Dead Secret dffi-3

by Beverly Connor

  “The doctor said that the weapon you and Mike were stabbed with was as sharp as a scalpel, had a double edge and was at least six inches long,” said David. “My guess is it’s an expensive knife-or rather a dagger, since it was double-edged.”

  “Why do you say it was expensive?” asked Diane.

  “Because you can’t sharpen cheap steel as sharp as the knife that stabbed you and Mike was.”

  “So that’s something.”

  “He’s probably proficient with it,” said David.

  Diane raised her eyebrows and leaned forward. “How so?”

  “Because, relatively speaking, he did minimal damage,” said David. “An unsteady hand could have been much worse on the two of you. The doctor said Mike’s cut showed no evidence of rocking inside the wound, and it came out on the same plane that it went in. That’s a steady hand.” David made an underhanded stabbing gesture. “The angle was slightly upward-about five degrees from a level plane. He wasn’t taller than Mike. I’d say about the same height, maybe slightly shorter, but not by much.”

  Diane pinched the bridge of her nose, forcing herself to visualize Mike being stabbed, trying to get an image of the event. David was right: The guy had to be proficient to do it quickly and not be seen.

  “You okay with this, Boss?” asked Jin.

  “Yes. I’m all right. Go on.”

  “Your jacket had a slice almost equal to the length of your wound,” said Jin. “The knife went in; he sliced down and withdrew. All very neat.”

  Diane winced at his description. She saw both David and Jin grimace as well.

  “So what can we infer-he’s proficient with a knife and had no intention of killing, just maiming?”

  “I can’t say he had no intention of killing Mike,” said David. “He could easily have died.”

  Diane cast her eyes upward to stop the emotion that was threatening to spill tears into her eyes. If David and Jin noticed, they said nothing.

  “So all we know for sure is that he had an expensive knife and knew how to use it.”

  “That’s about it,” said Jin.

  “It’s a help. Did you tell Garnett all this?”

  Jin nodded. “We keep him up-to-date.”

  Diane was surprised at how much they had gotten done in just a few hours. “Good work. Okay. How about the other cases you processed while I was on vacation?

  One by one, Jin and David reported on all the pending cases and where they were in the process. When they finished, she complimented them on their thorough work and then asked about Caver Doe.

  “He’s not a priority, but did you have time to work on his effects?”

  Both David and Jin bobbed their heads. “Oh, yeah,” said Jin. “He was wearing a plain green plaid flannel shirt, but some really cool jeans. Levi’s, pre-1936.”

  Diane could see that Jin was dying to tell her about them. She waved a hand at him. “You have the floor,” she said, knowing he’d certainly take it.

  Jin stood. “Caver Doe’s jeans had a back cinch.” Jin turned and pointed to the back of his jeans-which did not have a cinch-and looked over his shoulder at Diane. “The back cinch was a little minibelt that tightened the waist. They were called waist overalls back then, not blue jeans.”

  Jin turned to face Diane. David sat up on the sofa, resting his forearms on his thighs and leaned forward, listening.

  “His jeans also have a crotch rivet.” Jin started to point, but stopped as a flush crept over his face. “Well, never mind. The crotch rivet and the back cinch were removed during World War Two to save on metal and fabric and never used again. That dates them to before the Second World War.

  “In 1937 the company changed the way they sewed the back pockets, so the material would cover the rivets. That was because the cowboys complained that the metal rivets scratched their saddles-they were marketing to cowboys, and cowboys were particular about their saddles. Caver Doe’s jeans also had suspender buttons. All that puts them before 1937. Now, what Caver Doe’s jeans didn’t have was a red label.”

  Jin turned and pointed to his left rear pocket, where a red Levi’s label was sewn, then faced her again, and for a minute Diane didn’t know if he was going to sit back down or break into a dance. Instead, he walked closer to her desk and looked earnestly at her.

  “I checked and there was never a red label sewn on Caver Doe’s jeans. The company started sewing the red label in 1936 so Levi’s could be recognized at a distance. Caver Doe’s jeans did have belt loops. Those were first added in 1922.”

