Dead Guilty (16 page)

Frank
finally
took her up on
the offer to
nap on
her
couch
and
Diane
worked
in
silence,
examining,
measuring and recording each bone—along with any
identifying characteristics that manifest themselves in
the bones. She looked for nicks or perimortem breaks
that might be associated with an injury inflicted by the
murderer. She found none.

As
she examined the vertebrae, she found a stress
fracture on the pars interarticularis of the fifth lumbar
vertebrae. More evidence that Red Doe had been a
ballet dancer. The arabesque position places an inordi
nate amount of stress on the lower spine, and fractures
on one of the lumbar vertebrae are not uncommon.

Finally,
Diane examined the cut end of the phalan
ges under the microscope. Four bore the mark of the
same tool that was used to cut off the fingers of the
other two victims.

She
was taking photographs when Frank came back,
sleepy eyed. ‘‘Don’t you ever go to bed?’’
‘‘Is that an offer?’’
‘‘Yes, definitely.’’
‘‘Okay. Let me take a look at the rope and I’ll let
you take me home.’’
‘‘Rope?’’
‘‘The rope they were hung with.’’
‘‘Oh.’’
Diane took Red’s rope to the table and laid it out.
The red string that tied the cut ends together looked
as if it had been dipped in fresh blood. She examined
each of the knots again. They were identical to Blue’s
and
Green’s,
down
to
the
stevedore’s
stopper
knot.
Definitely tied by the same hand.
She decided to leave the bones and the rope out on
the table and get David to help her finish the photo
graphs
tomorrow.
She
looked
at
her
watch.
Today.
Damn, she’d hardly get any sleep. As she started to
leave, she saw the other box with the single piece of
rope that they had found on the ground at the scene.
She took out the rope and lay it on the table. It was
full of kinks and covered with worn places. No knots
for her to analyze. She laid it on one of the empty
tables.
*
*
*
Diane fell asleep with her arm around Frank’s waist,
his body nestled against hers. Despite the hot night,
his body felt good and safe, like home. The last thing
she thought of before going to sleep was the lone rope
she left lying out on the table in the lab.

When
Diane
arrived
in
the
crime
lab,
Neva
ap
proached her anxiously and handed her drawings of
Fred and Ethel. The drawings looked as if Fred and
Ethel had sat for them. They were similar to the com
puter graphics, but didn’t have that computer graphic
look. Both were Caucasian. Diane noticed the noses
right away. They had the most distinctive detail. Neva
had taken to heart the lesson Diane gave her.

Ethel
was young, midtwenties, with dark hair falling
below her chin, oval face, slight nose, eyes wide apart.
Fred was older, midforties. Neva had drawn his hair
neither short nor long, but a median length for males.
His face was square and his nose almost pug, with a
prominent dip between the nasal bone and the frontal
bone between the eyes. Their lips were neither thin
nor thick. Fred and Ethel, who never knew each other
in
life,
were
now
‘‘married’’
skeletons,
given
a
new
life in Neva’s drawings.

‘‘Very
good,’’ Diane told her. ‘‘This is exactly what
I’m looking for. We’ll have to frame and hang these.’’
A museum exhibit had already begun playing out in
the back of her mind.

Diane
unlocked
the
lab
and
the
vault
for
Neva.
While
she
waited
for
David,
she
set
up
the
camera
equipment.

‘‘If
this rate of mayhem keeps up, you’re going to
have to hire a second crime scene unit,’’ said David
as he came through the door.

‘‘Maybe
we
can
put
an
ad
in
the
paper
notifying
everyone that the county has reached its quota of mur
ders for the year, so they can’t commit any more.’’

David
took over the task of setting up the cameras,
and Diane laid out the bones for the photographs. As
he
helped
her
photograph
Red
Doe’s
bones,
David
briefed her on the crime scene and the latest gossip.

‘‘You
certainly gave Neva a boost—sending her to
process the car by herself, then assigning her to recon
struct
the
faces.’’
He
spoke
in
a
low
voice,
even
though there was no way Neva could hear them from
inside
the
vault
room.
‘‘She
was
much
more
confident—and friendly—at the crime scene.’’

