Beverly Connor - Dust to Dust

Diane introduced Hanks to her geology curator. They shook hands and Mike grinned at him. Mike often said it was entertaining to be with Diane and her team. He looked very entertained at the moment.

“And what are you doing out here?” asked Diane.

“I was at the hospital with some pictures for Marcella to look at. I hoped she might recognize some of Dildy’s day laborer friends as people who might have worked on her house. She didn’t. As I was leaving I saw the paramedics who brought me to the hospital the other day. They told me they had another run here tonight. Said something about some bones being found? Is that right?” he asked.

“We have several things to tell you,” said Diane, “so you’d better sit down.”

“Does Neva being followed have anything to do with this?” he asked.

From the set of his jaw, Diane could see he had gone from being amused by them to being suspicious again that Diane was leaving him out of the loop. He was probably wondering why she hadn’t called him.

“We believe it might,” said Diane. “The case has taken an unusual turn. And there could be someone after her.”

They started to sit down when a pair of headlights suddenly shined in the window, blinding them for a moment.

“Well, shit,” said Hanks. He unholstered his gun and went to the door and waited.

Diane and the others stood back with their arms folded. They heard two car doors slam. In a minute or so, they heard footfalls on the porch and a knock on the door.

“Everything okay in there?”

Hanks opened the door to the two policemen. Diane rose to greet them.

“We’re fine,” she said.

“Hi, Detective Hanks. Saw your vehicle. Guess you heard about all the excitement,” said one of the policemen.

Hanks nodded.

The policeman looked at Diane. “All clear around the road. Nothing going on. We’ll be out here making our rounds around the property,” he said.

Diane could see the two of them were trying very hard to be conscientious. Probably sitting in their car and making an occasional circuit would be fine.

“Thanks,” she said. “We’ll be here for a little while.”

He touched his hand to his hat and the two of them left.

Diane closed the door and grinned at Hanks. “It could happen to anyone. Want to renegotiate the thing about not letting us live that little episode down?”

Hanks smiled back. “I’m sure I wasn’t as energetic as all of you were in jumping to conclusions.”

“Perhaps not, but we sometimes exaggerate.” She smiled sweetly at him.

He laughed. “That sounds like blackmail.”

Thankfully, Hanks did seem to have a sense of humor and it seemed to have mellowed him again.

“I was just about to call you to tell you about the latest developments, when you showed up,” Diane said. “Have a seat and I’ll go through all of it with you.”

“Should we be using this woman’s house?” he asked.

“Marcella’s daughter gave my team permission to camp out in her living room while we carry out our experiments,” said Diane.

“Experiments?” he asked, laughing. “You’re conducting experiments? That sounds ominous.”

He chose a large leather chair to sit in. He stretched out his bad leg and shifted until he found a comfortable position. Diane was sure it was a relief not to have to wear the neck brace, but trying to go through a daily routine while your arm was in a sling and your leg hurt had to be difficult.

Neva sat leaning against Mike on one end of the sofa. David sat cross-legged in his sock feet on the other end. Diane chose the other stuffed chair, settled in comfortably, and started telling about the mask Marcella had been piecing together.

“When I saw her in the hospital, she told me to look at the inside of the pieces. I did and saw they had been molded over a human face.”

“You mean like a death mask?” he said.

“Could have been, but we didn’t know that. It could have been a life mask. But Marcella also told me to look at the sherds,” Diane said.

“You keep using that word, sherds . You talking about broken pieces of pottery?” he asked.

“Yes, exactly,” said Diane.

“Okay,” he said. “Just making sure I understand. Go ahead.”

Diane started to speak when he interrupted again. “Should he be here?” Hanks pointed to Mike. “No offense, buddy, but you’re a civilian.”

“Mike does consulting with the crime lab because of his knowledge of rocks and soils,” said Diane. “He helped rescue Hector from the well. And the experiment we are working on involves soil samples.”

Mike didn’t even blink. Diane didn’t tell Hanks that she hadn’t actually talked to Mike about the experiment. But she didn’t want to send Mike to wait outside. And it was true, after all, he did know about soils.

“Okay, go on,” said Hanks.

“Marcella told me to look at sherds she had assembled from the back part of the mask. I did, and found what looks like a cast of a sharp-force-trauma head wound,” she said.

“Now that’s interesting,” said Hanks. “So, the artist, or whoever, put the clay on over a head wound?”

“It looks that way. Some of the etching suggests the head was also shaved before making the mask,” said Diane.

“This is getting weird,” he said.

“We haven’t even gotten to weird yet,” said Diane. “Marcella, Dr. Payden, is an expert in pottery. She’s creating a reference collection of pottery sherds and thin sections for the museum. A thin section is a very thin slice of, in this case, a pottery sherd, mounted on a microscope slide to be examined under polarized light so that its various constituents can be identified. Before she came here, her work involved prehistoric pottery from Texas that was tempered with animal bones. She was surprised to find that the pottery she found buried here in her yard also had been tempered with bone.”

“I don’t get it. Are we talking about this being an archaeology-what do they call it-site, an archaeology site? A dig? Why are you telling me this?” he asked without rancor, but with a lot of curiosity.

“No. There is no bone-tempered pottery in the prehistory of Georgia,” said Diane.

She explained about what tempering is, how it gives a distinctive look and characteristics to pottery, and that in Georgia, common prehistoric tempers were fiber, shells, and grit.

“But this is not prehistoric. We are talking about modern pottery here. Are you with me?” she said.

“Not yet, but keep going,” said Hanks. “This is like watching the Discovery Channel. And I’m anxious to hear how your guy Hector got in the well. This is where all this is leading, right?”

Diane smiled. The others had been silent throughout her narration. It was the first time they had heard all of it. Mike hadn’t heard any of it.

“Marcella used a lab in Arizona to analyze her Texas pottery sherds to identify the species of animal bone used for the tempering. It’s a thing archaeologists like to know,” Diane said. “She sent samples of the pottery she found in her yard here to the lab to find out what species of animal was used in it. The lab called me at the museum when they couldn’t get in touch with Marcella. She was in the hospital. They were quite disturbed to discover that the species was human. I believe they faxed you a copy of their report.”

“Well, yeah, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of the damn thing.” Hanks leaned forward, openmouthed. “Are you telling me those pots she found were made out of human bone? Now, that is spooky.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Diane could see the surprise on Mike’s face. Neva smiled at him and patted his thigh.

“The clay used to make them had human bone mixed with it for temper. Yes,” said Diane.