Scattered Graves dffi-6

by Beverly Connor

  Scattered Graves

  ( Diane Fallon Forensic Investigation - 6 )

  Beverly Connor

  Local politics get nasty when a new mayor is elected and Diane Fallon is replaced with an incompetent crony as head of the crime lab. But just as she's adjusting to life without murder, the newly appointed chief of police and the mayor are shot dead. Back on the job, Diane sees, but can't quite believe, the evidence damning the former chief of detectives as the shooter. Someone with plenty to gain intends to get away with more than murder, and as the investigation reveals an ever-widening web of corruption and treachery, Diane realises that no one is safe - least of all her.

  SCATTERED GRAVES

  A DIANE FALLON FORENSIC INVESTIGATION

  BEVERLY CONNOR

  AN OBSIDIAN MYSTERY

  Praise for the Novels of Beverly Connor

  ‘‘Calls to mind the forensic mysteries of Aaron Elkins and Patricia Cornwell. However, Connor’s sleuth in fuses the mix with her own brand of spice as a pert and brainy scholar in the forensic analysis of bones.... Chases, murder attempts and harrowing rescues add to this fast-paced adventure.’’ —Chicago Sun-Times

  ‘‘Connor combines smart people, fun people, and dan gerous people in a novel hard to put down.’’ —The Dallas Morning News

  ‘‘Connor grabs the reader with her first sentence and never lets up until the book’s end....The story satisfies both as a mystery and as an entre´e into the fascinating world of bones. . . . Add Connor’s dark humor, and you have a multidimensional mystery that deserves comparison with the best of Patricia Cornwell.’’

  —Booklist (starred review)

  ‘‘In Connor’s latest multifaceted tale, the plot is ser pentine, the solution ingenious, the academic politics vicious... chock-full of engrossing anthropological and archaeological detail.’’ —Publishers Weekly

  ‘‘Connor’s books are a smart blend of Patricia Cornwell, Aaron Elkins, and Elizabeth Peters, with some good, deep-South atmosphere to make it authentic.’’

  —Oklahoma Family Magazine

  ‘‘Crisp dialogue, interesting characters, fascinating tid bits of bone lore, and a murderer that eluded me. When I started reading, I couldn’t stop. What more could you ask for? Enjoy.’’

  —Virginia Lanier, author of the Bloodhound series

  ‘‘Beverly Connor has taken the dry bones of scientific inquiry and resurrected them into living, breathing characters. I couldn’t put [it] down until I was finished, even though I wanted to savor the story. I predict that Beverly Connor will become a major player in the field of mystery writing.’’

  —David Hunter, author of The Dancing Savior

  ‘‘Fans of... Patricia Cornwell will definitely want to read Beverly Connor . . . an author on the verge of superstardom.’’ —Midwest Book Review

  ‘‘Connor’s breathtaking ability to dish out fascinating forensic details while maintaining a taut aura of sus pense is a real gift.’’ —Romantic Times (top pick)

  ALSO BY BEVERLY CONNOR

  DEAD HUNT

  DEAD PAST

  DEAD SECRET

  DEAD GUILTY

  ONE GRAVE TOO MANY

  SCATTERED GRAVES

  A DIANE FALLON FORENSIC INVESTIGATION

  BEVERLY CONNOR

  To Hubert Connor

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A special thanks to Anne Bohner, Kristen Weber, and Robbie.

  Chapter 1

  Diane Fallon studied the Neanderthal child staring at her from his perch. His chubby face didn’t look all that different from his modern Homo sapiens cousins. He was smiling shyly at her from atop a boulder out side the rock shelter, his plump little fingers grasping the surface of the rock.

  ‘‘Will you lookee here...’’

  For a fraction of a second Diane was startled, as if the resin figure of the Neanderthal had suddenly come to life. She smiled to herself and turned to see a lanky kid, she guessed about thirteen years old, looking wide-eyed at the Neanderthal exhibit. Behind him stood Sheriff Bruce Canfield of Rose County and an older man she did not know.

