Dust to Dust dffi-7

by Beverly Connor

  Dust to Dust

  ( Diane Fallon Forensic Investigation - 7 )

  Beverly Connor

  Beverly Connor. Dust to Dust

  (Diane Fallon Forensic Investigation — 7)

  To Robbie.

  This one’s for you.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to Charles Connor, as always, for his unlimited support and patience.

  Thanks to Kristen Weber for her hard work, expertise, and kindness.

  Prologue

  Marcella Payden straightened the silverware beside the two cobalt blue dinner plates, then lit the fat cinnamon-scented candle in the middle of her small oak dining table. A breeze from the open window carried the tinkling sound of ceramic wind chimes and made the candle flame dance. Nice, she thought as she surveyed the table, smiling at herself and the giddy feeling in her stomach. How long had it been since she’d had a date?

  Marcella smoothed her cotton Navajo-style skirt and ran a hand over her hair, tucking stray tendrils back into the beaded barrette that loosely bound her graying locks. She felt like a teenager. It felt good.

  She looked at her calloused hands-deeply tanned, a few wrinkles. Much like her tanned and lined face. It was a good face. She liked the way she looked-the roughness was the mark of what she was.

  The woman next door back in Arizona had smooth, unlined skin and soft, manicured hands that Marcella’s husband had found more to his liking. It hurt, of course, when he left her, but the strongest emotion was surprise. She was astonished that her husband would find someone who sold lipstick for a living more interesting than an archaeologist.

  “No accounting for taste,” she muttered to herself. That was what she got for marrying a philosopher. It would serve him right if he had to drive around in that lilac convertible for the rest of his life.

  The wind picked up and the napkins fluttered on the table. Marcella walked to the window to close it. Outside was already dark, even though it was still early by her reckoning. Along with the rustling of leaves and the ringing of wind chimes, the wind carried a chill. She stood for a moment, taking in the cool fresh air. North Georgia was so much cooler than Arizona. It was very pleasant.

  But the chill… or something else… brought a sudden shift in mood. Marcella’s hair stood up on the back of her neck and her heart beat faster. She clutched at her silver squash-blossom necklace.

  What brought that on? she wondered, squinting and looking out into the darkness through the open window. She saw nothing but the silhouettes of trees moving in the wind, and heard no sound but the rustling leaves, wind chimes, and distant road noise.

  It was a Lewis moment.

  Lewis was a cognitive archaeologist in Arizona, a colleague and intellectual sparring partner. He had a keen interest in how Paleo-Indians managed to survive among lightning-fast sabertoothed tigers and other giant predators of stealth and speed. His research into the functioning of the human brain led to the interesting discovery that the subconscious can perceive a movement or a threat and the body can respond several seconds before the conscious mind even becomes aware. A nice little brain function that helped early humans survive at a time when animals were bigger, faster, and had way sharper teeth.

  Marcella agreed with this idea because she had experienced the phenomenon firsthand. It happened while she was walking through an overgrown field surveying for signs of prehistoric inhabitants-looking for arrowheads, actually. She found herself suddenly breathing rapidly, her heart pounding… and inexplicably she was standing more than three feet to the side of where she had been a moment before. She had no idea what had happened or why she had jumped to the side. But her eyes were fixed on the spot where her next step would have been. There, hidden in the grass, lay a rattlesnake. Subconscious awareness and involuntary response had kicked in. A prehistoric survival function had saved her from harm.

  Marcella called such moments of subconscious wariness “Lewis moments.” She looked through the open window again but saw no sabertooths in the shadows. She wondered whether such automated responses could really have been that effective. With snakes maybe, but tigers?

  Silly woman, she thought. It’s probably all those towering trees waving in the wind. Marcella missed the desert colors: earth tones, red rock. There was just too much giant, vivid green here.

  She closed the window and walked across to the living room to turn on the light. Her eye stopped on the desk where the light sat and she realized that it was the desk-or rather what she had found in it-that was nagging at the back of her mind. That must be it.

  Marcella had cleaned out the ramshackle potter’s shed behind her house. Among miscellaneous pieces of broken furniture and weathered plywood, under a piece of old linoleum long ago ripped up from the kitchen floor, with myriad items littering its top, she had found the old desk. A rough pearl constructed of distressed maple, it had three drawers down each side and one long drawer in the middle. Although it was not an extraordinary desk, she liked its solid promise.

  When she was cleaning the layers of dust and grime from the desk, she found writing on the bottom of the middle drawer. The house had been a treasure trove of nice surprises, but this surprise was disturbing. It was also old; too old to do anything about. Still, she intended to speak with Jonas about it and ask him to mention it to Diane Fallon.

  Marcella partially pulled out the drawer as she turned on the banker’s lamp on top of the desk. The fluorescent bulb had a second’s delay before the light came on. Just as it brightened, she felt another Lewis-moment shiver and the world went black.

  Another bright shining light appeared and Marcella wondered whether she should crawl to it. It shouldn’t be this hard, she thought, as she struggled to move across the floor.