‘‘She
just
needed
experience—and
someone
to
counteract
Garnett.
That
Janice
year
apparently
touched
all
the
the department.’’
Warrick
thing
last
women
working
in

‘‘Garnett
asked us to take Raymond Waller’s collec
tion to keep safe in the museum until Raymond’s fam
ily could claim it. He didn’t want to leave it in the
house. I took everything to Korey. I thought some of
the items might need special care.’’

Nice
of Garnett to take care of things for the family.’’
‘‘He’s
not
a
bad
guy,’’
said
David.
‘‘A
little
too
political.
Acts
like
he’s
always
looking
over
his
shoulder.’’
‘‘Probably is. Have you met the mayor?’’
‘‘No, but I understand that you’ve had a conversa
tion with him.’’
Diane smiled as she placed Red Doe’s fourth lum
bar vertebra on the stand to be photographed. ‘‘Yes.
We had a conversation.’’
David laughed, snapped the pictures and removed
the camera from the stand. ‘‘That’s the last one, isn’t
it?’’ Diane nodded. ‘‘We’re processing the Waller evi
dence as quickly as we can. There wasn’t much there.
We collected fiber samples from the furniture that had
been ripped up. When we find the perp, he’s bound
to have gotten fibers all over him.’’
‘‘Someone
was
obviously
looking
for
something,’’
mused Diane. ‘‘You don’t think it was the collection?’’
David shrugged. ‘‘Maybe. That seems the most ob
vious. It’s just that...’’
‘‘There are those other murders,’’ finished Diane.
‘‘Yeah, those other murders. And why would he rip
up the upholstery in search of baseball bats? Doesn’t
add up.’’
David cast a glance at the lone rope lying on the
table, the one found on the ground at the Cobber’s
Wood crime scene. ‘‘You going to be able to do any
thing with that?’’
‘‘I don’t know. It was tied in knots long enough to
leave kinks in the rope. I thought I might be able to
do something with those.’’
‘‘What can you possibly do? The knots are gone.’’
‘‘But they were there.’’
‘‘So
was
my
hair,
but
we
can’t
reconstruct
where
the cowlick was.’’
‘‘It was on the front right side, opposite where your
part was.’’
David opened his mouth, then shut it, and stroked
his bald head as if feeling for something. ‘‘How could
you know that?’’
Diane took a rope she had purchased that morning
and laid it beside the crime scene rope. ‘‘You forgot,
I’ve seen pictures of you as a kid.’’
David threw back his head and laughed one loud
Ha!
‘‘You had me going. Good thing you told me. I’d
have been thinking about that all day.’’
‘‘You’d
have
figured
it
out.
The
point
is,
there’s
always evidence.’’
David went back to the crime lab, shaking his bald
head, leaving Diane to study the rope. Near one end
was a
cluster of
six kinks
about an inch
to an
inch
and a half apart—some kinks were more crimped than
others. Fifteen inches down, there was a larger kink
with significant wear on the inside of the curve. Two
and
a
quarter
inches
from
there,
another
series
of
worn
places.
The
wear
was
not
continuous,
but
in
patches down the rope.
She
photographed
the
rope
and
measured
all
the
places
where
it
was
kinked
and
worn.
Altogether,
there
were
eleven
kinks
of
varying
sizes
and
seven
places where the rope had been worn, some quite ex
tensively, some barely noticeable. Sometimes the wear
was inside the kink, other times it was alone.
Diane
lay
her
new
rope
beside
the
crime
scene
rope—called the ‘‘lone rope’’ in her notes. She took
red and green Sharpies and began marking the new
rope to match the lone rope—green signifying a kink,
red signifying wear.
‘‘Okay,
smarty,’’
she
muttered
to
herself,
‘‘what
kind of knot was tied in this rope?’’
The obvious first choice—obvious to her, at least—
was a sheepshank. Perhaps the person wanted to use
the rope, but was worried the worn places had weak
ened it. A sheepshank is a method of strengthening a
rope by tying it in such a way as to take the strain off
the weak areas. It shortens a rope, but is a good way
to use a damaged rope in a pinch.
She tied a sheepshank several times, each time try
ing to match the green kinks to the turn of the knots
and placing the red worn areas where they would be
strengthened by having good rope on either side. Even
after numerous attempts, she never got close to match
ing
her
red
and
green
points
to
the
turns
of
the
sheepshank.
The
initial
failure
made
her
Okay,
the
kinks
are
the
turns
of

more
determined.
the
knots—or
.
.
.
where the rope looped around an object. And so where
does
the
wear
come
from—from
rubbing

against
an
of
colored
rubber bands out of a drawer and dropped them on
the table next to the experimental rope.

