Dead Past

by Beverly Connor

  “When Juliet first came to work at the museum, Andie made her a gift basket, as she does for all new employees. Because seashells were a speciality of Juliet’s, Andie used that as a basis for the theme of the basket. The centerpiece was a doll—Ariel, the mermaid from Walt Disney.”

  Diane saw the frown that briefly creased Laura’s forehead. Ariel was the name of Diane’s adopted daughter, who was killed. Ariel had named herself after the Disney character because she wanted to start a new life with a new name—Ariel Fallon. Diane continued.

  “When Juliet saw the basket on her desk, she freaked. I mean really freaked. It was much worse than when Kendel found the museum snake coiled up in her desk drawer—and that was an event we will all remember for some time to come. Juliet was very embarrassed at her reaction and muttered something about being afraid of new dolls. Andie had taken the doll out of the packaging when she made the basket. It wasn’t in a box.”

  Diane stopped to let it sink in.

  “I’m sorry,” said Laura. “I don’t see the significance of that, and I can see by your face that it is significant, but I need a little more.”

  “Juliet said, ‘I remember being in a dark room with new dolls.’ You asked what she meant by new dolls, and she said, ‘Dolls still in the box.’ But we know from her reaction to the welcome basket that she was scared witless by a doll that was not in a box.”

  “OK,” said Laura, still sounding unsure. “So what did she mean?”

  “There is something else common to new dolls besides the cardboard box they often come in. I saw it last night when I passed the museum store and saw all the Dora the Explorer dolls lined up together on the shelf. It was really very eerie. In the low nighttime lighting of the gift shop, each of the little dolls was peering out at me from behind the cellophane window in its box. Andie’s basket didn’t have the doll in a box, but there was cellophane around the whole basket—and Ariel the mermaid was peering out from inside the plastic.”

  Diane could see from the puzzled look on Laura’s face that this really cleared it up for her.

  “Are you saying Juliet would be afraid of an old doll if it was wrapped in cellophane?”

  “Yes.”

  “And this means?”

  “The room of dolls she saw in her memory weren’t dolls; they were murdered people wrapped in plastic, and this was the first psychological trauma for her and may have led to Event Two—her kidnapping.”

  Chapter 33

  If Laura was shocked before, she was stunned into silence now. She sat back in her chair, staring in disbelief at Diane.

  Diane pulled out the tape that Laura had sent her.

  “Here, play the part where she is telling you what her memories are. Instead of it being a room full of dolls, think mass murder scene and listen to how the rest of her memories sound.”

  Laura put the tape in her recorder, found the right place, and played it. At the end of the sequence she stopped the tape.

  “It is scarier, hearing it from the perspective you describe, I’ll grant you that,” said Laura.

  “The sequence also makes more sense,” said Diane. “The fear she has of the room makes more sense and the running makes more sense.”

  “Yes, it does,” agreed Laura. “But . . .”

  “I know. I said it’s tenuous. But I think it is worth investigating.”

  “What in the world made you think of murder victims?” asked Laura.

  “A couple of things. In the morgue tent, we were short on body bags and had to cover the victims with plastic until bags arrived. Looking at the burned bodies through the plastic was eerie, to say the least. It reminded me of a murder in Atlanta recently where the killer used plastic to wrap the victim and hid him in a wall. Plastic is popular with killers because if you wrap the victim up just right, the blood doesn’t leak out.”

  “My God.” Laura shook her head as if shaking the image out. “Can you investigate this?” asked Laura. “Would you even know where to begin? I really don’t want to hit Juliet with this, especially since at the moment it’s no more than speculation.”

  “I agree. And, yes, I can investigate it. First, there are some things I’d like to know. We know she was kidnapped from her home in Arizona, but what was she doing in the weeks before the kidnapping? Was she at home in Arizona or was she somewhere else? You can ask her that, can’t you?” said Diane.