  “So the time line for the jeans is between 1922 and 1936,” said Diane.

  “Yep.” Jin sat back down and leaned forward in the chair. “I found a lot of animal hairs on the jeans.”

  “That’s interesting. . ” Diane winced in pain. Her amusement at Jin’s demonstrative explanation of Caver Doe’s jeans had relieved Diane from some of the pain in her arm, but it was back-sharp pains, as if the knifer were stabbing her over and over again.

  “What’s wrong?” asked David. “You don’t look well.”

  “A little pain. I didn’t want to take any medication until I got home tonight.”

  “Take a pain pill. Jin and I’ll take you home when you want to go.”

  “I wanted to start on Caver Doe’s bones this afternoon.”

  David got up and went around to Diane’s small refrigerator hidden behind a walnut cabinet, took out a bottle of water and handed it to her. “Take a pill.”

  Diane fished out the bottle of extra-strength Tylenol rather than her prescription Percocet, took out a pill and downed it with a long drink of water. “David, it’s a good thing you are a friend.”

  “I know,” he said. “It lets me get away with a lot.”

  “What kind of animal hairs did you find on the jeans?” Diane asked.

  “Sylvilagus floridanus, Sciurus carolinensis, Equus caballus and Canis familiaris,” said Jin.

  Diane wrinkled her forehead. “So we have rabbit, squirrel, horse and dog. What color horse?” asked Diane, smiling at Jin.

  “Brown,” said Jin, grinning back at her. “The dog was black. The horse hair was clustered on the seat-looks like Caver Doe rode bareback and didn’t wash his jeans before going caving.”

  “We think he hunted squirrels and rabbits,” said David. “I suppose those were his all-purpose jeans-hunting, riding, caving. The lantern’s kind of nice too. It’s circa nineteen-thirties or — forties. We’re still looking into that.”

  “You’d better tell her about the book,” said Jin.

  “It was a perfectly reasonable purchase. We’ve bought many more expensive things,” David protested.

  Diane looked from Jin to David. “You bought something?”

  “A used dog-eared book on railroad-spike collecting, for seventy-five dollars,” Jin said.

  “Seventy-five dollars?” said Diane. “For a book on railroad spikes?”

  “We didn’t have a database of railroad spikes,” said David. “It was perfectly reasonable to get a book to start one. I couldn’t help it if the only one was out of print and rare.”

  “Do we really need a database of railroad spikes?” asked Diane.

  “We have two spikes in this case.”

  “And he read where last year someone used one as a murder weapon in Nevada,” said Jin in a mock defense.

  “I’ll admit there’s not a lot of call for it, but you never know what information a case will hinge on.”

  Diane shook her head. “Okay. So what about the button? We do have a database on buttons, as I recall.”

  David’s grin was so big that both Jin and Diane laughed at him.

  “Our button, it turns out, is rare. And it gives our time line a new date-provided the button actually has some connection to Caver Doe, which is really a long shot, because there were no fingerprints and nothing whatsoever to connect it to the caver, except that they were both in the cave.

  “Although our jeans may date from the thirties, our button dat
es from the forties. It’s a silver-plated plastic officer’s-uniform button specially commissioned for the newly authorized Army Specialist Corps. The buttons were never used because the secretary of war unauthorized-or whatever it is they do-the ASC before it went into effect. The only people to have them besides the manufacturer were the Philadelphia Quartermaster’s Department and a few colonels.”

  “I’m surprised,” said Diane. “I had no idea you would get that much from the button.”

  “How much is it worth?” asked Jin.

  “Couple hundred, maybe,” said David.

  “Damn,” said Jin.

  “It’s very rare.”

  “Tell her about the backpack,” said Jin.

  “The backpack was rare?” said Diane.

  David shook his head. No. It’s a World War One U.S. Army backpack. It’s what was in it. He had a lot of candles and matches, of course, and get this-a Mickey Mouse flashlight.”

  “A Mickey Mouse flashlight?”

