of bureaucracy—the commissioner and the chief of detectives.

People in leadership gather like-minded people around them—not simply like-minded, but people of similar morality. With good leaders, it can be a good thing. With ill-intentioned ones, it is a nest of vipers. She’d seen it in petty dictators, petty bureaucrats and now here in her hometown’s government. She resolved right at that moment to defeat it—to defeat them, to humiliate them, to rub their noses in their own incompetence.

“Andie,” Diane called without taking her gaze from Warrick’s. Andie hurried into the room, and from the look on her face, she had clearly been listening. “Show this woman out, and she is never to set foot in this private area of the museum again. If she does, call security.”

“Ms. Fallon . . .” Warrick began. Her face looked suddenly less angry. “I’m just trying to do my job.”

“Anything else you have to say to me is irrelevant. We’re finished.”

“I can see my way out.” She turned on her heels and walked out of the office.

“You all right?” asked Andie. “I heard what she said.”

“I’m fine. But I’d sure like to arrange for one of the dinosaurs to fall on her.”

A knock on the door brought both their heads around. It was Jonas, looking like he just came in from the field.

“We brought the bones in,” he said. “I just left them with Korey, and he locked them in the storage vault.”

“Were you able to find the skull?”

Jonas shook his head. “Not yet. But we’ve got a ways to go to get to the bottom of the pit.”

“I really can’t thank you enough,” said Diane.

“No, it’s me who’s grateful. My old department wasn’t mine anymore. When you retire, they seem to think all your knowledge retires with you. I got hints every day about how they needed office space. This is heaven-sent for me. It’s like starting a new career.”

“Why don’t you spend the night at your house tonight?” said Diane.

“I’m going to do just that. Have a long soak in the tub and then listen to some Bach with a bottle of beer.”

“Sounds like something I’d like to do.”

After Jonas left, Diane headed for the conservation lab. Korey was still working on separating the papers found in the basement. He had several single sheets laid out on a table.

“You working alone tonight?”

“Yep. Hope I don’t need an alibi later on.”

Diane smiled at him, as though it was a joke, but she could see he was only half joking. “Anything interesting in the papers from the basement?”

“I haven’t read any of them thoroughly yet. A lot are written in this spidery handwriting that’s hard to read. But yeah, there’s some requisition forms to a veterinary college for a series of calf fetuses, and one to a guy in Utah about some fossil dinosaur eggs. I wonder where those ended up. I guess in someone’s private collection. There was a cool 1849 map of the United States. I sent that and an interesting collection of drawings off to be processed at another lab. The drawings looked like they were the original plans for the dinosaur murals in the big rooms.” Korey grinned.

“That is interesting. Go ahead and let the exhibit planner—” Diane had gotten into the bad habit of referring to her staff by their titles rather than their names. She needed to break herself of that. “Let Audra know the kind of things you’re finding so she can start on some ideas.”

“I talked with her this morning.”

“Good. Korey, I hope you don’t mind if I use the lab here to look at these bones. I was going to set up a separate one on the third floor, but the storage vault in this room is one of the safest places. The last intruders couldn’t open the vault.”

“You think maybe the break-in was about your bones?”

“Yes, I do. I think they were looking for the clavicle that started all this.”

“There’s a table in the vault. I can clear it off and you can use it. That way you won’t have to keep packing it up and taking it out. It’s kind of cool in there, though.”

“I’ll wear a sweater.”

Diane helped Korey rearrange the storage room so she could work. They collected all the measuring equipment Andie had put in the third-floor room and brought it back to the vault.

“Need any help?” asked Korey.

Diane shook her head. “I’ve already pulled Jonas and Sylvia in. I can’t tie up the entire museum staff.”

“It’s kind of interesting, though.”

Korey watched Diane lay the bones in anatomical position on the metal table.

“It’s hard to imagine the poor guy was ever alive. You think you can get him to talk to you?” he asked.

“Oh, yes. He’ll tell me all about himself. Murderers don’t know how eloquent bones can be.”

