Beverly Connor - Dust to Dust

Hanks put his hands on his face and rubbed his eyes. “You people know how to do weird. I’ll give you that,” he said.

“After discovering those two things-the sharp-force trauma and the human-bone tempering-it was incumbent on us to search for human remains on the property. I decided we would conduct a study David had been wanting to do. It involves developing quicker methods for finding buried human remains. Starting in the backyard, he and two technicians from the DNA lab were using stakes and string to grid the property into squares. They would then take soil samples at defined increments and analyze them for their chemical constituents. Decomposing remains leave chemical signatures. We don’t know the range of the affected area for soil conditions in this region. The study was designed to answer some of the questions we don’t yet have answers for, and to locate any remains that are here.” Diane stopped to let it all soak in.

“Couldn’t you use cadaver dogs?” he asked.

“We suspect the remains could be decades old. The context in which Marcella found the broken pottery suggested the 1950s,” said Diane.

“Okay, so I take it your… experiment worked,” he said.

“In a rather serendipitous way,” said Diane. “While they were putting up stakes and strings for the grid, Hector fell into an abandoned well. It had been capped with wood that was covered in dirt and vegetation and had rotted over the years. The bone he discovered was at the bottom of the well. We suspect there are more,” said Diane.

“Couldn’t the bone be from a deer or something?” said Hanks. “People do throw dead animals down dry wells to get rid of the carcasses.”

Diane was surprised at how often she was asked that question. Even Frank had made a similar query at one time. She wondered whether they really thought it was hard to tell the difference between animal and human or if they thought the skull was required in order to make a positive species ID.

“No,” she said simply.

“Seriously, should we get the medical examiner to take a look?” he said.

“You can if you want,” said Diane. “But it’s a right human tibia of someone in their teens. Possibly female, but that’s not certain. What is certain is that it is human.”

“I take it you’ve done this before,” he said.

Diane found it hard to believe that he didn’t know. But he was relatively new to Rosewood and apparently knew her only as the director of the crime lab and the museum.

“I’m a forensic anthropologist,” said Diane.

He winced and saw that David, Neva, and Mike were grinning at him. “Okay, I wasn’t aware. Do you know how long it was in the well?” he asked.

“Probably more than fifty years. There is a particular smell the marrow leaves that lasts for decades in buried bone. That was gone. The bone had taken on the color of the surrounding soil, indicating it had been buried for most of its tenure in the well,” she said.

“Where is it now?” he asked.

“In my car, wrapped in newsprint. We’ll have to get someone out here to stabilize the sides of the well so we can get the remaining bones out.”

“So, now you don’t have to complete your study,” he said.

“Oh yes,” said Diane. “Just because we found bones in the well doesn’t mean the yard isn’t full of buried bodies.”

“Oh, I see,” said Hanks. “So we could have lots more bodies?” He stared at Diane. “Are you serious? This could be a… some maniac’s burial ground?” He shifted in his chair, winced suddenly, and rubbed his shoulder. “Damn it,” he said. “Sorry.”

David got up and went to a cooler he had tucked in a corner of the room and brought everyone a cold drink. Diane took a long sip. It was a cool evening, but the ice-cold drink still tasted good.

“Any idea who this serial killer is? We are talking about a serial killer, aren’t we?” he said. “And as wildly interesting as this is, it looks like it all happened a long time ago. Does it have anything to do with the here and now?” He took a drink and held the cool bottle on his collarbone.

“Some kind of killer,” said Diane. “At best, someone who illegally disposed of a body. I don’t know that we have a whole yard full of bodies. We may have only the one in the well. As for a player in this, we have a few ideas. We think the ceramic artist might be the same one who wrote the strange message on the bottom of the desk drawer, and the one who did the paintings that were stolen.” Diane pointed to the wall over the sofa. David, Neva, and Mike turned to look at the blank wall as if a shadowy image might remain.

“Why the pictures?” he asked. “They were painted by this Mad Potter?” Hanks asked.

“I don’t know for sure,” said Diane. “We do know the pictures were signed by the artist with a drawing of a bird. The paramedic’s grandmother-”

“Wait, you lost me. The paramedic’s grandmother? What paramedic? The ones who came here?” said Hanks.

Diane explained that the paramedic who tended to Hector was familiar with the place, and his grandmother had knowledge of the house from when she was a teenager.

“Humph, small world,” Hanks said, and took another drink.

Diane found that explaining the whole train of thought out loud, paired with what evidence they had and didn’t have, was helpful to her understanding. She hoped Hanks found it illuminating, but he seemed more entertained than anything else.

Diane mentioned her thought that the initials MAG in the signature on the desk drawer might be symbolized by the picture of a bird. Hanks wasn’t impressed with that. She didn’t blame him. It sounded rather silly when she repeated it out loud to a skeptical ear.

“I get that, because the thieves stole the old paintings, it looks like the attack on Dr. Payden and the theft could have something to do with the old bones-and where the bones came from. But, frankly, that bird thing is a stretch,” he said. “The whole past-present thing is a stretch.” He brought the hand holding his drink up to his face and rubbed his eye with a free finger.

“There’s also Marcella’s pottery that was stolen,” said Diane. “We speculated the thieves thought they were taking valuable Indian artifacts. But consider that Marcella’s pottery and the pieces found here on the property were all fired on a bonfire kiln, which gave all of them the same distinctive appearance. The thieves might have been after pottery made by the Mad Potter, as you so colorfully call him or her, and took Marcella’s pieces by mistake.”

“Perhaps, but that connection is so tenuous, it really doesn’t bear spending time on, really. No offense. Not that we don’t need to find out who might be buried here, but, like I said, it looks like it was a long time ago and doesn’t have anything to do with the attack on Dr. Payden. And I’m more concerned about that. I’m sorry, but there it is,” he said.

Diane smiled at him. “So it would seem. But here’s the kicker.” Diane leaned forward, resting her forearms on her knees. “Neva has been tracing the ownership and history of this house-retracing Marcella’s steps as she tried to discover the home’s pedigree. That search took them both to the courthouse and the historical society. Yesterday at the historical society, Neva met a volunteer named Mary Phyllis Lassiter,” Diane said.

“That name sounds familiar,” Hanks said.

“You may have heard it on the news. Neva and Izzy processed her crime scene today. She was strangled in her home overnight,” said Diane.

He looked startled. “Okay, I’ll grant you, that’s an interesting coincidence,” he said.

“More than coincidence. Izzy called just before you arrived,” said Diane. “He’s working late at the crime lab processing the evidence. At the Lassiter crime scene they found the same expensive hiking boot print that we found here when Marcella was attacked-not just from the same kind of boot,” said Diane. “The same boot.”