  “Where she was?” asked Laura. “What makes you think she may not have been at home?”

  “Because of something else that struck me on the tape,” said Diane.

  “I must say, Diane, you got a lot more out of the short conversation than I did,” said Laura. “What else did you notice?”

  “Andie’s basket had the mermaid doll that we think was the trigger that set off Juliet’s fear attack, but the basket also contained a lot of seashells. Even though Juliet likes seashells—she’s made a career of mollusks—the juxtaposition might be important in her memory.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Do you know where her grandmother lives?” asked Diane.

  “No. Is that important?”

  “Along with all her fearful memories are also good memories of her grandmother and memories of collecting seashells on the beach. She didn’t collect seashells on the beach in Arizona,” said Diane.

  “You think all of these memories are connected in time,” said Laura. She got up and walked over to a small refrigerator and took out a couple of Dr. Peppers and gave one to Diane. “I need something to drink, and they won’t let me drink and take care of patients at the same time. And I don’t like to drink alone.” She glanced at her watch.

  “Do you have an appointment coming up?” asked Diane.

  “In about fifteen minutes. Go on,” said Laura.

  Diane opened the drink and took a sip. It was ice-cold. “I think the memories are connected by fear, at the least.” Diane took another drink.

  “Look, Laura,” said Diane. “I’m not really saying anything, except that it’s something to investigate. I agree, you shouldn’t mention this to Juliet. Right now it’s just a flight of fancy of mine, but I’d like to look into it.”

  “Well, I must say, you’ve surprised the hell out of me,” said Laura.

  “I could be completely wrong and probably am. I’ve certainly not been able to do much with the other cases I’m working on now,” said Diane.

  “And why are you working on them at all? I thought your job is to analyze bones and collect evidence from crime scenes. Is Rosewood having a shortage of homicide detectives? Come to think of it, I wouldn’t be surprised, the way Adler has been attacking the police.”

  “I got interested in solving those crimes when Patrice Stanton vandalized my car,” said Diane.

  “The woman’s obviously crazy. She really thinks you killed her son? I know she said that, but I thought she was just sticking it to you for turning the little carjacker in.”

  “No, she actually thinks I killed him. The only bright spot is that she’s stopped her harassment because she thinks I also killed McNair and she’s afraid I’ll come after her.”

  Laura threw her head back and laughed out loud.

  It was getting colder outside. Diane was glad to be back in her office and warm. She reached for the phone to call Garnett when Andie knocked on her door and stuck her head in.

  “You have some visitors from the dark side,” said Andie.

  “Send the creatures in,” said Diane.

  David, Jin, and Neva all came into her office, pulled chairs away from their places against the wall, and sat down. Jin turned his chair around so that he sat straddling it, resting his arms on the back.

  “Is this some kind of protest?” said Diane. “Have I been working you too hard?”

  “We came to see the skull,” said David.

  “OK.” Diane picked up the crystal skull and handed it to David.

  “Wow,” he said. “This is nice.” He turned the skull over in his hand and caressed the sur
face. “Is it ancient?”

  “No way to tell,” said Diane. “All quartz is ancient, so there’s no help there. And there’s no way to effectively analyze the tool marks. They could have been made a thousand years ago or yesterday using tools of ancient design. That’s part of the mystery of crystal skulls.”

  “This is just about the neatest thing,” said David. He handed it to Neva.

  “It’d be pretty with a light shining through from the bottom,” she said. “Pretty mysterious, too.”

  “Yes, it would,” agreed Diane. “Did you guys come just to look at the crystal skull, or was there some other reason?”

  Neva handed the skull off to Jin. He turned it over and looked at it from all sides. Then he held it up to the light and looked deep into it.

  “We’re just stuck, Boss,” he said when he finished looking through the skull. “We thought if we sat in the skull’s aura . . .”

  “We thought no such thing,” said Neva. “We just thought getting our mind off the cases for a while, some idea might surface.”