  The sheriff was holding a cardboard file box, the kind with a lid and handholds on the sides. His widebrimmed sheriff’s hat sat on top of the box. Canfield was a large man in his late fifties with a full head of dyed brown hair. He was wearing his khaki sher iff’s uniform and Diane thought he looked a little sheepish.

  She hadn’t heard them come in, with all the noise created by the staff working on the dioramas for the new human-evolution exhibits.

  ‘‘Hello, Diane,’’ said the sheriff. ‘‘Sorry to barge in here like this.’’ He set the box on a nearby table. ‘‘This here’s Arlen Wilson and his grandson Henry. Arlen has a farm out in the county.’’ The sheriff’s booming voice echoed across the room, and several exhibit preparers glanced their way, then back at their work.

  Arlen Wilson, the grandfather, was a man who looked to be in his sixties. He was taller than the sheriff by an inch or two. He had a ruddy complexion, white thinning hair, and the beginnings of a beer belly hang ing over his belt. He and his grandson both were dressed in worn jeans, short-sleeved plaid shirts, and baseball caps.

  ‘‘Nice meeting you,’’ Arlen said. He took off his cap and grinned broadly as he shook her hand.

  The teen, Henry, was not as tall as his grandfather. He was close to Diane’s five nine and about as lean as she was. From the broad grin on his boyish face, Diane surmised he was happy to be here in the museum.

  ‘‘I heard you was doing something to the primate room.’’ Henry turned to his grandfather. ‘‘Lookit how real they are.’’

  Diane was afraid Henry was going to reach out and touch them, as she was often tempted to. He looked at each small scene in turn—the child on the boulder, a man making stone tools, a Neanderthal burial. On another pass, his gaze finally saw the little girl in the back of the cave hiding behind a rock, peering out at the other child. Henry grinned.

  ‘‘She playing hide-and-seek?’’ he asked.

  ‘‘Maybe,’’ said Diane. ‘‘That’s for you to decide. We’re trying to make each exhibit tell small stories, but you have to supply some of the plot from what you see.’’

  ‘‘Wouldja look at the way he’s staring right at us,’’ the kid said, pointing to the child on the boulder.

  ‘‘Each scene has one figure making eye contact with the visitor,’’ said Diane.

  ‘‘I like that,’’ said Henry. ‘‘It makes them look so alive, like they’re watching you.’’

  ‘‘The artists have just finished a Cro-Magnon,’’ said Diane, ‘‘one of the oldest modern humans. He looks at you out of the corner of his eye as he stands side ways to you. It’s an odd sensation, but fun.’’ Diane smiled at Henry before she turned back to the sheriff, glad to see that the new exhibit was getting a good review.

  ‘‘What can I do for you?’’ She eyed the box sitting on the table.

  Henry, who was leaning rather far into the di orama, spoke up before the sheriff had a chance to answer.

  ‘‘Tell me, what do you think happened to them? Did we kill them off, or did they marry with us and disappear, or did the weather get them?’’

  ‘‘I didn’t know you’re interested in Neanderthals, Henry.’’ The sheriff chuckled.

  ‘‘We watch a lot of those shows,’’ said his grandfa ther. ‘‘The ones on PBS and the Discovery Channel.’’

  ‘‘I don’t know what caused their extinction,’’ said Diane. ‘‘Right now it looks like they did not inter breed with us. So far, scientists haven’t found any Ne anderthal DNA in our gene pool.’’

  ‘‘Those scientists need to come to my jailhouse on a Saturday night,’’ said the sheriff.

  Th
ey laughed, and Diane made a move to address the box.

  She reached out to touch the lid.

  ‘‘What’s in the box?’’ she asked the sheriff.

  ‘‘It’s probably nothing, just pieces of animal bone... but you never know. Henry may have a point,’’ said the sheriff.

  Diane raised her eyebrows, looked at Henry, and started to open her mouth. Arlen Wilson spoke first.

