Dust to Dust

by Beverly Connor

  “Well, I’m not right all the time.” He shrugged. “I never said I was. Sometimes paranoia is just that. Besides, had it been the bad guys, we would be safe.”

  Mike visibly relaxed his tense body. Neva shook her head and opened the door. Detective Hanks was standing on the porch looking puzzled. He wasn’t wearing his neck brace, but his arm was still immobilized in a sling and he favored his wounded leg.

  “What was that all about?” he said. “I drive up and all of you make a mad dash for the house and turn off the lights?”

  Diane smiled at him. “You have a new haircut,” she said, and invited him into the house.

  He stroked his short hair. “When your arm’s in a sling and you’re limping from being shot in the leg, you can’t afford to have your hair standing up on end or blowing in the wind like a wild man,” he said. “Now, what the heck . . . ? You guys looked like you were running for your lives. Who were you expecting?” He had the twinkle of amusement in his eyes.

  Diane explained about the possibility of Neva being followed.

  “My SUV’s not black,” he said.

  “It’s pitch-dark out. You can’t make out colors in the dark,” said Diane. “And your headlights were blinding.”

  “But that’s still quite an overreaction,” he said.

  “Not considering we were shot at and a man was killed last time we were here,” said Diane. “You aren’t going to let us live this down, are you?”

  “Not on your life. You should have seen you guys.” He grinned. “And who are you? Just so I can get the story right,” he asked Mike.

  Diane introduced Hanks to her geology curator. They shook hands and Mike grinned at him. Mike often said it was entertaining to be with Diane and her team. He looked very entertained at the moment.

  “And what are you doing out here?” asked Diane.

  “I was at the hospital with some pictures for Marcella to look at. I hoped she might recognize some of Dildy’s day laborer friends as people who might have worked on her house. She didn’t. As I was leaving I saw the paramedics who brought me to the hospital the other day. They told me they had another run here tonight. Said something about some bones being found? Is that right?” he asked.

  “We have several things to tell you,” said Diane, “so you’d better sit down.”

  “Does Neva being followed have anything to do with this?” he asked.

  From the set of his jaw, Diane could see he had gone from being amused by them to being suspicious again that Diane was leaving him out of the loop. He was probably wondering why she hadn’t called him.

  “We believe it might,” said Diane. “The case has taken an unusual turn. And there could be someone after her.”

  They started to sit down when a pair of headlights suddenly shined in the window, blinding them for a moment.

  “Well, shit,” said Hanks. He unholstered his gun and went to the door and waited.

  Diane and the others stood back with their arms folded. They heard two car doors slam. In a minute or so, they heard footfalls on the porch and a knock on the door.

  “Everything okay in there?”

  Hanks opened the door to the two policemen. Diane rose to greet them.

  “We’re fine,” she said.

  “Hi, Detective Hanks. Saw your vehicle. Guess you heard about all the excitement,” said one of the policemen.

  Hanks nodded.

  The policeman looked at Diane. “All clear around the road. Nothing going on. We’ll be out here making our rounds around the property,” he said.

  Diane could see the two of them were trying very hard to be conscientious. Probably sitting in their car and making an occasional circuit would be fine.

  “Thanks,” she said. “We’ll be here for a little while.”

  He touched his hand to his hat and the two of them left.

  Diane closed the door and grinned at Hanks. “It could happen to anyone. Want to renegotiate the thing about not letting us live that little episode down?”

  Hanks smiled back. “I’m sure I wasn’t as energetic as all of you were in jumping to conclusions.”

  “Perhaps not, but we sometimes exaggerate.” She smiled sweetly at him.

  He laughed. “That sounds like blackmail.”

  Thankfully, Hanks did seem to have a sense of humor and it seemed to have mellowed him again.

  “I was just about to call you to tell you about the latest developments, when you showed up,” Diane said. “Have a seat and I’ll go through all of it with you.”

  “Should we be using this woman’s house?” he asked.

  “Marcella’s daughter gave my team permission to camp out in her living room while we carry out our experiments,” said Diane.

  “Experiments?” he asked, laughing. “You’re conducting experiments? That sounds ominous.”

  He chose a large leather chair to sit in. He stretched out his bad leg and shifted until he found a comfortable position. Diane was sure it was a relief not to have to wear the neck brace, but trying to go through a daily routine while your arm was in a sling and your leg hurt had to be difficult.

  Neva sat leaning against Mike on one end of the sofa. David sat cross-legged in his sock feet on the other end. Diane chose the other stuffed chair, settled in comfortably, and started telling about the mask Marcella had been piecing together.

  “When I saw her in the hospital, she told me to look at the inside of the pieces. I did and saw they had been molded over a human face.”