  “Made by USALite. Shows Mickey Mouse walking in the dark with a flashlight. It dates to 1935. About ruined, though. It used two D-cell batteries, and they leaked all in it. It’s a shame; it was a cool light. He had extra batteries and they leaked too. The battery acid got all over a couple of handkerchiefs, the matches, and some candles.”

  “What about the picture?” asked Diane. “It was pretty soaked with blood and body fluids, as I remember.”

  “We photographed it in different kinds of light. I’m working on cleaning it,” said Jin. “Did you know that Korey has some of the same document-cleaning agents that we use?”

  “Yes,” said Diane. “The museum occasionally does the same kind of restorative work that we do here in the crime lab.”

  “I just thought it was kind of interesting,” said Jin.

  “Anything else?” asked Diane.

  “Caver Doe had a wad of cash in his pocket,” said Jin.

  Diane raised her eyebrows. “Oh?”

  “They were stuck together. I’m cleaning them. The bills I can see are ones, so I don’t think it’s going to be a lot of money.”

  “He also had a pencil and a key in his pocket,” said David. “The key looks like it belonged to something small, like a box. Didn’t see any strongboxes while you were in the tunnels, did you?”

  “No. I guess we’d better keep an eye out when we go back. Is that it?”

  “That’s all we know so far,” said Jin.

  “You know,” began David, “Jin, Neva and I thought we’d like to have a crime scene section in the museum with displays on what we do. . like the bottle reconstruction we did at the bar fight crime scene-how it’s like the potsherd analysis the archaeologists do.”

  “A crime scene section in the museum? You’re joking, aren’t you?” The medicine hadn’t kicked in yet and her arm was still throbbing. It was too early in the day for her to feel so bad now. She took another sip of water.

  “No, Boss,” said Jin. “You’re always getting flak because we’re housed in the west wing here. Why not show people what we do? It doesn’t have to be gruesome.”

  “Frankly, I’d never thought about that,” admitted Diane. She had always worked hard to keep them completely separate-with the exception of occasionally using the museum staff as consultants to the crime lab.

  “Jin’s right,” said David. “People would find trace analysis interesting, and they wouldn’t be so averse to our being here.”

  “I’ll give it some thought.”

  “And we could make some of our more innocuous databases available on a computer,” added David. “Not AFIS, CODIS or anything like that, of course.”

  “Some of David’s databases that we don’t use that often,” said Jin, “like buttons and railroad spikes, maybe feathers. Feathers are nice. You know, makes us not look so. . gruesome-just really weird.”

  “We would only be able to use the databases that are ours,” began Diane, when there was a muted knock on her door.

  “Yes?”

  Neva entered. She nodded at David and Jin, but the uneasy look on her face worried Diane.

  Chapter 14

  Jin jumped up and gave Neva his chair. “Mike okay?” he asked.

  Diane held her breath as Neva answered.

  “He’s doing good.” Neva’s hair was falling from the clasp that held it up in its casual twist. She smoothed the freed locks behind her ears. “They got him standing up. I just came here to check in; then I’m going home to get something to eat, take a shower and change clothes.” Neva smoothed her wrinkled shirt with her hands as she settled into the chair. “I’m going to spend the night at the hospital. He doesn’t really need me to, but he insists on not telling his parents until he’s well, and I think someone needs to be there.” Her gaze darted from David to Jin, then to Diane, as if waiting for permission.

  “I’m sure he’ll appreciate having you there,” said Diane.

  Neva’s downturned mouth and wrinkled brow looked to Diane as though she still had something to say, but was waiting to be alone with Diane and did not want to ask the others to leave. David’s and Jin’s eyes met Diane’s for a fraction of a second before the two men headed for the door. They were almost out when Jin turned and asked Neva if she’d heard from the company that made Moon Pies.

  Neva’s lips curved up in a small smile as she twisted around toward them. “It’s from the nineteen-forties. They sent me a chart and pictures of all their wrappers since 1917. Another database for David.”