  Chapter 1

  Diane Fallon parked her car well out of the way alongside the narrow drive. She closed her car door and stood looking at the old farmhouse illuminated by the headlights of a police car and the forensics van already there. Diane was director of the RiverTrail Museum of Natural History and director of the Rosewood Crime Lab, which was housed in the museum. It was in her role as crime lab director that she was here, but she suspected on this occasion she would be wearing both hats. That was because the house belonged to Dr. Marcella Payden, whom the museum’s archaeology curator, Jonas Briggs, had hired to create a reference collection of prehistoric potsherds for the museum’s archaeology department.

  It was an old house, perhaps from the early 1900s, set among trees that looked old enough to be original to the place. The two-story white wooden structure had a blue tin roof and long open porches on the first and second floors that stretched across the front of the house. There was a redbrick chimney on each end. At one end of the house a metal carport contained a light-colored SUV. Large square-cut stones lined the gravel driveway.

  The yard was mainly dirt with rock-bordered areas that had once been flower beds. Broken concrete yard ornaments-statuary, fountains, vases-littered the yard. From its appearance, the place could have been an archaeological dig. In reality, it was just an old farmhouse yard containing an odd assortment of disused items.

  Diane changed from her heels to comfortable loafers and slipped a flannel shirt over her dark metallic burgundy cocktail dress. She held the shirt tight around her as she walked toward the house to shield herself from the wind, which was becoming chilly.

  Neva Hurley and Izzy Wallace were taking their kits from the crime scene van as they spoke with a patrolman. Diane waved to them.

  “What do you know?” asked Diane as she got within earshot.

  Neva and Izzy were police officers with the Rosewood PD and two of the four crime scene investigators who worked for Diane. Neva was energetic, slim, and in her late twenties. Izz
y, the newest member of the crime lab, was a fiftysomething, sturdily built guy. They grinned at her when she approached.

  “You know Officer Daughtry?” asked Izzy, with a tilt of his head to indicate the patrolman.

  “Diane Fallon,” she said, shaking the officer’s hand.

  “Good to meet you, ma’am,” he said.

  He seemed a little green. Must be a rookie, Diane thought.

  “Nice outfit,” said Neva. “I like the way your dress matches the burgundy in the plaid of your shirt. Very lum berjack chic.”

  Diane smiled. “I’ve been to a benefit at Bartrum University.”

  Neva looked at her watch and up at the sky. It was close to dawn.

  Diane gave her a weak smile. “Frank hasn’t given up on teaching me to dance. We went out afterward.”

  There was a gust of cool wind and Diane folded her arms across her middle to keep the chill out. She thought she heard the faint ring of wind chimes in the distance. She nodded toward the house.

  “David called me about this. What’s going on?”

  David Goldstein was assistant director of the crime lab. This evening he was on duty handing out assignments while he worked in the lab.

  “David called you?” said Neva. “He didn’t have to. We’ve got it covered. Ol’ Izzy here is doing pretty good.” Neva punched him affectionately in the shoulder. “Rosewood PD said a woman was attacked here earlier tonight.”

  “Attacked? She survived?” Diane asked. Her body relaxed.

  “Yes, but I don’t know how bad off she is,” said Neva. “The lead detective’s on his way. I think he’s been questioning someone. That’s all I know.”

  Neva looked at Patrolman Daughtry as if he might have more information. He shook his head and shrugged.

  “I was told to wait here for Detective Hanks,” he said.

  Neva squinted, observing Diane. “Is there something special about this case?”

  “Marcella Payden is an adjunct professor of archaeology at Bartrum and a consultant for the museum,” said Diane.

  “Oh,” said Neva. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  The crunch of gravel and two blinding headlights heralded an approaching car. Diane stepped closer to the van with Izzy, Neva, and the patrolman, and they watched the car pull in behind the police car.

  Detective Hanks, she thought. She recognized him, but she hadn’t worked with him before. He took a step in their direction just as gunfire cut the ground at his feet.

  Chapter 2

  Loud bursts of gunfire exploded one after another. Diane ducked beside the van, pulling Neva down with her.

  “What the hell?” she heard Izzy shout, ducking for cover himself.

  The shots were coming from the woods beyond the drive where they were parked. Bullets dug out plugs of dirt from the ground. One ricocheted off a rock and hit the van; some hit the piles of lawn sculpture; others flew over their heads. The gunman didn’t seem to be aiming at anything in particular, or he was aiming at everything. It sounded to Diane like a rifle, but she wasn’t an expert on guns.

  Izzy, his gun out, eased to the rear of the van. Neva took out her gun and followed him. Patrolman Daughtry moved toward the front of the vehicle and peeked out at the dark woods. A bullet struck the side of the van and he pulled back.

  “Shit,” he hissed. “Hey, you crazy son of a bitch, what the hell do you think you’re doing? Lay down your gun and come out with your hands-”

  His reply was cut short by a hail of bullets.

  Keeping low, Diane climbed into the van through the sliding side door. She crawled to the driver’s seat and cut off the inside lamp and the headlights. As she called for backup on her cell phone, a bullet zinged through the driver’s window and exited on the passenger side. Diane jumped and hit her elbow on the gearshift.

  “Diane, you hurt?” called Neva and Izzy together.