  “I’ve had the same problem,” said Diane. “I was just about to call Garnett when you came.”

  She lifted the phone and dialed his number.

  “Garnett,” he answered.

  “It’s Diane. Do you have anything you can share with us? What’s going on with the Stanton and McNair cases?”

  “I can tell you this. The meth lab evidence didn’t make it to the arson lab and I don’t know where it is.”

  “What? Did McNair steal it? How was he expecting to get away with that?”

  “Maybe he’d say his truck was stolen. I suppose his plan was to say someone came into the dock at the arson lab and took it.”

  “He left it in the truck? Why wasn’t it transferred?” asked Diane. Her three criminalists stared at her.

  “The evidence is gone?” mouthed David.

  Diane nodded.

  “I don’t know,” said Garnett, “but the meth lab explosion is pretty much at a standstill, and guess who’s getting the heat?”

  “I hope the commissioner,” said Diane.

  “He is. I think he’s feeling betrayed at the moment,” said Garnett. “And we are taking some pretty heavy hits ourselves.”

  “We have some information on Stanton that might be of use to you.”

  “Oh? Tell me,” said Garnett.

  “Why don’t you come over to the crime lab here? Perhaps we can share information.”

  “Share?”

  “I want to wrap the cases up as much as you do. I feel like Councilman Adler is going to have something to hold over me if I don’t. I realize that I’m not a credible suspect, but the guy deals in rumor and innuendo and not facts,” said Diane.

  “I’ll be right there,” said Garnett.

  “We’ll be waiting for you.” She hung up the phone. “OK, guys, maybe this will break something loose.”

  Diane and her crime scene crew stayed busy in the lab catching up on work while they waited on Garnett for over an hour. Still no sign of him. Diane looked at her watch.

  “I think we’ve been stood up,” she said.

  As she pulled her cell phone out of her jacket pocket to call him, it vibrated in her hand. She looked at the display. Garnett.

  “Traffic bad?” said Diane.

  “They found Marcus McNair’s truck and the evidence—such as it is—in a warehouse off Nowhere Road. You and your team get up here.”

  Chapter 34

  The old redbrick warehouse looked like it was built when cotton was still king. It should surely be on the list of historic sites. She remembered it from when she was a kid as a place where no one—meaning kids—was supposed to go. Naturally that was a challenge, but attempts to investigate the building or use the place as a make-out spot were met with a series of ill-tempered night watchmen. It now stood like a derelict from another age, overgrown with weeds and invasive plants, the red bricks weathered and crumbling.

  Diane parked the crime scene van beside one of the police cars and she and her crew piled out. They left their kits in the van and walked to the warehouse, entering through the large open doors. Pools of the fading sunlight shined through high broken-out windows, illuminating little. The flashlights carried by Garnett and the police were the only other effective source of light. The large truck Marcus used to haul away the evidence was parked in the middle of the room.

  “What do we have here?” asked Diane, looking around at shadowy piles of twisted metal and rubble dumped on the ground.

  “Jeez, what a mess,” said Jin. “Is this our evidence he hijacked?”

  “Looks like it.” Garnett was all smiles. Diane would have thought he’d be thoroughly pissed at finding the meth lab evidence in such a state.

  “Apparently McNair wanted to have a look at the evidence before he turned it in.” Garnett played his flashlight over a pile of bones. Diane winced at the blackened and broken fragments that had been cast aside.

  “He was making sure we couldn’t identify the cook, wasn’t he,” said Diane. He was going to remove all the bones, repackage the other evidence, and then take it to his lab.”

  “That’s what it looks like, but somebody shot him first,” said Garnett.

  “Why are you so happy about this?” asked Diane.

  “Because this warehouse and property belong to Councilman Adler. Oh look,” he said as another car drove up and parked outside the warehouse. “I think it’s the media. I wonder how they got wind of this?” He grinned and went out to meet them.

