Scattered Graves dffi-6

by Beverly Connor

  ‘‘Why?’’ said Izzy. ‘‘I hate to admit it, but I’ve never read Oliver Twist. Or seen the movie—or the musical. Evie wanted to go, but I couldn’t imagine sitting in the Fox Theater through a Broadway musical. Wish I had now.’’

  Diane told the two of them what she had learned from Loraine Sutton about Jefferies and Peeks meet ing with young people fresh out of high school and college, about getting them jobs in banking, insurance, and government agencies, and giving them expensive watches. About the boy who almost came forward— the boy who matched the description she had built out of the bones from the field Arlen Wilson plowed.

  ‘‘Jefferies ran cybergangs,’’ said Frank.

  Chapter 34

  ‘‘I think your case and mine just came crashing to gether,’’ said Frank.

  ‘‘You believe it’s the same people?’’ said Diane.

  ‘‘I’m having an upsurge in identity thefts and you have someone who might be running a cybergang,’’ said Frank. ‘‘It may turn out that Malcolm Chen is alive and hacking his little heart out in his apartment and Jefferies was doing something completely different with his time, but with what we suspect right now, it’s looking very much like they are related. It bears looking into.’’

  ‘‘What’s with Oliver Twist?’’ asked Izzy.

  ‘‘Oliver Twist was an orphan who fell in with a gang of young thieves run by a bad guy,’’ said Diane.

  ‘‘Oh, well, that fits,’’ said Izzy. ‘‘But what’s cyber gangs? Never heard of them before.’’

  ‘‘That’s more Frank’s domain,’’ said Diane.

  Diane heard a commotion coming through Andie’s office. It was her team. Her team. That sounded good. They were doing their usual bickering.

  ‘‘We just had pizza,’’ said Neva.

  ‘‘You can never have too much pizza,’’ said Jin. ‘‘It’s essential food.’’

  ‘‘You can have too much pizza,’’ said David. ‘‘You might want to ask the rest of us before you just go pick up food for all of us.’’

  Diane smelled the aroma of pizza coming through the door. Jin was carrying three large boxes.

  ‘‘Hi,’’ said Neva when she saw Diane. ‘‘We finished the house.’’

  ‘‘You didn’t happen to find a copy of Oliver Twist in any of the rooms?’’ said Diane.

  ‘‘We gave all the books we found to Izzy,’’ Neva said. ‘‘Why?’’

  Neva went to Diane’s small refrigerator and began getting drinks out.

  ‘‘Diane figured out that’s where the list was,’’ said Izzy.

  The three of them stopped and looked at Diane.

  ‘‘Really?’’ said David. ‘‘Well, you could have saved us a lot of time.’’

  ‘‘The pizza smells really good,’’ said Izzy.

  Neva brought several drinks over and handed them out. She raised her eyebrows at Izzy and gave him a nod. Izzy nodded back and smiled. They were all in on it, thought Diane. Apparently Izzy had discussed his idea with all of them.

  ‘‘So, why Oliver Twist?’’ asked David.

  ‘‘It was missing on the shelf,’’ said Izzy.

  ‘‘Couldn’t it have been loaned out?’’ said David.

  ‘‘I don’t think Jefferies loaned books,’’ said Diane. ‘‘He liked them and he wanted to keep them—even the ones he didn’t read.’’

  ‘‘How could you know that?’’ said David.

  ‘‘Just a feeling,’’ said Diane.

  ‘‘We need more,’’ said David. He had a puzzled frown on his face, as if Diane was suddenly about to trade in her microscopes for a Ouija board.

  ‘‘There’s more,’’ said Diane, smiling. ‘‘We’ll have to eat on the coffee table. The computer’s on the big table and it looks like it is going to stay there for a while.’’

  ‘‘Any luck?’’ said David. He walked over to the computer and pulled up a chair.

  ‘‘Depends on what you mean by luck,’’ said Frank. He took the black light and showed David the message.

  ‘‘Bit of a smart aleck,’’ said David.

  ‘‘What?’’ asked Jin. He and Neva came over and looked inside the computer case.

  ‘‘What do you make of that?’’ said Neva.

  ‘‘Let’s eat the pizza before it gets cold,’’ said Diane. ‘‘I’ll tell you while you eat.’’

  Diane got napkins from a cabinet and they all gath ered around the coffee table, grabbing slices of pizza as Diane began her story.

  ‘‘It started in the field that Arlen Wilson was plow ing. He found some pieces of bones, told Sheriff Canfield, and brought them to me. I examined the bone fragments—which looked like they had gone through a wood chipper. They were possibly from a male in his late teens or early twenties who might have worn jewelry or a body piercing. When I told Canfield the bones were human, he had the field searched, and more pieces of bone were found along with black hair. This second set of bones and accompanying evidence were the ones that disappeared from the crime lab under Bryce’s watch. After they disappeared, the sher iff went back to the field one more time and found a few more pieces and brought them to me. One was a maxilla with an incisor—a shovel-tooth incisor.’’

