Dead Past dffi-4

by Beverly Connor

  “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 Diane.

  “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.”

  “That’s good-I mean the more clues we have, the faster we can solve this thing,” said Jin. “Not that we have another dead body from the explosion.”

  “I’m hoping I have enough facial fragments for another reconstruction,” said Diane. “Carry on.”

  Diane worked her way down the embankment, slipping a couple of times in the snow. When she got back down she went inside, pulled Garnett away from the media, coaxed him into the van, and told him about the other person in the basement-and about Jin’s find.

  “This is good. I can tell the media how valuable information could have been lost if we hadn’t found where McNair hid it.”

  Get your mind off payback, thought Diane. “Have you found anyone alive who lived in the apartment house,” she asked. “What about the landlord? Who was renting the basement?”

  “No one was renting the basement, according to the landlord,” said Garnett. “I’ve got some men sitting on him. I can’t believe someone could have a lab in his house and not know about it. We’ve pushed him pretty far, but so far he’s not budging.”

  “How about residents? One of them could have allowed someone in the basement,” said Diane.

  “Most of them were killed in the explosion. There’s a kid who does have an apartment in the house. He went on vacation to Europe with his parents just before this happened. We’re hoping when he returns he’ll have some answers to your questions. I’ve got your drawing out there, no hits. I’ve sent it to the old members of the drug unit. I’m waiting to hear. Now, what do you have on the Stanton kid?”

  Diane told him about the museum thefts, his relationship with Darcy, the possibility that they were on a date and neither had any idea that there was a meth lab in the basement.

  “I’ll be damned. That puts a new face on it. Why did he try to jack your car?”

  Diane shrugged. “He was hurt and dazed after the explosion. He panicked. Maybe he really didn’t know what he was doing. He probably carried a gun as a macho thing. I don’t know and probably never will. But we have found no trace connection with him and McNair. Have you found any links?”

  “No,” Garnett confessed. “None whatsoever. They were both shot with Berettas, but not the same one. The two murders are so similar, but at the same time there are some important differences. This museum theft makes me think the similarities are simply coincidences.”

  “Look, Garnett, don’t lock me out of this. I need to know what you know. We can help and I’m very motivated.”

  “I’m telling you all I know. This find in the warehouse here puts you back in the game. Right now I need to get back to the media. I’m hoping for some press that’ll stop Adler in his tracks. He’s hurt a lot of good men.”

  “Would you get one of the patrolmen to give me a ride back to the lab? I’d like to start working on these bones.”

  “Sure,” said Garnett. “Izzy’s here; I’ll get him to take you.”

  “He’s working? I thought he’d be off mourning his son.”

  “He’s due time off, but he wants to find out who did this, and I’m letting him help. I think he needs to be involved.”

  “Poor guy,” said Diane. They emerged from the van and Garnett went to get Izzy. Diane got the box of bones and, hoping to look inconspicuous, stood behind the van. She looked up on the ridge and saw a beam of light extending from the ground upward like a small spotlight. She watched it for several moments. It didn’t move. Jin! she thought.

  Chapter 35

  Diane opened the van, shoved the box of bones in, and raced up the hill. She slipped on the snow and scraped her knees through her pants.

  “Damn!” she exclaimed, picking herself up and hurrying up the embankment.

  At the top of the ridge she saw the flashlight leaning against a rock. She searched the ground quickly with the beam of her flashlight. Just as her light played on a hiking boot at the bottom of an embankment on the other side of the ridge, she heard a groan.

  “Jin!” she shouted.

  She ran down the embankment, half sliding on the rocks and snow, fortunately not falling.

  She knelt beside him as he struggled to his knees. “Jin, what happened?” she asked. “Did you fall?”

  “Fall?” He said confused. “No. I don’t think so.” He sat up. “Damn, my head hurts. He rubbed his hand on the back of his head. “Ouch!” He brought his hand back around. “It’s wet,” he said.

  “Let me look.” She aimed her flashlight at the back of his head and parted his hair. “You have a cut and it looks like you’re going to have a sizable bump. You’re sure you didn’t fall? What’s the last thing you remember?”

  Jin tried to stand up.

  “Just sit there for a moment, and tell me what you remember.”

  “I was kneeling down, digging at something I found,” said Jin.

  “More evidence?”

  Jin shook his head. “An arrowhead.”

  “An arrowhead?”

  “Yeah, milky quartz, looked like, from what Jonas called the Old Quartz Culture, about eight thousand years ago. There’s a zillion of those kinds of points in Georgia. Don’t you visit your own museum?”

  “Yes, I know what the Old Quartz Culture is. That’s the last thing you remember-digging out the arrowhead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Someone hit you,” she said.

  “Hit me?” Jin stood up suddenly and checked his pockets. “The cigarette butts are gone. Someone stole my cigarette butts. It had to be the killer. He was right here with me and I let him get away.”

  “We don’t know it was the killer…,” began Diane.

  “Who else would give a shit about cigarette butts? Jeez, I don’t believe this.” Jin retrieved his flashlight and began searching the ground.

  “You all right up here?”

  Diane looked up at the top of the ridge. It was Izzy Wa
llace. He was followed by Archie, the policeman from the morgue tent, and another patrolman Diane recognized as one of the two who helped her when Blake Stanton was locked in her car. The three of them came down the slope.

  “We saw you running like a bat out of hell up the embankment,” said Izzy. “What happened?”

  “It looks like someone hit Jin over the head and stole some evidence,” said Diane.

  “Here?” said Archie. “While we were all down at the warehouse? Somebody was up here?”

  “Looks like it,” said Diane.

  Izzy saw Jin searching the ground. “What do we need to be looking for?” he asked.

  “An evidence bag with cigarette butts,” said Jin. “Maybe I did fall and it just fell out of my pocket.”

  “From the bump on the back of your head, I think you were hit,” said Diane. “You were unconscious for a while. You need to see a doctor.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You need to do what she says, son,” said Archie. “We’ll search up here. If there’s anything to be found, we’ll find it.”

  “Let them look, Jin.” She saw something on the ground and picked it up. It was the quartz arrowhead. She handed it to Jin.

  “I’m sorry, Boss,” he said.

  “That’s all right, Jin. None of us expected anyone to be up here, with all the police around.”

  “There’s all kinds of roads and paths around here,” said the patrolman.

  “He could have come and gone up any one of them,” he said.

  “He was sure quiet,” said Jin.

  “This snow,” said Archie. “It cushions your footsteps.”

  “Come on, Jin,” Diane said. “I need to get back with the bones and you need to see a doctor.”

  “Really, Boss…”

  “That’s an order, Jin,” said Diane.

  She, Jin, and Izzy worked their way down off the ridge by the light of their flashlights.

  “I’ll be back for you, Archie,” called Izzy.

  “No problem, Izzy,” he called back.

  “You and Archie riding together?” said Diane.

  “Yeah, temporarily. I’m not really back officially, and Archie usually works in the evidence locker. We’re just a couple of old guys waiting for retirement, trying to make a difference.”