  Diane and her crew looked at each other, eyebrows raised. “Payback’s a bitch,” said David. “Wow, did I use another word that starts with a p?”

  “OK,” said Diane. “David, you and Neva take the truck and warehouse. Jin, I want you to scout the whole area around the warehouse to make sure that there isn’t some ravine he’s been throwing bones in. I’ll have a look at this pile of bones over here. Do we have lights in the van?”

  “Yes. I’ll hook them up,” said David.

  Diane left the others to do their work and, going over to the pile of bones, squatted beside them to take a look. She pulled on a pair of gloves and picked up one of the bones—a fragment of skull. The bones, like the others in the greatest heat of the explosion, were badly burned. Some were almost white, others were blackened and cracked. However, there was one thing she saw immediately even in the dim light of the huge warehouse. In the pile of bones there were two left femora. There had been another person in the basement with the unknown victim whose skull she partially reconstructed.

  Diane retrieved a flattened box from the van, put it together, and began packing the bones carefully inside. She was about to pack the last few bones when suddenly the section of warehouse was awash with light.

  She stood and gave the scene another look. The entire floor was filled with piles and piles of rubble from the fire. He had brought all of the evidence here to go through himself before taking it to the arson lab to be processed. What was he looking for? Anything else beside the bones, or just anything that might incriminate him? Looking around at the compromised evidence, Diane had no doubt that McNair had been up to his eyeballs in methamphetamine dealing.

  She finished packing the bones just as Garnett brought several members of the media in to take pictures of the dumped evidence. Diane ducked out before anyone could get a picture of her. Outside, David was standing near the van staring up at the ridge that overlooked the warehouse site.

  Diane loaded the box in the van, then followed his gaze. “What are you looking at?” She held up a hand to shield her eyes from the sun.

  “I’m trying to figure out what Jin is up to,” said David. “He’s been up on that ridge, taking pictures and walking back and forth.”

  Diane looked up on the ridge at Jin, who was squatting, looking at something on the ground. “He must have found something,” said Diane.

  “Looks like it,” said David.

  “Let’s go see what it is,” said Dian
e.

  “You’d better go. If we all disappear, the media will get suspicious and follow us,” said David.

  “Good thinking.” Diane got a flashlight from the van and walked alone up the rocky snow-covered ground to the ridge where Jin was taking pictures.

  “What did you find?” asked Diane.

  “Hey, Boss. Look at this.” Jin showed her a place among the weeds and bushes that was disturbed. There were no footprints, but the ground and vegetation were flattened.

  “I found these.” Jin held up a bag with cigarette butts. “We can get some DNA from these.”

  “Did you find any bones or evidence?” asked Diane.

  “No, but this is interesting.” He gestured toward the warehouse.

  Diane viewed the brick structure looking more and more like an ancient ruin as the sun’s rays faded into twilight. She saw nothing unusual. “Why were you photographing the building?”

  “Look for yourself.” Jin gave her the camera. He had screwed on a telephoto lens.

  Diane looked through the lens of the camera at the warehouse. Through one of the upper windows she had an almost perfect view of the lighted inside. She saw clearly McNair’s truck and the piles of defiled evidence.

  “This is interesting. You think someone was up here spying on McNair?” said Diane.

  “Yeah, I think so. There was a light snow the night McNair was murdered and there hasn’t been one since. The butts I found had a light covering of snow. They are recent, but not after the murder.”

  Diane looked through the lens again. She could see the reporters photographing the scene; she saw Garnett standing by watching. She saw Neva open the door to the truck. It was a good vantage point for spying.

  “Continue to scout around,” said Diane. “See if you can find any tracks. If we could get a line on a vehicle, that would be great. When you finish, help David and Neva. I’m going to hitch a ride back to the lab and work on the bones we found.”

  “The rest of the cook?” asked Jin.

  “I’m not sure now that the guy I reconstructed was the cook, or was the only cook. There was at least another person in the basement when it exploded.”