  “You mean like a death mask?” he said.

  “Could have been, but we didn’t know that. It could have been a life mask. But Marcella also told me to look at the sherds,” Diane said.

  “You keep using that word, sherds. You talking about broken pieces of pottery?” he asked.

  “Yes, exactly,” said Diane.

  “Okay,” he said. “Just making sure I understand. Go ahead.”

  Diane started to speak when he interrupted again. “Should he be here?” Hanks pointed to Mike. “No offense, buddy, but you’re a civilian.”

  “Mike does consulting with the crime lab because of his knowledge of rocks and soils,” said Diane. “He helped rescue Hector from the well. And the experiment we are working on involves soil samples.”

  Mike didn’t even blink. Diane didn’t tell Hanks that she hadn’t actually talked to Mike about the experiment. But she didn’t want to send Mike to wait outside. And it was true, after all, he did know about soils.

  “Okay, go on,” said Hanks.

  “Marcella told me to look at sherds she had assembled from the back part of the mask. I did, and found what looks like a cast of a sharp-force-trauma head wound,” she said.

  “Now that’s interesting,” said Hanks. “So, the artist, or whoever, put the clay on over a head wound?”

  “It looks that way. Some of the etching suggests the head was also shaved before making the mask,” said Diane.

  “This is getting weird,” he said.

  “We haven’t even gotten to weird yet,” said Diane. “Marcella, Dr. Payden, is an expert in pottery. She’s creating a reference collection of pottery sherds and thin sections for the museum. A thin section is a very thin slice of, in this case, a pottery sherd, mounted on a microscope slide to be examined under polarized light so that its various constituents can be identified. Before she came here, her work involved prehistoric pottery from Texas that was tempered with animal bones. She was surprised to find that the pottery she found buried here in her yard also had been tempered with bone.”

  “I don’t get it. Are we talking about this being an archaeology—what do they call it—site, an archaeology site? A dig? Why are you telling me this?” he asked without rancor, but with a lot of curiosity.

  “No. There is no bone-tempered pottery in the prehistory of Georgia,” said Diane.

  She explained about what tempering is, how it gives a distinctive look and characteristics to pottery, and that in Georgia, common prehistoric tempers we
re fiber, shells, and grit.

  “But this is not prehistoric. We are talking about modern pottery here. Are you with me?” she said.

  “Not yet, but keep going,” said Hanks. “This is like watching the Discovery Channel. And I’m anxious to hear how your guy Hector got in the well. This is where all this is leading, right?”

  Diane smiled. The others had been silent throughout her narration. It was the first time they had heard all of it. Mike hadn’t heard any of it.

  “Marcella used a lab in Arizona to analyze her Texas pottery sherds to identify the species of animal bone used for the tempering. It’s a thing archaeologists like to know,” Diane said. “She sent samples of the pottery she found in her yard here to the lab to find out what species of animal was used in it. The lab called me at the museum when they couldn’t get in touch with Marcella. She was in the hospital. They were quite disturbed to discover that the species was human. I believe they faxed you a copy of their report.”

  “Well, yeah, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of the damn thing.” Hanks leaned forward, openmouthed. “Are you telling me those pots she found were made out of human bone? Now, that is spooky.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Diane could see the surprise on Mike’s face. Neva smiled at him and patted his thigh.

  “The clay used to make them had human bone mixed with it for temper. Yes,” said Diane.

  Hanks put his hands on his face and rubbed his eyes. “You people know how to do weird. I’ll give you that,” he said.

  “After discovering those two things—the sharp-force trauma and the human-bone tempering—it was incumbent on us to search for human remains on the property. I decided we would conduct a study David had been wanting to do. It involves developing quicker methods for finding buried human remains. Starting in the backyard, he and two technicians from the DNA lab were using stakes and string to grid the property into squares. They would then take soil samples at defined increments and analyze them for their chemical constituents. Decomposing remains leave chemical signatures. We don’t know the range of the affected area for soil conditions in this region. The study was designed to answer some of the questions we don’t yet have answers for, and to locate any remains that are here.” Diane stopped to let it all soak in.

  “Couldn’t you use cadaver dogs?” he asked.

  “We suspect the remains could be decades old. The context in which Marcella found the broken pottery suggested the 1950s,” said Diane.

  “Okay, so I take it your . . . experiment worked,” he said.

  “In a rather serendipitous way,” said Diane. “While they were putting up stakes and strings for the grid, Hector fell into an abandoned well. It had been capped with wood that was covered in dirt and vegetation and had rotted over the years. The bone he discovered was at the bottom of the well. We suspect there are more,” said Diane.

