Dust to Dust (29 page)

Diane smiled at him. “So it would seem. But here’s the kicker.” Diane leaned forward, resting her forearms on her knees. “Neva has been tracing the ownership and history of this house—retracing Marcella’s steps as she tried to discover the home’s pedigree. That search took them both to the courthouse and the historical society. Yesterday at the historical society, Neva met a volunteer named Mary Phyllis Lassiter,” Diane said.

“That name sounds familiar,” Hanks said.

“You may have heard it on the news. Neva and Izzy processed her crime scene today. She was strangled in her home overnight,” said Diane.

He looked startled. “Okay, I’ll grant you, that’s an interesting coincidence,” he said.

“More than coincidence. Izzy called just before you arrived,” said Diane. “He’s working late at the crime lab processing the evidence. At the Lassiter crime scene they found the same expensive hiking boot print that we found here when Marcella was attacked—not just from the same kind of boot,” said Diane. “The same boot.”

Detective Hanks sat in stunned silence for a moment.

“You know, you could have started out with this information,” he said.

“Perhaps,” said Diane.

“Did the Lassiter woman live in Rosewood?” he asked.

“Hall County. Just over the line. You’ll need to speak with Sheriff Braden,” said Diane.

“You say Izzy Wallace is processing the evidence now? Can I see it?” he asked.

Diane shook her head. “Telling you about the boot print is a courtesy. The sheriff gets to see his evidence first,” she said.

Hanks nodded. “I can respect that.” He paused, staring at the blank wall behind the sofa, looking deep in thought. He shifted his position again, and again winced in pain. “Then what do we have here?”

“I don’t know,” said Diane.

Hanks looked at Neva. “What did the Lassiter woman say to you?” he asked.

“Nothing to me.” Neva explained the interchange at the historical society. “I think you need to speak with Marcella and find out if she met Ms. Lassiter when she was there.”

He nodded. “Are there any other surprises you have to spring on me?” he asked Diane.

“No. That’s about all we know,” she said.

He laughed. “I hope we aren’t dealing with a league of Mad Potters trying to keep their ceremonies and history a secret.”

“That would surprise me,” said Diane. “I have no explanation. It could be that, unknown to us, the paintings
are
valuable, and the attack on Dr. Payden was simply about money. I have no idea if anything was stolen from Lassiter’s house, but if it happens she had paintings by the mysterious artist . . . Well, it would be worth finding out. In the museum we have paintings by an unknown artist and we were unaware for a long time that they are extremely valuable. So it’s not unheard of.

“Or,” suggested Diane, “Marcella’s attacker could be trying to prevent us from uncovering an old crime. The perpetrator could still be alive, though up in years, I would imagine. Or it could be a big coincidence, and what we first thought about Marcella’s attack was correct—they just didn’t know she was home, and got caught in the middle of a robbery.”

Hanks flexed the hand that was in the sling back and forth, exercising it. “You’ve given me a lot to work with, I’ll give you that. I haven’t made any headway talking to Ray-Ray Dildy’s associates. He was just a two-bit petty crook. No one I’ve spoken with knows what he was up to lately. But, basically, he was a loser to the end.”

Diane saw the subtle frustration in Hanks that he hadn’t been able to solve this crime—the eye tic he had frequently rubbed, the clinching of his jaw. He needed to prove himself. She understood that. Rosewood’s previous chief of police had been murderously corrupt, and Hanks had been one of his last hires. Even though Hanks wasn’t known to have done anything wrong, there was the taint of association. For the chief of police to have hired him, he must have thought him corruptible. How did anyone fight that? Hanks wanted to solve this, and do it himself. The fact that he had shared a little of his investigation tonight was a sign that he might be mellowing a bit where Diane was concerned.

“Do you know Sheriff Braden in Hall County?” asked Diane.

“We haven’t met,” he said.

“I’ll call and tell him you’re coming, if you like,” said Diane. “I can send Izzy over with the evidence at the same time.”

Hanks nodded. “Sometime tomorrow, late morning would be good.”

“I’ll give him a call in the morning,” said Diane.