First
she located each green kink with no red wear
on
the
inside,
made
a
bight—a
loop—and
placed
a
yellow rubber band around it to hold it in place. She
took
the
kinks
with
inside
wear
and
did
the
same
thing. Where the rope showed several kinks close to
gether, she didn’t bother with how the knot was actu
ally tied, but simply looped them together and held
them with a blue rubber band.
Okay, now it looks like
a mess, but that’s all right.

Diane
examined
the
crime
scene
rope
again
and
studied the red wear marks on her experimental rope.
She tried several ways of folding the rope so that the
wear
marks—the
red
marks
on
her
experimental
rope—touched each other. Each way was a tangle of
rope with no significant pattern.

There
was
about
a
foot and
a
half
where
several
spots of wear spiraled around the rope. She folded her
arms and frowned at the two pieces of hemp lying on
the
table.
The
lone
rope
had
been
twisted
in
some
way.
She
made
a
loop
at
the
widest
space
between
wear marks and then twisted the rope so that all the
wear
marks
touched,
securing
it
with
a
red
rubber
band. It now almost looked like something. But what?

Neva
came out of the vault, stretching her arms. ‘‘I
thought I’d break for lunch,’’ she said.
Diane looked at her watch. She’d been at this damn
rope far too long, and what was it going to tell her
anyway?
‘‘I didn’t realize it’s getting so late. How’s the recon
struction going?’’
‘‘Good, I think. I’ll have something by the end of
the day. If people will refrain from killing each other
for a while, I’ll get all three done pretty quickly.’’
‘‘What’s
your
take
on
the
most
recent
murder?’’
asked Diane.
‘‘We don’t have that many murders here, and now
we have a cluster of five, maybe six. It doesn’t look
like a serial killer to me. Not that I’ve had any experi
ence with serial killers, but the last two killers seemed
to be looking for something. I’m kind of thinking it
may be Steven Mayberry. And he, Chris Edwards and
Raymond
Waller
were
involved
in
something.’’
She
shook her head. ‘‘But none of them have any criminal
record that we know about, and as far as I know, they
were all decent, hard-working guys.’’
Diane
nodded.
Not
a
bad
analysis,
she
thought.
‘‘Fortunately, the who and why are Chief Garnett and
Sheriff
Braden’s
problem.
We
just
uncover
the
evidence.’’
Neva looked at the tangle of rope. ‘‘What are you
doing here?’’
‘‘I’m trying to figure out what kind of knot was tied
in the rope.’’
‘‘You can do that?’’
‘‘So far, no. But that hasn’t stopped me. I’ll leave
it alone for a while. Maybe something will come to
me if I get my mind off of it.’’

Diane
faxed her initial report on the analysis of the
skeletons
to
Sheriff
Braden,
letting
him
know
that
photographs and copies of the report would arrive by
messenger in the afternoon. By the time all that was
taken care of, she
was starved. She brought tomato
soup in a Styrofoam cup and a chef salad back to her
museum office. As she sipped the soup and ate her
salad,
her
gaze
rested
on
envelopes
containing
the
mummy’s
X-rays
sitting
in
her
in-box.
It
made
her
smile. Diane was getting into the mummy thing like
the rest of her staff. She quickly finished her lunch,
disposed
of
the
remains
and
sat
down
at
the
light
table.

She
selected
the
X-rays
showing
the
thorax—the
midsection—of the mummy. As was her custom, she
started by examining the pelvis. It was a male pelvis.
That was no surprise. The innominates, the large flat
hip
bones,
showed
signs
of
thinning.
It
looked
as
though
he
had
suffered
inflammation
of
his
ischial
tuberosities—the site of several muscle attachments as
well as the place where he sat.