Dead Past dffi-4

by Beverly Connor

  “I’ve got my people making a list of possibles,” said Garnett. “When we can, we’ll interview the survivors, see what they can tell us. I think we’re looking at one of the biggest tragedies Rosewood has ever suffered.”

  “Marcus,” said Whit, “I think you might as well learn what you can from the firefighters for now. It’s going to be later in the day before you can get access to the house.”

  Whit’s mild, friendly manner diffused the situation for the moment, but McNair cast a mean glance at Garnett before he left.

  “Do I need to know what’s going on?” asked Diane when McNair was out of earshot.

  For a moment Garnett watched Marcus McNair trudge to his car through the thin layer of slush still on the road.

  “Albin Adler, the councilman, is trying to start an investigation of the police department, raising a big stink, and McNair’s feeding him misinformation. It’s just political nonsense. It goes on all the time, but I want to keep it out of here.”

  Diane was more than willing to let it not be her problem.

  “Adler wants to run for mayor and then governor,” added Whit. “And he’s got all his relatives doing his dirty work. I understand they’re legion.”

  Diane’s team had been waiting patiently, appearing to ignore Garnett and Whit’s conversation as they rummaged through their crime scene cases, pulling out what they needed. But Diane knew they were soaking up everything. David would use the information to feed the basic paranoia he enjoyed nurturing; Jin was fascinated with southern local politics; and Neva would use it to wheedle more information from buddies on the police force.

  Diane watched them a moment before she spoke, smiling as she thought how much she liked her staff. David looked up at her and grinned. She left Whit and Garnett to their conversations and focused on her team.

  “OK,” she said, “David and Jin, I want you to clear a path to the site and a perimeter immediately around it to provide a work area. Neva and I will work the area outside that perimeter.”

  “I can handle that,” said Neva, “if you need to set up… ” She nodded toward the morgue tent-the place where the bodies and the body parts would be delivered-and let the sentence fade off.

  “I’ll work here until the medical examiners are ready,” Diane said. “Let’s get started.”

  Marking found items with flags-green flags for debris, orange for human remains-Jin and David were searching a wide path from the driveway to the burned-out house. She and Neva began a search of the front yard from the street to the house.

  Most of the debris was pieces of wood and shingles from the house. Other than blood, probably from victims who were outside the house when it exploded, neither she nor Neva initially found any human remains.

  Diane was setting a green flag beside what looked like the leg of a chair when she heard her name. She stood up to see medical examiner Lynn Webber waving to her from the road.

  Reaching for something hanging on a limb, Neva was a few feet away near a small maple tree.

  “Neva, I need to go… ”

  Neva retrieved the object-it looked like a piece of cloth to Diane-bagged it, marked the limb with a tag, and put a yellow flag beside the tree. Yellow flags were the code for “look up.”

  “Sure. We can handle this,” Neva said.

  “Neva, I know this is a lot, but when you finish here, I need for one of you to process my car. It’s parked in front of my house.”

  “Your car? What happened?”

  That’s right, thought Diane, they don’t know. She hadn’t told them about the kid with the gun.

  “Someone tried to highjack my car last night.”

  “What?” Neva stood openmouthed. Glancing over at the burned-out house still holding the charred bodies, she said, “All this, and you had to deal with a carjacker?”

  Diane gave her a quick explanation, waving off her concerns with a flick of her hand. “It turned out all right.” And it had, but the kid with the bloody stump had haunted her dreams during the few hours’ sleep she was able to catch before Garnett’s call.

  Diane retraced her steps to where Lynn Webber stood shivering in her brown suede coat. Her white earmuffs looked like snowballs against her short black hair. Her tan linen slacks appeared wholly inadequate for the weather, as did her leather fashion boots with two-inch heels.

  Lynn’s dark eyes were somber. “How bad is it?” she asked.

  “Bad. Garnett is trying to find out how many students were involved. They’re setting up a command post near the morgue tent,” said Diane, gesturing for her to lead the way.

  “Allen Rankin and Brewster Pilgrim are waiting in that tent.” Webber pointed at the green and white striped tent. “They were offered hot coffee.”

  “Sounds good.” Diane smiled and walked with Webber toward the hospitality tent.

  “You know,” said Webber, “our local hospitals are better equipped to handle this. I feel as though I’ve run away with the circus.”

  “You’re preaching to the choir. Apparently, the mayor wants a very visible presence so everyone will see that he’s on top of the situation.”

  Lynn Webber shrugged. “Maybe he’s right. People do have a tendency to think you aren’t doing anything if they don’t see you doing it.”

  “Well, they’ll have a ringside seat here,” said Diane.

  As she walked with Lynn through the slush, she scanned the crowd that was gathering behind the police barricade. Cars were parked down the street as far as she could see. Too many people, she thought. Surely, this many people don’t have missing children.

  “Most are rubberneckers trying to catch site of something sensational,” said Lynn, as if reading Diane’s thoughts. “At least, I hope this many people haven’t lost a loved one.”

  As she grew closer to the onlookers, Diane could pick out the worried parents and friends. It was the look of desperation and fear that gave them away. The gawkers and ghouls had eyes that glittered with anticipation as they strained to get a look at the burned-out house in the distance. A man with a camera tried to get under the roped-off area, and a policeman pushed him back.