“I appreciate that.” Hanks rose from his seat. “Well, I’ll say this. This has been interesting.” He finished the rest of his drink and looked around for a garbage can. David got up and took the bottle from him.

Diane left shortly after Hanks. On the way home she tried to call Frank on the home phone. No one answered. His car wasn’t in the drive or in the garage when she arrived. She opened the front door and went inside. On the answering machine she found a message saying he wouldn’t be home at all. He and his partner were going to Nashville, Tennessee, on a case—but only for a day—he thought.

She felt a little dispirited as she listened to the message. She had looked forward to seeing him. She wondered whether he had found time to look at Ellie Rose Carruthers’ diary pages. Probably not.

She took a shower and got into bed. Tomorrow was going to be a big day. She had to excavate a well.

The well was simply too unstable and dangerous for Diane to work in without structural reinforcements to hold back the crumbling walls. Mike called in an engineering consultant from Bartrum University who designed a liner for the well consisting of ten-foot steel chain-link fencing reinforced by steel posts, straps, and bars. It took two days for Mike to locate a contractor, collect the materials, and get the job done.

Thick cotton batting and wire mesh were laid over the debris in the bottom of the well and a temporary wooden platform was built over that to protect the remains lying beneath the rubble. The entire steel structure was assembled aboveground and lowered with extreme caution into the well by use of a construction crane. Inside the well, the liner was expanded outward against the stone wall and locked in place with reinforcing steel braces. All this was done without ever touching the bottom of the well or the delicate matter that lay there.

Mike attached a ladder to the side of the reinforced well. He and Scott strung the wiring for the work lights and removed the temporary platform, the wire mesh, and cotton batting from the bottom of the well. On the surface, the crew used wooden posts and beams to build a hand-operated winch above the well. They wrapped Diane’s rescue rope around the hoist and attached a five-gallon bucket to the end of the rope for lifting debris out of the well.

Paloma said her mother was greatly frustrated not to be there. An excavation in her own backyard and she, an archaeologist, was stuck in the hospital. Andie came up with the idea of using a webcam down in the well. Marcella could watch the excavation, the crew at the top of the well could keep track of what was going on down below, and Andie herself could watch from her office. Andie saw it as an opportunity to conduct research for the webcam project she was working on with the curators. Diane thought it was a great idea. She got permission from Chief Garnett. David helped with the technical part. The webcams were attached to the wire liner near the work lights that illuminated the bottom of the pit.

“I love it,” Mike said with obvious pride, looking down into the well at the finished construction. “I would trust my life with that, Boss.” He grinned at Diane.

“Well, that’s certainly reassuring,” she said. She looked into the lighted well. “I’ll have to give you credit. It does look safe and functional.” But what she was thinking was how foreboding it was. She had the feeling she was looking into the mouth of something very dark and evil. She put on her caving hard hat with a light on it and lowered herself down the ladder.

Before she started excavating the bones, Diane had to clean out a lot of debris—pieces of the rotted wooden well cap, rocks, leaves, and surface vegetation that had fallen in with Hector. She filled the bucket time and again and the top crew hoisted the bucket loads out of the well using the winch. It didn’t take as long as she feared to clear the bottom of the well. But it was tiring.

So now Diane was at the bottom of the well, kneeling over her real work. Marcella, Andie, Garnett back in his office, and her crime scene support up top were watching via Web video as Diane’s hands brushed debris off the dome of a skull.

The rule of excavating is to work from the known to the unknown—start with bone you can see and follow it into the debris, inch by inch. Diane’s tools were a trowel, a brush, and wooden tongue depressors so as not to harm the bone. It was slow work, but the ground was relatively soft clay, silt, and sandy soil. Fortunately, it was a dry well and had been for many years. Otherwise, they would be dealing with a whole other problem—a body that had decomposed in waterlogged soil. If she were dealing with a body that had become adipocere rather than skeletonized, it would be another whole level of unpleasantness.

The bones were a gray-brown color—the same as the surrounding soil. They stood out in relief like a piece of artwork. She brushed off a last clump of dirt and took a photograph. Diane moved to the edge of the well where she knelt and took several more photographs of the bones.

