Beverly Connor - Dust to Dust

She examined the skull of the female. It was small with nice, even teeth, but they were starting to decay. Without intervention they wouldn’t have stayed nice for very much longer. Was she homeless? Poor?

Diane fit the mandible, the lower jaw, to the maxilla, the upper jaw, and held them together with one hand. She placed the reconstructed ceramic mask over the face.

It was a perfect fit.

Diane set the mask aside, a mask she strongly suspected was made of clay tempered with the crushed bones of its subject. When she had first seen it sitting in Marcella’s workroom, she was struck by its beauty. She saw now that the beauty was in the young girl. The mask was simply the product of a cruel and arrogant mind.

As she was about to lay the mandible aside, Diane’s eye stopped on a disfiguration showing through the dirt stains. It was a healed fracture-a disturbing sign, evidence of an older severe injury. She laid the young girl’s mandible on the table and turned the skull over in her hands and looked at the back of it. The cut extended vertically across the parietal and occipital of the skull. It looked to have been made by a heavy bladed weapon, most likely an axe or a hatchet. From the size and depth of the cut, it was clear the sharp edge of the weapon would have gone into the brain. There was no doubt this wound would have killed her.

Diane picked up the broken pieces of pottery containing what appeared to be an impression of the head wound. Accounting for the thickness of the skin and tissue on the skull at the time the clay was applied to the head, the mold looked to be a fit. At this point she could not say with certainty that the pottery sherds were or were not impressions of this skull wound. A microscopic examination of the pattern of the mold and the wound would be more definitive.

She photographed the skull and the mask to show the direct comparison. Next, she photographed the healed fracture on the mandible. After that, she did the measurements of the skull at all the craniometric points, recording each. Doing the measurements provided some momentary relief to Diane. The math helped her keep the objectivity and emotional distance she needed in the face of the terrible cruelty she saw in the bones.

When she finished examining the skull, she placed it on the table with the rest of the brown-gray stained skeleton. These bones had a sad story to tell, aside from the terrible trauma of the fatal head injury and the severed limbs. There was the healed fracture of the mandible. Three ribs had been broken and healed. Both the left and right radii of the arms contained healed fractures caused by the young girl’s arms being twisted. The femur had been broken and healed in her lifetime. The femur was a big strong bone, not easy to break. If it was broken, it was because it met with a sizeable force. The young teen had been abused for years before she was murdered. Diane wondered whether she ever had any joy in her life.

As Diane finished and packed up the first set of bones, David, Neva, and Scott came in with the remaining contents of the well.

“You doing okay?” David said.

The three of them gathered around her as if there were something they could discern in her appearance if they looked closely enough.

“I’m fine,” said Diane.

“I heard the other guy’s not doing as well,” said David.

Diane frowned.

“I see Garnett sent guards,” said Neva. “They’re downstairs in the lobby.”

Diane nodded. “Until they find out who sent him-and why-I’m using the office here,” she said.

“Good idea,” said David. “It’s more defensible.”

“David said the guy last night is related to what’s his name-that Dildy guy,” said Neva. “Why are you being targeted?”

“I don’t know,” said Diane. “It makes no sense. But I intend to find out. I just don’t know how, right now.”

“If the answer lies in Marcella’s well,” said David, “I think we may be able to crack it.”

“Oh?” Diane pulled off her gloves and washed her hands. “Come into the office and tell me what you found.”

Diane’s osteology office was more spartan than her museum office and it was a good deal smaller. The walls were painted an off-white cream color that she had hoped would give the room a warm glow. It hadn’t. The floor was green slate. She hadn’t wanted the static electricity or fibers that a carpet would generate. The desk and filing cabinets were a dark walnut. The comforts in the room were a long burgundy leather couch that sat against one wall, a matching chair, and a small refrigerator in the corner. A watercolor of a lone wolf hunting was the only decoration.

Scott looked around the room. “This is nice,” he said, sitting down on one end of the sofa. David sat on the other end and Neva took the chair.

Diane got everyone a drink from the fridge before she sat behind her desk.

“How’s Hector doing?” she asked Scott.

He bobbed his head up and down. “He’s doing okay. He’s learning to maneuver on crutches and thinks he can now come back to work. I think he needs a few more days’ healing. They had to put a pin in his leg.” Scott screwed his face into a painful-looking grimace.

“The tibia is a long, thin bone,” said Diane. “It needs the support. Tell him we are all thinking about him.”

“He sure hates to miss all the work,” he said.

Diane could see he meant it. Hector and Scott apparently loved work.

“So,” she asked David, “what have you found? Smoking gun? Fingerprints?”

“Funny you should mention that,” he said. “Under the remaining bones we found several items of interest. You know how there were two hammers-a large one and a smaller one? There were two axes, actually an axe and a hatchet.”

“Possibly the murder and dismembering weapons,” said Diane.

“That’s what we think,” said Neva.

“They are rusted, and the wooden handles are mostly rotted away, but we may be able to do something with them,” said David. “But what was under the axes is really great,” he said. “We found a zippered case with sculpting tools in it. Because they were closed up, the wooden handles are in better condition. They have dark stains that I think are blood and-drum roll, please-there are fingerprints in the blood.”

Diane opened her mouth in surprise. “Fifty-year-old fingerprints? Are you serious?”

“It gets better,” said David. “They also threw unused clay down the well. You know how clay is. Think about those little bull figures from Çatal Höyük in the Old World archaeology section of the museum. They have those ancient fingerprints all over them. Clay is really good for that.”

“That’s a gold mine,” said Diane. “That’s amazing.”

“We think so,” said Neva. “They just threw all the incriminating evidence down the well and covered it over. We can do a lot with it.”

“Well-done,” said Diane.

“The credit goes to those who tried to get rid of the evidence,” said David. “I wish all our perpetrators were so accommodating.”

“It’s almost as if they put the evidence in a time capsule,” said Scott. “We’re going to try to get DNA from the blood. No guarantees, but if we do, it will be a good paper. Speaking of which, there is just no DNA in the pottery sherds. Even in a bonfire kiln, it’s just too hot,” he said.

“I didn’t think it would work, but I appreciate your trying,” said Diane. “You never know until you try.”

Just as she was about to heap more praise on them, the phone on her desk rang.

“Yes,” she said.

“Diane, this is Ross. I know this is short notice, but Detective Fisher from Gainesville, who was the detective in charge of the Stacy Dance case, wants to come over and have a look at the evidence. He wants to bring the medical examiner, Doppelmeyer, and he wants Dr. Webber to be there.”