  “Yeah,” said Jin, “a Moon Pie database. I’m going to enter it into a contest for the least-used database of all time.”

  David rolled his eyes and pulled Jin out the door with him.

  “Is Mike really okay? You look worried,” said Diane.

  Neva nodded. “They got him up and he walked around his room for a few minutes. He’s stiff, sore and really pissed at the guy who stabbed the two of you. The nurses said he’s doing great.”

  Neva didn’t say anything more, just sat in the chair looking small and uncomfortable.

  “What’s on your mind, Neva?”

  “This is really hard. I always keep confidences. I do. I’m good at that. But. . ” Tears welled up in her brown eyes and she looked like a doe about to make a run for it.

  Diane came around her desk and led Neva to the couch. They sat half-turned so they faced each other. Diane rested her injured arm on the back of the sofa.

  “But what?” she asked.

  Neva took a breath. “Mike’s being sexually harassed.”

  Diane didn’t know what she had expected Neva to tell her, but that wasn’t even on the list. She stared at Neva, openmouthed and speechless for a moment.

  “What?”

  “He asked me not to tell anyone, especially you.”

  “Why especially me?”

  She shrugged. “He might be afraid you’d think less of him.”

  “He should know better than that. Who’s doing it?”

  “Look, I know this is a bombshell I’m handing you, but please don’t tell him I told you. He’ll never trust me again. It’s just that Mike’s a really nice guy and deserves better-and now this has happened to him.”

  “Who’s harassing him? Someone here?”

  “Sort of, but mainly at Bartram University. Dr. Lymon, the geology professor.”

  That it was Dr. Lymon also surprised Diane. Dr. Annette Lymon was part of the faculty-exchange arrangement Diane had with various departments at the university-faculty serving as part-time curators in exchange for office and research space. It was a great money-saving system for the museum, which didn’t have a lot of money but did have a lot of space. Mike was Dr. Lymon’s graduate assistant.

  “Is he doing anything about it?”

  Neva shook her head. “He’s a guy, so he doesn’t believe anyone would take it seriously. But when he turned her down, he lost his assistantship.”

  Diane felt fire rise to her face. The wound in her arm tingled from the heat in her skin.
“I didn’t know he was losing his assistantship. When did this happen, and why doesn’t he file a complaint? He’s not shy.”

  “She came on to him about a month ago. She’s a professor. He’s a student. He says it doesn’t matter, that he can always sling hash until he graduates, and anyway, she’s not on his committee-whatever that means.”

  “It means she doesn’t get to judge his dissertation.”

  Diane thought for a moment. As she recalled, Annette Lymon was Mike’s major professor. Then she remembered that he had changed the focus of his dissertation from sedimentary structures-Lymon’s expertise-to crystallography several months ago, and changed major professors. Even though that predated the harassment by several months, Diane wondered if it was connected.

  There was something about Dr. Lymon that Diane remembered-last month she expressed a desire to step down from her museum post, which was a relief to Diane. It had been clear to her that Dr. Lymon didn’t enjoy working at the museum, even though it virtually doubled her research space. Plus, the manager for the geology collection had come to Diane and complained about Lymon’s work on several occasions since Lymon arrived-something managers rarely did.

  “Last month? Was that the first time?” asked Diane.

  Neva nodded. “It was completely out of the blue.” Her eyes narrowed to slits. “She grabbed him by the crotch and propositioned him. Then she got really upset when he turned her down.” Neva leaned forward. “It’s not just that. She came up to me in the parking lot and told me I’d better watch out, that Mike abused his last girlfriend. I didn’t believe her and told her so. Mike shows no signs of being an abuser. My cousin married one, and I know what they’re like. Even when they’re trying to make nice, I know what they’re like.”

  “You’re right, it’s not true,” said Diane. “I know what she’s referring to, and I also know it wasn’t Mike. He was trying to help the victim-as was I.”

  “I didn’t tell Mike what she said, but if she’s spreading it around. .”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “I know it’s asking a lot, but can you do it without letting Mike know I told you about the harassment?”