Most of the bones of the human skeleton were accounted for, with the notable exception of the skull. Even the atlas, the bone that the skull rests on, was there. Diane examined it with her hand lens. She closely inspected each of the other bones of the neck.

“No marks,” she said.

“So that means that the murderer didn’t cut off the head and take it with him?” asked Korey.

“Probably not. It’d be hard to do it without making cutting marks on the vertebrae.”

Her excavators even found the small hyoid bone; the bone that anchors the tongue and the only bone not attached to any other bone. However, most of the terminal phalanxes of the toes were missing, and all of the terminal phalanxes of the right hand were missing. She suspected that many of the smaller bones would show up in the sifted material.

With the bones laid out and the right scapula, humerus and clavicle juxtaposed, there was a clear pattern of damage that she had seen in the collarbone when Frank first showed it to her. The damage included the second, third, fourth and fifth ribs, which were broken where the scapula body would have covered them. At the place where those bones cluster together some force had crushed them.

She examined the scapula with the hand lens. Part of the damage to it had left a straight indentation in the crushed bone.

“That looks like it hurt,” said Korey.

“I imagine he passed out, if he was conscious at all.”

“Can you tell what happened?”

“Whatever force hit him came from his rear and was focused over the scapula and not distributed.” Diane gestured with her hand, pretending to hit the scapula. “It’s more damage than a person swinging a weapon could inflict.”

“What then?”

“I don’t know.” She placed the bones back in their place. “He also has a healed break in his left tibia. Maybe he’s got an X ray somewhere. It will positively identify him, if we ever get a clue to who he is.”

“What else do you know about him?”

“He was muscular.” She pointed out the well-developed muscle attachments on his arms and legs. “Bones are plastic and continue to remodel throughout life. Something like hard work or hard exercise shows up on them. Stronger muscles need larger attachments to hold on to.”

She told him the results of the stable isotope analyses she’d had done on the clavicle.

“Now,
that
is totally cool. You know, you should add a forensic unit to the museum. We have plenty of room on the third floor.”

“One of the board members suggested the same thing. I came here to get away from forensic work.”

“Didn’t work, did it? Maybe the universe is telling you something.”

“Yeah, that I’m an idiot.”

Diane would like to have used the skull to determine race. Without it she’d have to use other methods—most of which involve measurement, and all of which are less than precise.

She started with the long bones. She placed the left humerus on the osteometric board—a wooden device consisting of a platform on which the bone is laid, a “headboard” against which one end of the long bone is positioned, and a sliding “footboard” to mark the length. She recorded the measurement on her computer.

“Most of what I’m doing now is measuring,” she said. “It’s like watching grass grow.”

“I was about to get that idea,” Korey said. “I’ll go out to the lab and work a while. Let me know if I can bring you anything.”

Diane continued, losing track of time in the minutiae of the detailed measurements on different parts of the bones. She recorded each of them in her computer program, recollecting Kevin asking her at the party why he would have to learn math. If he could see her now, it would seem that was all she did, but math often gives the best information. Measuring is tedious, but she taught herself to like it for its precision. The math would give her the best guess on the race of the individual, and she needed the race for a good estimation of the height.

The ring of her cell phone made her jump. Perhaps she needed to change it to a melody.

“Dr. Fallon, this is the front desk. There is a Dr. Duncan here to see you.”

Dr. Duncan,
she thought.
Who’s that?
Then she remembered. Frank’s brother, Linc. “Would you ask him to come to the second-floor staff lounge? You’ll have to give him directions.”

Diane left the storage room and locked the door behind her. Korey was still working on the documents.

“I have a guest coming up,” she said. “Frank’s brother. I’m going to be gone for a while. If you leave, go ahead and lock up. I have a key.”

She went into the small bathroom near Korey’s office, washed her hands and looked at herself in the mirror. She looked terrible. She ran wet fingers through her hair. It didn’t do much good. “Well, he’s not here for a date,” she told her reflection.