  ‘‘I have shovel-tooth incisors. Want to see?’’ said Jin.

  ‘‘Not with your mouth full of pizza,’’ said Neva. ‘‘Jeez, Jin, it’s bad enough that we have to eat pizza two days in a row without seeing it in your mouth.’’

  ‘‘I’ll swallow,’’ said Jin.

  ‘‘That’s all right. We all know what they look like,’’ said Neva.

  ‘‘I don’t,’’ said Izzy.

  ‘‘I’ll show you one later,’’ said Diane. ‘‘The point is, they’re very common among Asians. Not nearly as common among other ethnic groups.’’

  Diane took a bite of her pizza before it got com pletely cold and washed it down with a sip of Dr Pep per. They all watched her, waiting for the rest of her story.

  ‘‘In the meantime,’’ she continued, ‘‘David was hav ing suspicions about the mayor and the people around him. He came up with credible evidence suggesting not only that Jefferies may have been responsible for the surge in burglaries that cost the former mayor the election, but that he may have been responsible for the murder of Judge McNevin and then framed some one else for it. Then Edgar Peeks was killed at the mayor’s house and we discovered that Bryce and Rikki may have been looking for some kind of list at the scene of the crime. It also came to our attention that the mayor was trying to bring the crime lab, the DNA lab, and the osteology lab under his control. We suspected that the mayor and his friends were in volved in something criminal but didn’t know what. Are you with me so far?’’ she said.

  ‘‘Gotcha,’’ said Jin, grabbing another slice.

  The others nodded.

  ‘‘I went to see former mayor Sutton today and we had a talk. This is what his daughter told me.’’ Diane explained about Loraine’s friend Buckley seeing the mayor having dinner with the young people and giving them watches. ‘‘One of the kids wanted to talk with Buckley. They set up a meeting, but the kid didn’t show and couldn’t be contacted. Buckley described him as young—late teens, early twenties—Asian, and with a body-piercing ring in his nose.’’

  ‘‘Oh,’’ said Neva. ‘‘Well, that’s similar to the bones you described.’’

  ‘‘Yes,’’ said Diane. ‘‘And the last time Buckley saw the young man, whose name was Malcolm Chen, cor responds roughly to the time I estimate the bones were deposited in the ground. However, keep in mind, all of this is a thin thread supported by mostly circum stantial evidence. I’m only about eighty percent sure of the sex of the bones—and a set of characteristics is not by any means an identification.’’

  ‘‘If you have a tooth,’’ said Jin, ‘‘there’s a good chance I can get DNA from the root.’’

  ‘‘I’m hoping,’’ said Diane.

  ‘‘So what do you think is going on?’’ said Neva.

/>   ‘‘When I was telling the sheriff to look into a person named Malcolm Chen, Frank recognized the name as one he has on a list of hackers.’’

  ‘‘Okay, the plot thickens,’’ said David. ‘‘So the late mayor had himself a cybergang.’’

  ‘‘That’s what Frank said. What is that exactly?’’ asked Izzy. ‘‘I know hardly nothing about computers.’’

  Diane gestured to Frank. He finished his last bite of pizza, wiped his hands on a napkin, and took a drink.

  ‘‘There are several types of cybergangs, from loosely organized groups of friends who hack because they can, to well-organized networks of people who commit crimes using computers. The money they make with identity theft, stealing financial and proprietary infor mation, and laundering money is in the billions—it’s now more lucrative than illegal drugs,’’ said Frank.

  Izzy whistled.

  ‘‘Wow,’’ said Neva. ‘‘Wow.’’ She shook her head. ‘‘Wow.’’

  ‘‘What’s with the watches?’’ asked Izzy.

  ‘‘It’s like gang tattoos, or colors,’’ said Frank. ‘‘A way to increase the tribal feeling of the members. It lets them know if they continue to work they are in for riches.’’

  ‘‘I’d think the kids they’re recruiting would prefer iPods,’’ said Izzy.

  ‘‘With electronics, you have to update them in a year. They’re a commodity, temporary. The watches are a symbol of the long term and of wealth. At least I think that’s what Jefferies had in mind,’’ Frank said.

  ‘‘It’s like those identical signet rings worn by Jefferies and Peeks—and Bryce,’’ said Diane. ‘‘Defines them as a group.’’ Diane explained to Frank about the identical rings bearing the image of Alexander the Great.

  Frank laughed. ‘‘Tribal leaders get to wear different markings,’’ he said. ‘‘It fits the profile of a lot of gang culture.’’

  ‘‘So,’’ said David. ‘‘We’ve never really speculated on the content of this mysterious list. I was thinking offshore bank account numbers. But it could be the names of the cybergang members.’’

  ‘‘Could be more than one list,’’ said Frank.

  ‘‘I’ll bet Jefferies was the only person who knew what was on the list, or lists,’’ said David. ‘‘Or maybe Jefferies and his top two lieutenants. And now all the people who knew are dead.’’

