Dust to Dust (34 page)

Kingsley laughed. “Okay. I can handle that. I hope Detective Fisher can.”

“He’ll have to,” said Diane. “Have you called Lynn?”

“Yes, she’s willing. A little too willing if you ask me,” he said.

“When do they want this to take place?” said Diane.

“This evening, they said. After work.”

“Good, I’ll be able to get some more work done before then.”

She had already hung up before she remembered that she didn’t tell him that Frank had translated the diary pages. She could tell him later when she saw him.

She called the restaurant and ordered steak dinners to be delivered to the lobby of the crime lab for her two security guards. Then she dialed the DNA lab and asked for Jin.

“Yo,” he said.

“What is the status of the Stacy Dance evidence?” she said.

“Done. I put it in the evidence vault in the crime lab. We ready for a transfer?” he asked.

Diane explained about the meeting. “Can you attend?” she asked

“Sure, Boss. Glad to,” he said.

She looked at her watch. She’d have time to get started on the other set of bones before the meeting.

The teenage male skeleton looked similar to the female skeleton as it lay on the paper atop the metal table. It was stained the same earth-toned colors. It had similar wounds in the skull—sharp-force trauma to the back of the head. His limbs had been removed from his body, not with any surgical precision, but with an axe, and evidenced all the clumsy damage that came with a coarse instrument.

Looking at the arms that had been severed, the sliced head and trochlea of the humeri, Diane wondered whether the woman, MAG, could have been the artist who created the bone-tempered pottery. Could she have dismembered these bodies by herself? No, she would have needed help. Lynn Webber needed a diener to grapple with the cadavers, put them on the table for autopsy, arrange them for photographs. Most medical examiners did. The deadweight of a human body would have been extremely hard to move around. There had to be at least two perps—or one burley man. It would have been next to impossible for one woman to do this. Especially at a time when women were not as buff as they are now.

Perhaps it was a true artist colony and several people lived in the house. Maybe the message on the desk drawer meant MAG knew what was going on and she was afraid for her life. She or her mother was the landlord. Why didn’t she move in with her parents? Or get them to throw the others out? But sometimes it isn’t that easy. Bullies can intimidate some people into emotional paralysis. And the writing on the drawer came from an emotionally distraught person.

Diane had finished with the measurements of the skull when she heard raised voices coming from the crime lab. She took off her gloves, washed her hands, and went out to see what was happening now.

David, Neva, and Izzy were at the round debriefing table with Jin. David was pointing to evidence envelopes laid out in front of them. He was arguing with Jin, gesturing to a report he had in his hand. Neva stood by with a frown on her face. Izzy just looked puzzled.

“What’s going on?” Diane asked. Her people rarely argued.

“Jin has mixed up the evidence,” said David. “It’s all compromised. Marcella’s and the Dance case from Gainesville you are working on.”

“What?” said Diane. She did not want to hear that, not with a crowd of law enforcement and forensic people on the way to examine the Stacy Dance evidence. “Jin?”

“I didn’t, Boss. I don’t know what he’s talking about. You know I don’t mess up,” he said.

Diane turned to David. He looked tired.

“What’s this about, David?”

“This evidence he’s about to give away to Gainesville. Some of it is the evidence we collected at Marcella’s. I don’t know how, but somehow when he was working on the Gainesville stuff, it got mixed up. I don’t see how we can use any of it now.”

“No, Boss, I’ve been trying to tell him,” said Jin. “I don’t know what he’s talking about. I worked on the Dance evidence in my lab. You know that.”

Jin stood with his arms crossed, glaring at David, who glared back.

“Let me see,” said Diane.

She read the Stacy Dance evidence report, flipping through the pages, looking at the photographs Jin had taken of the evidence.

“What’s the problem?” said Diane.

David tapped the paper in her hand. “The evidence Neva and Izzy collected from Marcella’s is mixed in with the Dance evidence. Jin must have been working here when we were, and he grabbed the wrong evidence.”

Diane had collected much of the evidence from the Stacy Dance crime scene, and she recognized it in Jin’s report and photos.

“Are you saying this is the evidence collected at Marcella’s? Have you looked in Marcella’s container?” said Diane.