  “All those people…,” whispered Lynn.

  Diane avoided meeting anyone’s gaze and was glad to duck inside the coffee tent. A young policeman was on his way out with a carton of several cups of coffee for the policemen standing duty. He nodded at them as he passed.

  There were few people other than medical examiners in the tent. A long table on one side held a commercial coffeemaker and an array of pastries. Four women manned the table, setting out plastic forks and packages of Styrofoam cups. They looked up as Diane and Lynn entered and began pouring two cups of coffee.

  A policewoman was arranging a desk near the entrance. Diane guessed it was to be the location to receive x-rays, toothbrushes, hairbrushes, and other objects that might hold DNA or other clues to victims’ identities. Diane didn’t recognize the policewoman. She thought she was learning all the personnel on the force, but apparently there had been some recent additions.

  This young woman looked just out of the academy. In fact, her smooth unlined face looked like she could still be in high school. She was unloading a grocery bag, setting boxes of different sizes of Ziploc freezer bags on the desk.

  Lynn Webber walked on past to a waiting cup of hot coffee, but Diane stopped at the desk.

  “Hi.” She hoped she sounded friendly. “Are those all the bags for holding objects for comparison DNA samples?”

  “And you are?” said the young woman without looking up from her task.

  “I’m sorry.” Diane held out the identification that hung around her neck. “I’m Diane Fallon. I’m head of the Crime Lab here in Rosewood.”

  The woman looked up and gave her a tight smile. “Yes, I’m to collect the samples from the parents.”

  “Plastic bags are good for transporting evidence,” Diane said. “But for storage, plastic isn’t right for all evidence. Let me bring you some evidence bags… ”
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  “My sergeant told me to get these.” Her voice was curt; she broke eye contact and continued unloading the plastic bags.

  “If a parent brings in a damp bath towel, for example, it would…”

  “I do what my sergeant tells me.”

  “Of course you do. I’m sorry to have brought it up to you.” Diane took her phone from her pocket, flipped it open, and called Garnett. “Chief Garnett, I would like the evidence from family members collected in the evidence bags from our lab, and I need you to talk to the sergeant in charge so he can change the orders of the patrolman at the scene here.”

  Diane paused. The policewoman looked at her, wide-eyed. She sat back and expelled her breath in a huff.

  “I’m in the coffee tent, or whatever you call it. The police are setting up a desk here to receive the samples.”

  Diane paused again, listening to Garnett. “I did tell her myself. She is very into chain of command.” Diane handed the phone to the policewoman. “It’s Chief Garnett. He wants to speak to you.”

  The young woman took the phone hesitantly, eying Diane as she said hello.

  “Sergeant Davis told me…” She stopped talking for several moments. “Yes, sir,” she said and handed the phone back to Diane.

  “I’ll have someone bring you the proper bags and boxes,” said Diane, punching Neva’s cell number. She told Neva what she wanted and apologized for pulling her off the scene. Diane was thinking that things like this could be avoided if she gave workshops to the police on collecting evidence. They had resisted the notion, but she’d talk to Garnett about it again.

  Diane smiled and thanked the policewoman, but she could see she hadn’t made a friend. Great, she thought, I’ll never get on good terms with the police.

  The other two medical examiners, Pilgrim and Rankin, were in a corner, sitting on a couple of folding chairs and drinking from steaming Styrofoam cups. She waved at them and headed in their direction. They had barricaded themselves in with folding chairs held in place by their booted feet. Their bodies looked relaxed, but their faces showed deep frowns. Rankin was on his cell phone. Lynn was a few feet away, drinking her coffee with an amused expression. She handed Diane a cup as she walked by.

  “It’s good coffee,” Lynn said, grinning at Diane. “You were so nice. I’d have ripped her a new one.”

  “She was only doing what she was told. It always amazes me how little influence I have.”

  Lynn’s laugh was almost a giggle. The two of them pulled up chairs and sat across from Rankin and Pilgrim.

  “I just got off the phone with Whit,” said Rankin, shifting his position and putting his cell phone back on his belt. “He’s thinking there may be as many as thirty bodies.”

  Chapter 5

  Diane stood at a shiny stainless steel table in the cold morgue tent, looking down at a shock of blond hair held together by an iridescent blue clip. The hair and a small bit of scalp were attached to a piece of parietal bone from the right side of a skull.

  Explosions and fires are odd. They consume or blacken most everything, but occasionally there are surprising anomalies, such as this beautiful lock of blond hair-almost untouched, somehow thrown free in the explosion, along with scalp and bone.

  Diane measured the size and arc of the bone before Jin photographed it. Jin was a good assistant for this, not just because of his keen interest in DNA and his basic competence, but because, even in the worst of circumstances, he was nearly always happy. The tent would be somber without him if its only occupants were her, the MEs, the police, and burned bodies.