She asked for the basket, which David immediately lowered down to her on the end of the rope. She removed the skull first. She turned it over and brushed the dirt off it. What caught her eye at once was the cut in the back of the skull. There was little doubt in her mind that it would fit the pottery cast. Diane set the skull on batting in the basket and signaled for David to pull it up.

The vertebrae snaked from where the skull had been lying on its side, curving before terminating at the sacrum. When they winched the basket back down, she picked up the vertebrae one at a time and put them in the basket in order, along with the pelvis. It was a female pelvis, from a teen. She signaled David to hoist them up. Next she sent the ribs.

The rest of the bones were in disarray. Diane stopped and sat back on her haunches. The angular rocks behind the wire bit into her back. She folded her arms and sat for several moments, glad the webcams weren’t aimed at her face. She took several deep breaths.

When she worked as a human rights investigator in South America, there was a nun in the mission where they were housed who was forever giving them advice that sounded like Zen koans. Once when Diane and her crew became disturbed over a mass grave, she said, “In order to get close to them, you must get far away from them.” It was a concept they all knew and relied upon, but when Sister Margaret said it, it took on a more spiritual essence. Diane often had to stop and find that faraway place to put her emotions.

The remains had been butchered. Of course, she knew they would have been, if, indeed, these were the bones that were ground up for temper. But being confronted with the jumbled, cut bones was far more disconcerting than the intellectual knowledge of what had theoretically happened.

The arm bones were behind the body, upside down, as if someone threw them down the well after the torso was thrown in. They were broken—some from the falling rock, or the falling Hector, and some from the butchering. The shoulder blades were nothing more than spines of bone. The bodies of the scapulae were gone; only jagged edges remained. Scapulae were relatively thin. Probably they were easier to grind down than the heavier bones. She took several more photographs.

She picked up one of the long bones of the arm to place it in the basket. Under it lay another. That made three humeri. The minimum number of individuals in the well went from one to two. The bones represented at least two bodies. She placed the bones in the basket and watched as they were raised to the top.

“You want to take a break?” David called down.

“Not yet,” she said. “Send down some small boxes.”

She collected the hand bones, tiny pieces that belonged to the wrist and hand. Again there were bones that represented at least two people. She rough-sorted them into left and right and size. One of the individuals was larger than the other. Most of the hand bones were missing. There were not four complete sets. Maybe they were yet to be uncovered. Maybe they too had been ground into temper.

A piece of something caught her eye. It had been under the arm bones, and like the bones, was similar in color to the earth. But this object was not bone. She began gently teasing and sweeping the dirt away. She found the edges. It was something rolled up. She believed it was leather. Once she had outlined it in the soil and excavated a few inches under it, she carefully picked it up. It was surprisingly heavy. Something was wrapped inside it.

As she put it in the basket, the object came apart and two hammers fell out: a large iron mallet and a smaller hammer with a broad face. She paused again and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand.
Damn it
. She knew what it was. The bone hadn’t been ground; it had been pulverized. Bones had been put in the leather and pounded with the hammers. First the large hammer to break it up, then the smaller one for finer work. She sent it up and then she climbed the ladder to the surface. She needed a break.

Up top, Detective Hanks had been watching the computer screen with Mike. It looked as though Mike had been giving him a lecture—probably on soils, or Blue Ridge geology. Neva was wrapping the bones and packing them in boxes. Scott was helping. Topside around the well looked like a scene from
Road Warriors
—all scaffolding and cables that had a jury-rigged quality to it. Sparks popped from the flames of a wood fire that was burning for warmth.

When David helped her off the ladder, he stared at her face. She knew what he noticed. He’d seen it in her many times, as she in him when they were working on mass graves. That forlorn, hopeless look. The knowing that even if you brought the perpetrators to justice, it wouldn’t balance the scales, because you hadn’t prevented those victims from suffering; you hadn’t stopped the killing. David put his arms around her and hugged her. The others looked up, a little alarmed, as if she might be hurt.