  ‘‘The land next to mine is owned by a man from Detroit. He sometimes asks me to tend it for him. He got the idea he wanted to plant ryegrass and put some cattle on it this winter. I guess he was gonna ask me to tend to them too. I’ll have to tell him to hire some body else. I’m not a cattleman.’’ Arlen shook his head. ‘‘Anyways, I was plowing it before planting the rye grass, and my grandson Henry likes to look over freshplowed ground.’’

  ‘‘I find the neatest stuff,’’ said Henry. ‘‘I’ve got a whole collection of arrowheads. I once found an Indian-head penny.’’

  ‘‘This time he found some bones—pieces of bones. I thought it was nothing, just the bones of some ani mal. But Henry thought we should call the sheriff.’’

  ‘‘I figured it like this,’’ said Henry. ‘‘The pieces are all about the same size. Mostly. And they look chopped up. Well, you don’t get rid of animals that way. If an animal dies, you either bury it or haul it out into the woods for the buzzards and coyotes—you don’t chop it up in small pieces.’’

  ‘‘He thought they might have gone through a wood chipper,’’ said Arlen. He and the sheriff chuckled.

  ‘‘We just thought it was worth a look,’’ said the sheriff, still appearing a little embarrassed. ‘‘You know, just in case.’’

  ‘‘Then, let’s have a look. We’ll use the lab through here,’’ said Diane.

  She led them through double doors into a room with cabinets and counter space, sinks, and work islands—all metal and shiny. One end was stacked with materials that had overflowed from the exhibit preparations.

  Diane donned a pair of gloves she pulled from a box on the wall, tore a sheet of brown paper from a roll mounted on the wall, and spread it out on one of the shiny tables. She set the box down and opened it to find wadded-up newspaper. She gently removed the paper. The box was filled with pieces of bone with moist dirt clinging to their surface.

  ‘‘We didn’t want to wash them up,’’ said Henry. ‘‘I don’t think you’re supposed to do that, are you?’’

  ‘‘You did right,’’ said Diane.

  She picked out several pieces of bone, put them on the table, teased the dirt away from them with her fingers, and set them aside. The pieces were all of similar size, but not so small that she couldn’t recog nize them.

  ‘‘I’m afraid that Henry is right,’’ said Diane. ‘‘They are human, they’re fairly fresh, and they show definite tool markings as a result of being chopped up, proba bly in a wood chipper.’’

  ‘‘I knew it,’’ said Henry. ‘‘I knew it.’’

  Chapter 2

  ‘‘Well, damn. Well, damn. Are you sure? Of course you’re sure. Well, damn.’’ The sheriff slapped his hat against his thigh and looked up at the ceiling. ‘‘All I need is a maniac running loose in the county. You’re sure, aren’t you?’’ he asked again. ‘‘Could it be a pig? I understand pigs are like humans.’’

  Both Arlen and Henry looked at Sheriff Canfield with identical bewildered expressions.

  Diane grinned at him. ‘‘The tissue is similar. That’s why pig valves can be used in heart surgery and why pigs are sometimes used in forensic research. But the shapes of the bones are very different.’’ She picked up several pieces of the broken bone. ‘‘This is the distal end of a phalange, this is a piece sliced off a greater trochanter, this is the petrous portion of the temporal bone, this is a piece of occipital—all of it is human.’’

  ‘‘Okay, I was just hoping that you were having an off day,’’ he said. ‘‘I don’t suppose you can ID the victim?’’

  Diane cocked an eyebrow at him. ‘‘Right now I can’t even tell you if it’s one individual or more than one. If we get lucky—’’

  ‘‘You mean there may be more than one body? Well, hell,’’ said the sheriff.

  ‘‘I don’t know,’’ said Diane. She looked from Henry to Arlen. ‘‘Are these all the bones you found?’’

  Henry nodded. ‘‘We just looked in that one spot where they turned up in the plowed ground,’’ said Henry. ‘‘We didn’t go digging around.’’

  ‘‘How big a field are we talking about?’’ asked the sheriff.