  “Plenty of roots for DNA,” said Jin as he tweezed samples of rooted hair from the scalp. He had a green surgical cap covering his straight black hair and wore green scrubs and short sleeves despite the cool temperature of the tent. Diane envied his ability to withstand the cold. She was bundled up and freezing. “You know if we had our own DNA…”

  “I know,” said Diane, interrupting Jin before he made another petition for a DNA lab. She liked the idea, but refrained from telling Jin or he would be ordering the equipment.

  The problem was that Rosewood didn’t want to pay for a DNA lab. Diane guessed they were holding out for her to put one in on the museum’s budget. After all, the museum, which was officially not part of the crime lab, had its own DNA lab-what’s one more lab, she was sure they were thinking. True, depending on how she crunched the numbers, she might be able to make a DNA lab pay for itself. But she didn’t tell Jin that, either.

  “You going to put in a DNA lab?” asked Lynn Webber. Diane looked up to see Lynn putting an organ-it looked like a heart-on the scales.

  Diane looked sideways at Jin as he stared down at nothing in particular on the tent floor. Just as she thought, he’d put Lynn up to it.

  “Jin wants to.” Diane evaded answering her directly, hoping Lynn would drop it.

  “It’d probably pay for itself,” said Lynn, retrieving the organ from the hanging scales. Diane shot her a scowl. Lynn smiled back.

  “Probably female,” said Diane of the remains on her table. “It’s a small skull.” She looked again at the wavy lock of hair, touching it with her gloved hand. “And this is a female hairstyle and clip.” She recorded the information on a form.

  Jin packaged the small piece of someone who only yesterday had been alive, labeled it, and put it on a trolley to be taken and stored in the refrigerated area of the trailer. He filed the hair root sample, then selected another small box containing body parts to be examined. It was the severed hand.

  “That’s odd,” said Jin. “It’s not even burned.”

  As if on some kind of psychic cue, Rankin looked up from an x-ray he was examining on a light table. “Did I hear you were carjacked last night?” he said.

  Diane cringed as everyone in hearing range stopped and stared at her. They had been working for three hours with little communication, other than task-oriented shoptalk-Lynn Webber commented that the victim she was working on died instantaneously, and Rankin said his might have died of smoke inhalation, he wasn’t sure. A little conversation was a welcome diversion and a rest.

  “Boss, you didn’t tell us about that?” said Jin.

  “I heard you locked him in your car,” continued Rankin. Allen Rankin was the ME for the city of Rosewood. He was younger than Pilgrim, more Webber’s age, and slim with brown hair, too even in color to be natural. He looked at Diane with interest, expecting the story.

  “Well, for heaven sake,” said Lynn, shaking her head. “What happened and how in the world did you lock him in your car?”

  “It happened when I was evacuating my apartment,” said Diane.

  “That’s right, you live near here,” said Rankin.

  “How did you find out about it?” asked Diane.

  “I have ears in the police department,” he said.

  They were all still staring at her, so Diane told the story about the kid with a gun and one hand.

  “He lost a hand,” exclaimed Jin looking down at the one lying on the table in front of him. “This hand?”

  “It would be my guess. He lost his right hand and this is the right hand of a male. I believe it was sheered off with a saw blade that came flying from the blast.” She retrieved a box from the long table containing unprocessed evidence that grew by the minute. She double-checked the label, initialed it, and opened the lid.

  “Ouch,” said Jin when he saw the bloody circular blade.

  “We’ll have to take a blood sample from it to be sure this is what did it. We can match the hand and blade with the blood in my car-and the kid.”

  “You think he was involved with the meth lab?” said Pilgrim. He and his assistant were making noise moving a cadaver to his table. Diane strained to hear over the rustling of the body bag. At least the body bags had arrived. At first they didn’t have enough and they had covered the victims with a clear plastic. Even the dieners thought it was creepy.

  “It seems likely,” she said. “If he was only a victim, what wa
s he doing with a gun?”

  “Exactly,” said Rankin. “Ironic thing is that he has the least injuries. All the other survivors have critical internal or brain injuries. He may be the only one who can shed light on this and I understand he’s lawyered up.”

  Diane heard several grunts of disapproval from people in the tent. It sounded like too many people. A constant parade of personnel came and went-bringing in bodies and evidence from the site, or delivering antemortem information from relatives, or paperwork from the police department. Diane hoped one of them was a gatekeeper. She didn’t like the idea of a reporter listening in on their conversations, or worse. She watched for a moment-all present were MEs, technicians or police, all people she recognized, all doing a job. And there were guards at the door.

  Diane focused her attention back on the hand lying on the table, palm up in a half-curled position. The thing she noticed first was that the nails were professionally manicured.

  “Has his nails done,” said Jin. “Not your average student.”

  “I wonder what the palm could tell us,” Diane said, attempting a smile.

  “That he has no future.”

  Jin responded so quickly that Diane looked over at him and raised an eyebrow. She was joking, but the authority in Jin’s voice surprised her.

  “The future is in the right palm, his past in the left.”

  “Oh?” Diane stared at him.

  “I used to date a girl who was into reading palms. That’s what she said.” He grinned broadly.

  She measured the hand and photographed it front and back, took samples from under the nails, swabbed the skin, and printed the fingers. Jin took a sample of tissue for DNA comparison. He handed her more remains.