“I was about to get it to see what kind of damage has been done,” said David.

Diane looked at the jumble of shoe prints Jin had separated out using the computer software. “The shoe prints too?”

“Yes,” said David, “especially the shoe prints.”

“You’re saying this is the boot print collected at Marcella’s?” Diane asked David again, pointing to a photo.

“I had to work on it to get it clear,” offered Jin. “There was a jumble of shoes on the electrostatic lifting film. I had the software separate out some of the prints from one another.”

David pointed at the photograph. “This is the hiking boot print from Marcella’s. Yes.”

“In that one, the heel was showing good,” said Jin. “I tried to filter out the other overlapping shoes from the rest of the print, but the heel is really clear.”

“The heel is all you need for an identification,” said David. “That’s how I know it’s the same. See these two chips in the heel? . . . Wait. Are you saying this isn’t a mistake?”

“I don’t see how it could be,” said Diane. “You think Jin took the evidence out of the bags and relabeled them?”

“No,” said David, “but I thought he was here when we were processing Marcella’s, and—”

“You had already processed Marcella’s evidence before we collected the Stacy Dance evidence,” said Diane. “I collected these shoe prints at the Stacy Dance scene. David, you owe Jin an apology. It’s the same print as the one from Marcella’s because the same boot was at both places.”

“What?” at least three of them said in unison.

All four of them looked at Diane as if she had said Kendel had just returned from her trip and had brought them a unicorn skeleton.

“What are you saying?” said David.

“She’s saying you need to apologize,” said Jin. “Hey, you mean it’s the same guy, don’t you? Jeez, Boss, that’s weird.”

It had taken a few seconds for it to dawn on all of them.

“But this would connect with the Lassiter crime scene too,” said David. “The same boot print was there. I don’t understand it. The MO is too different. They don’t look anything like crimes done by the same perp. Wasn’t there a lot of postmortem staging and cleanup in the Dance murder? Didn’t it have a definite sexual aspect to it?”

“Yes,” said Diane. “So it appeared. That’s what drew the Gainesville detective to the wrong conclusion.”

“Well, the attack on Marcella and the murder of the Lassiter woman had no sexual component. And not much evidence of planning at all. They look like crimes by an amateur looking for loot.”

“They would appear that way,” said Diane.

“Do you think the Gainesville guy may have thrown away the boots by the side of the road or something and the Rosewood guy found them?” said Jin.

“This makes no sense,” said David.

“I agree,” said Diane. “It doesn’t seem to. We also collected evidence of rope and other fibers in the Stacy Dance murder. The rope is the same too?”

“According to Jin’s report, it’s made of the same material,” said David.

Diane again read through portions of Jin’s evidence report on the Stacy Dance crime scene.

“I’ve read Marcella’s evidence report,” said Diane. “I’ve seen the blowup photographs of the fibers and read the chemical analysis of them. These fibers from the Stacy Dance scene are the same—the same dyed black wool and Manila hemp fibers. Granted, there are lots of ski masks like that and lots of rope. But you said, David, it was as if the masks and the rope were stored together. Could it be that . . .” She threw up her hands. “I can’t explain it. But this evidence described in Jin’s report is the evidence I collected at the Stacy Dance crime scene. He did not make a mistake.”

“You going to apologize?” said Jin.

“Sure,” said David. “Jin, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have jumped all over you like that.”

“I understand. I would have thought the same thing,” said Jin.

Neva rolled her eyes.

“I’m not sure I’m getting this,” said Izzy. “Did the same guy do all three crimes? Or are we looking for somebody who fished clothes out of the trash in Gainesville and used them in two more crimes down here? Or are we looking at some bang-up-big coincidence?”

“I don’t know,” said Diane. “But if we can find Marcella’s attacker, or the Lassiter murderer, we can ask them where they shop. In the meantime, I guess I need to ask Hanks to come to the meeting too.”

Diane set up the meeting in the basement conference room near the DNA lab. She was holding it away from the crime lab to distance her involvement in Kingsley’s case as far as possible from the jurisdiction of Rosewood. The conference room had a large round table with a white quartz top and comfortable chairs. Jin had picked out the furniture for the room. She wasn’t sure why he wanted white, but it was a pretty table—one that King Arthur would have liked.