  ‘‘Well,’’ said Arlen. ‘‘The part we was plowing’s a three-acre bit that’s circled by trees. It’s connected to a bigger, fifteen-acre field by a path just about wide enough for me to get the tractor through. A creek runs along the far edge in the woods. That’s why the owner wanted it seeded. It’s where the cows would go to get water. Not that he’s really going to put cows there. He’ll change his mind.’’

  ‘‘So we have eighteen acres to search?’’ interrupted the sheriff. ‘‘That’s just great.’’

  ‘‘Well, I don’t know if you’d need to look at the fifteen,’’ said Arlen. ‘‘See, the owner had me plow the three-acre field a couple of years ago. So it’s easier digging if you’re of a mind to bury something. The fifteen-acre parcel’s rock hard. Two years ago the owner got it into his head he wanted to plant sun flowers on the small piece and grow peanuts on the larger field. He changed his mind—he’s always doing that, doesn’t really know anything about farming—and ended up not doing anything with either field. So, I’m thinking that maybe whoever did it used the small field only, being as it’s kind of off by itself and the dirt was already roughed up from the earlier plowing.’’

  ‘‘Did you hear anything like a wood chipper?’’ asked the sheriff.

  ‘‘No. And might not have. Our house is about five miles away,’’ said Arlen. ‘‘Sometimes you can hear things through the woods—depends on the weather.’’

  ‘‘How long do you think they’ve been in the ground?’’ the sheriff asked Diane.

  She picked up one of the fragments and examined it, felt it. She put it to her nose and sniffed it. She did the same thing to another one.

  ‘‘I’d say not more than a few months—could be a few weeks,’’ she said. ‘‘This is fairly new bone. Chopped up like this, the flesh would decompose very quickly.’’

  The sheriff sighed. ‘‘I suppose I can get those ar chaeology students at the university, like we did be fore, to grid and sift,’’ said the sheriff, more to himself than to Diane and the other two.

  Diane looked at the box of bone fragments. She had successfully reconstructed bones from an explosion and from plane crashes. She should be able to do something with these.

  ‘‘If you can find the right pieces . . . ,’’ she began and picked up the petrosal. ‘‘This is the auditory canal.’’ She pointed to an opening in the bone. ‘‘I can make a mold of the canal, measure the angle, and estimate the sex of the person who owns this piece, with a little over eighty percent accuracy.’’

  ‘‘Well, that’ll be a good start,’’ said the sheriff. ‘‘What about DNA? Can Jin give us a profile?’’

  Diane smiled to herself. No matter what fascinating thing she could do with bones, DNA was always going to be king.

  ‘‘If any DNA survived,’’ she said. ‘‘And that’s a big if.’’

  ‘‘Why?’’ asked Henry. He hovered over the box like it was his stuff inside. His grandfather gently pulled him back.

  ‘‘DNA is very fragile,’’ said Diane. ‘‘It degrades quickly.’’

  ‘‘Then how can they find DNA in Neanderthals— they’re something like thirty thousand years old—and not these bones?’’ asked Henry.

  ‘‘That’s a good question,’’ said the sheriff. ‘‘Those Neanderthals have tougher DNA?’’

  The three of them looked at Diane as if demanding an explanation for what looked to them to be a con trad
iction.

  ‘‘No,’’ said Diane. She put down the bone fragment and stepped back from the table so she could look at the three of them.

  ‘‘For DNA to be preserved, it has to be protected from the elements. The Neanderthal skeletons that have survived to modern times were buried deep in the ground or inside caves. That gave them enough protection. Even then, scientists had to look for DNA in inner protected places like the roots of teeth and deep in the long bones.’’

  Diane gestured toward the box of bones. ‘‘I doubt these remains were covered with more than a thin layer of soil. Chopping them up caused them to de compose quickly and destroyed most of the places that DNA could be preserved.’’

  It was written on their faces that they weren’t convinced—after all, she could just see them thinking, thirty thousand years verses a few weeks. Diane took a deep breath. ‘‘Okay. Until fairly recently the prob lem was that even when there was DNA present, there was simply not enough to do anything with. We now have better methods of copying the DNA, duplicating it to make more of it.’’