  “Couldn’t the bone be from a deer or something?” said Hanks. “People do throw dead animals down dry wells to get rid of the carcasses.”

  Diane was surprised at how often she was asked that question. Even Frank had made a similar query at one time. She wondered whether they really thought it was hard to tell the difference between animal and human or if they thought the skull was required in order to make a positive species ID.

  “No,” she said simply.

  “Seriously, should we get the medical examiner to take a look?” he said.

  “You can if you want,” said Diane. “But it’s a right human tibia of someone in their teens. Possibly female, but that’s not certain. What is certain is that it is human.”

  “I take it you’ve done this before,” he said.

  Diane found it hard to believe that he didn’t know. But he was relatively new to Rosewood and apparently knew her only as the director of the crime lab and the museum.

  “I’m a forensic anthropologist,” said Diane.

  He winced and saw that David, Neva, and Mike were grinning at him. “Okay, I wasn’t aware. Do you know how long it was in the well?” he asked.

  “Probably more than fifty years. There is a particular smell the marrow leaves that lasts for decades in buried bone. That was gone. The bone had taken on the color of the surrounding soil, indicating it had been buried for most of its tenure in the well,” she said.

  “Where is it now?” he asked.

  “In my car, wrapped in newsprint. We’ll have to get someone out here to stabilize the sides of the well so we can get the remaining bones out.”

  “So, now you don’t have to complete your study,” he said.

  “Oh yes,” said Diane. “Just because we found bones in the well doesn’t mean the yard isn’t full of buried bodies.”

  Chapter 37

  “Oh, I see,” said Hanks. “So we could have lots more bodies?” He stared at Diane. “Are you serious? This could be a . . . some maniac’s burial ground?” He shifted in his chair, winced suddenly, and rubbed his shoulder. “Damn it,” he said. “Sorry.”

  David got up and went to a cooler he had tucked in a corner of the room and brought everyone a cold drink. Diane took a long sip. It was a cool evening, but the ice-cold drink still tasted good.

  “Any idea who this serial killer is? We are talking about a serial killer, aren’t we?” he said. “And as wildly interesting as this is, it looks like it all happened a long time ago. Does it have anything to do with the here and now?” He took a drink and held the cool bottle on his collarbone.

  “Some kind of killer,” said Diane. “At best, someone who illegally disposed of a body. I don’t know that we have a whole yard full of bodies. We may have only the one in the well. As for a player in this, we have a few ideas. We think the ceramic artist might be the same one who wrote the strange message on the bottom of the desk drawer, and the one who did the paintings that were stolen.” Diane pointed to the wall over the sofa. David, Neva, and Mike turned to look at the blank wall as if a shadowy image might remain.

  “Why the pictures?” he asked. “They were painted by this Mad Potter?” Hanks asked.

  “I don’t know for sure,” said Diane. “We do know the pictures were signed by the artist with a drawing of a bird. The paramedic’s grandmother—”

  “Wait, you lost me. The paramedic’s grandmother? What paramedic? The ones who came here?” said Hanks.

  Diane explained that the paramedic who tended to Hector was familiar with the place, and his grandmother had knowledge of the house from when she was a teenager.

  “Humph, small world,” Hanks said, and took another drink.

  Diane found that explaining the whole train of thought out loud, paired with what evidence they had and didn’t have, was helpful to her understanding. She hoped Hanks found it illuminating, but he seemed more entertained than anything else.

  Diane mentioned her thought that the initials MAG in the signature on the desk drawer might be symbolized by the picture of a bird. Hanks wasn’t impressed with that. She didn’t blame him. It sounded rather silly when she repeated it out loud to a skeptical ear.

  “I get that, because the thieves stole the old paintings, it looks like the attack on Dr. Payden and the theft could have something to do with the old bones—and where the bones came from. But, frankly, that bird thing is a stretch,” he said. “The whole past-present thing is a stretch.” He brought the hand holding his drink up to his face and rubbed his eye with a free finger.

  “There’s also Marcella’s pottery that was stolen,” said Diane. “We speculated the thieves thought they were taking valuable Indian artifacts. But consider that Marcella’s pottery and the pieces found here on the property were all fired on a bonfire kiln, which gave all of them the same distinctive appearance. The thieves might have been after pottery made by the Mad Potter, as you so colorfully call him or her, and took Marcella’s pieces by mistake.”

  “Perhaps, but that connection is so tenuous, it really doesn’t bear spending time on, really. No offense. Not that we don’t need to find out who might be
buried here, but, like I said, it looks like it was a long time ago and doesn’t have anything to do with the attack on Dr. Payden. And I’m more concerned about that. I’m sorry, but there it is,” he said.

  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.