  “Fine. Just startled-and pissed.” Diane crawled out of the van, cursing herself for being in a cocktail dress. What kind of idiot comes to a crime scene in fancy dress?

  Kneeling on the ground, she could see that Detective Hanks was down. Because of the positions of the parked vehicles in the drive, he was open to the woods when he got out of the car.

  “Hanks is down,” Diane said. “Keep the shooter occupied long enough for me to get him to cover.”

  “What?” said Izzy. “Well, hell.”

  He fired in the direction of the shooter. Daughtry fired a couple of shots blindly across the hood of the van in the general direction from which the bullets seemed to be coming.

  Diane dashed out in the open to Hanks, only a few feet away. He was already struggling to his feet just as she reached him. She slipped an arm around his waist and helped him take cover beside the patrol car. A bullet would have to go through the van and the police vehicle to get to him. It was a safe place to wait.

  Diane examined the wound in his thigh by what little illumination his headlights provided to their position. It was bleeding, but blood wasn’t pulsing out, nor was it profuse. The bullet hadn’t hit his femoral artery. It had only nicked him.

  “My leg is fine. It’s my shoulder,” he said. “Damn it. I fell and landed on my bad shoulder. Who the hell is that?”

  “I don’t know,” said Diane. “Is your shoulder out of joint?”

  Hanks rolled his shoulder, stretched his arm across his chest, and rolled the shoulder again, wincing the whole time. “No. Just hurts like hell. I’m fine. What’s this about?” He stood halfway and peered over the hood of the police car.

  “I have no idea. I just got here,” said Diane.

  “How’s Hanks?” shouted Izzy.

  “I’m fine. Just mad as hell,” he shouted back.

  “Backup should be here soon,” said Diane.

  Diane eased the police car door open, intending to turn off the headlights and use the radio as a link to the police who were on their way. As she reached to cut the lights, she thought she saw a shadow cross a window of the house. It was quick, just a roundish shape passing one of the lower windows.

  “That’s why the random shots,” she whispered.

  She cut the lights. Now only light from the first-quarter moon illuminated the area. At least the shooter would have a harder time targeting them.

  “What are you talking about?” said Hanks.

  He was shifting his weight, trying to look around the patrol car toward Neva and Izzy at the van.

  “They’re trying to keep us pinned down. Someone is in the house,” she said. “That’s why they’re just spraying bullets around, not targeting anything in particular.”

  Hanks looked over at her sharply, then turned his head toward the house. “Now? There’s someone in the house now?”

  “I’m not certain, but I thought I saw someone inside the house.” Diane stared at the windows again, squinting, as if that would give her better night vision.

  The shooter fired two more shots that dinged off the detective’s vehicle and a tree beyond the car. Diane listened for the distant sound of sirens. She heard none.

  “I’m going to ease over in the direction of the house,” she said. “Do you have a second gun?”

  Hanks lifted his pant leg and gave her the Chief’s Special he had strapped around his ankle.

  Diane weighed the gun in her hand. It wasn’t a particularly heavy gun, and she was strong, but it felt heavy in her hand, as if its lethal potential had a weight all its own. She didn’t particularly like guns, but it would be foolish to be without one now.

  She put her cell in her shirt pocket and moved a couple of steps in the direction of the house and woods, away from the shooter.

  “I’ll go with you,” Hanks said.

  “I’m just going to watch,” she said. “I have my cell phone to keep in touch. If there’s someone in the house, I can tell backup when they come.”

  “Fine. I’m still going with you.”

  Hanks stood halfway, keeping the vehicle between him and the shooter. He
leaned with his good side against the car.

  “Are you sure you can walk?” asked Diane.

  “My leg was just grazed and my shoulder’s been worse. I’m fine,” he said. “I’m thinking I’d like to get inside the house and see if I can spot the shooter from the second-floor windows.”

  Diane didn’t think that was such a good idea, but she didn’t say anything immediately. She called Neva on her cell and, speaking in a whisper, told her what she and Hanks were going to do.

  “Gotcha,” said Neva. “We’ll be here at the OK Corral hanging out.”

  “Backup will be here soon,” said Diane. She listened again for distant sirens, but still heard none.

  “If we stay near the trees and outbuildings,” said Diane, “I don’t think the shooter will be able to see us.”

  She hesitated a moment. She had been trying to make nice with the detectives ever since Izzy told her they thought she interfered in their investigations a bit too often. But Hanks was about to interfere with her crime scene.

  “Detective Hanks,” she whispered, hoping a soft voice would make her words sound soft as well, “if you go into the house, you will contaminate the crime scene.”

  “That’s not the priority right now. We have a shooter and maybe someone in the house,” he said.

  Diane stared at him a moment, weighing how to respond. Hanks was maybe in his late thirties, she guessed. His sandy hair was roughed up by his fall. She couldn’t read his expression in the dark and she didn’t know very much about him. He was new to the department. And he wasn’t making a good impression on her.

  “Backup will be here any moment,” she said. “You’re bleeding, your arm’s hurt, and there may be someone on the second floor-who is armed.”

  “And if there is, I’ll nail his butt to the wall. Come on, if you’re coming.” Hanks rose to his feet, keeping his head down.