Diane asked her policemen bodyguards to be present. She didn’t quite trust Oran Doppelmeyer to remain civilized. There must be more to their history than Lynn Webber had told her. The policemen seemed pleased to actually be involved in what was going on, rather than just sitting on the sidelines in case something should happen. They were also pleased with the food Diane had sent them. The way to a policeman’s heart.

She called Hanks and told him about the boot print. He was as mystified as she and her crew were. He seemed to like the scenario that the boots were thrown away and retrieved by someone else—the ski masks too. That was how the rope fiber got on them. The masks were near the rope, picked up the transfer, and when Marcella’s attacker used them, the fiber was transferred again. It was the only scenario that made sense.

Diane put the Stacy Dance evidence in the DNA lab. Her bodyguards were in comfortable chairs near the door, and now she waited for the others to arrive. She was not looking forward to this evening. She’d rather be at home with Frank.

Diane asked museum security to post someone at the information desk to greet her guests and bring them downstairs to the DNA lab. Ross Kingsley arrived first, looking, as usual, professorial. Lynn Webber came shortly after, looking rather stunning in a black gabardine suit with an olive silk taffeta blouse. She was dressed to be a presence in the room. Her black hair had a lustrous sheen and her makeup was perfectly applied.

Diane wondered whether she had remembered to run a comb though her own hair.

Sheriff Braden, who was in charge of the Mary Phyllis Lassiter investigation in the neighboring county, arrived shortly after Webber. He hadn’t changed from his sheriff’s uniform. Jin was already there, working in the DNA lab. Detective Hanks arrived after Braden. Now it was only the Gainesville contingent who had yet to arrive—Detective Ralph Fisher, Chief of Detectives Nancy Stark, and Medical Examiner Oran Doppelmeyer.

When Diane called Sheriff Braden, she had asked him to sit on one side of Lynn Webber. Diane was going to put Detective Hanks on the other side. Diane told Braden about her encounter with Doppelmeyer in the parking garage at the hospital and that she didn’t want him to get aggressive. Sheriff Braden, of course, was outraged. He was known to be fond of Dr. Webber ever since she arrived in the Rosewood area. Putting her between Hanks and Braden was to protect Webber from herself as much as from Doppelmeyer. Diane had a gut feeling that Lynn wasn’t ready to turn loose of him yet.

Diane mentally went over her ducks and calculated whether or not they were in a row. Close enough. The only problem she had with the meeting was any fallout for the Rosewood PD. Gainesville PD assumed that Rosewood had butted into their jurisdiction. She could see how that would piss them off. She hoped refusing to have Garnett there would reinforce her message that Rosewood wasn’t involved.

Diane served coffee, and as they waited she told Kingsley about the diary.

“He translated it?” Kingsley seemed surprised.

“He said it was pretty easy,” said Diane. “I don’t have it with me, but you could come over tomorrow, or this evening, and Frank can go over it with you.”

“Anything of interest?” asked Kingsley.

“There were a few entries about people she described as creepy. It’s hard to say who they were because proper names were harder to decipher. Frank can tell you about it.”

The people from Gainesville arrived. They didn’t look happy. Chief of Detectives Nancy Stark wore a plain brown suit and white blouse. It was wrinkled, as if she’d had it on all day and then had to drive here in it. Stark’s short dark brown hair was just beginning to gray. Her dark blue eyes looked suspicious as Diane made introductions. The detective, the one who closed Stacy Dance’s case as an accident, was in his mid-fifties. He had a thick shock of white hair and black eyebrows. He frowned at all of them. From the way Doppelmeyer glowered at Lynn, he was as angry now as during their run-in at the hospital. This was going to be a fun meeting. Diane ran her fingers through her hair.

They all did shake hands. That was a start. She and Lynn managed to avoid Doppelmeyer’s handshake. Not hard, since there were so many people. Diane directed them to the table and offered coffee. They declined. Perhaps later, she thought. Right now they probably felt that Rosewood was telling them they did a piss-poor job of investigating one of their own crimes. Diane understood their anger.