  ‘‘The murderer could be anybody,’’ said Neva. ‘‘Leaders of a rival organization, members of his own organization, Bryce, Rikki, Curtis Crabtree.’’

  ‘‘I think it’s time we tell Janice Warrick to sit Rikki and Bryce down and get serious,’’ said Diane.

  ‘‘You might want to give Janice the information and see how she wants to handle it,’’ said Izzy, smiling.

  ‘‘Yes,’’ said Diane. ‘‘That’s what I meant.’’

  Chapter 35

  Diane went to her office to call Janice Warrick while the others finished off the remainder of the pizza. Ja nice took a while to come to the phone. Diane played with a rock that had come loose from her desk fountain—pushing it back into place and taking it out again. She looked at her reflection in the blade of a letter opener, hoping that somehow the bruising on her face had vanished. It had not.

  When Janice answered, Diane related the entire chain of events and linking suppositions again. It was helpful to keep going over it. It showed up any weak ness in the logic and what needed to be dealt with. There were a lot of ifs connecting the links in the chain.

  Diane wasn’t sure how Janice felt about Frank knowing so much, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. They’d asked Diane to look into things on the sly when she was just a private person. She couldn’t undo the resources she had used before she became the director of the crime lab again.

  ‘‘This is a lot to take in,’’ Janice said.

  ‘‘And most of it may or may not be true,’’ said

  Diane.

  ‘‘It sounds good, though. It all fits, doesn’t it?’’ Ja

  nice said.

  ‘‘It does,’’ said Diane. But sometimes that’s a trap,

  getting seduced by the nice fit. ‘‘Jin will try to get DNA from the tooth. Sheriff Canfield asked the Atlanta PD to go by Malcolm Chen’s apartment. If Chen is miss ing, they will try to find some samples to test for DNA—a toothbrush, hairbrush, that kind of thing. Maybe we can find some firm connections for you to

  deal with.’’

  Diane noticed that all the sharing was going one

  way. Janice was not giving any information from her

  end of the investigation—which was as it should be,

  but it reminded her of what Izzy had said. The detec

  tives had a problem with her butting into an investiga

  tion. As she thought back, most of the ones she had

  been heavily involved in were ones where the perpe

  trator had involved her by coming after her, or the

  FBI had asked her to get involved. She had never just

  up and announced that she was going to take on a

  case and they could all report to her. By far, most of

  the crime scene data she and her team gathered was

  sent to the detectives in charge of a case and that was

  the end of her involvement. Diane felt a bit falsely

  accused.

  ‘‘I think it’s about time I brought Bryce in for a

  talk,’’ said Janice. ‘‘I’d like you to keep Rikki Gillinick

  on at the lab for a while. I think the longer they have

  hope they’ll find what they are looking for, the more

  information we can get from them.’’

  ‘‘All right,’’ said Diane. ‘‘You might want to get the

  GBI to do your crime scenes until we wrap this up. I

  can’t allow her to work on anything beyond what we

  are doing now. We probably will have to rework cases

  that came under Bryce’s tenure the way it is.’’ ‘‘I see what you mean. Do you think she’ll get suspi

  cious, not working cases?’’ asked Janice.

  ‘‘The first thing I did after I was reinstated was to

  ask David to contact TechClean to do a top-to-bottom

  cleaning of the lab,’’ said Diane. ‘‘There was a layer

  of dust on everything, and that can only mean the air

  filters aren’t working. We have to fix that problem. I

  also told them we have to recalibrate all the equip ment. That will take as long as I let it. Rikki was present during all that discussion, so she knows we

  won’t be doing much outside the lab for a while.’’ ‘‘Okay. That’s what we will do. You let us know

  when you’re ready to take new cases. Any luck with

  the computer?’’ asked Janice.

  ‘‘David and Frank are working on it, and they’re

  very good,’’ Diane said. ‘‘Apparently it’s slow going.’’ ‘‘Okay. Keep me informed and thanks for the infor

  mation,’’ she said.

  ‘‘Sure,’’ said Diane. ‘‘How is Garnett?’’

  ‘‘Lawyered up. Which is a good thing. This has been

  very hard for us to deal with. I told him that if the

  new chief tries to hang it on him, we’ll all back him

  up,’’ said Janice. ‘‘He probably thought I was playing

  him like a perp. Frankly, I think he’s protecting some

  one. So does the chief.’’

  ‘‘That makes more sense than him being a mur

  derer,’’ said Diane.

  Diane put the phone back in the cradle and immedi

  ately her cell rang.

  It was plugged in on her desk. She unplugged it and

  flipped it open. It was Sheriff Canfield.

  ‘‘Interesting news,’’ he said. ‘‘The Atlanta police

  can’t locate the Chen kid. His landlord hasn’t seen

 
him in weeks and the rent is overdue. The landlord

  says Chen was real punctual with the rent despite the

  ring in his nose. They collected the things you asked

  for. I’ll send them over tomorrow.’’

  ‘‘That was fast. How in the world did you talk At