Beverly Connor - Dead Past

“Sorry, oh, Dr. Fallon…”

It was Juliet Price, one of Diane’s museum employees. Juliet stopped abruptly, almost spilling her load of supplies. Her blond hair came loose from its clip and fell in her face. She looked wide-eyed at Diane as if she’d been caught at something.

“I… I took vacation time to help in the tent… ”

“That’s very good of you, Dr. Price,” said Diane. “I appreciate what you’re doing here. It’s a big help.” Diane used Juliet’s title, hoping to make her feel less like a kid playing hooky from school.

Juliet was extremely, pathologically, shy. She was actually underemployed at the museum, working below her qualifications, but her job allowed her to work by herself, and Juliet preferred working alone. She had even turned down a promotion when Diane offered her the more responsible position of collection manager. From the look of fear that had been on Juliet’s face at the prospect of the new job duties, Diane might just as well have told her the police were coming to arrest her.

Working in the hospitality tent with all its face-to-face interaction was a bold step of courage for Juliet. As she carried her tray of supplies to the table she nodded, and Diane thought she saw a wisp of a smile from her. Well, at least that’s progress, thought Diane.

As Diane started in Brewster Pilgrim’s direction with her steaming cup of coffee, someone laid a hand on her arm.

“Did I hear someone say you are identifying the… the students in the house?” The woman looked at Diane with wide blue, red-rimmed eyes. Her honey blond hair was limp and simply combed back. She wore a running suit that Diane knew to be expensive and running shoes that cost at least two hundred dollars. A mother of one of the students, Diane knew immediately.

“Yes.” Diane gave her a weak smile. She wished she could say, “No, I have nothing to do with this”-especially when looking into a parent’s sad eyes.

The woman thrust a folder into Diane’s hands. “These are pictures of my daughter. Please tell me if you’ve seen her.” She opened the folder and all but shoved it into Diane’s face.

“The police have a place set up over there”-Diane gestured toward the intake desk-“to bring pictures and…” She trailed off, not wanting to say samples of DNA. Nor did she want to say the truth-that no one was recognizable.

Diane unconsciously backed up as she looked down at the picture of a beautiful young woman of fair complexion and long blond hair with a gentle wave held back from her face with a blue clip. An electric shock rippled through her and she tried not to let her face reveal anything. After all, there was no way to visually identify a person by a lock of hair… but it looked so much like the lock that had been on her table. Diane stepped back half a step. She was now up against the table.

“They won’t tell me anything… please…”

The woman flipped through the pictures of her daughter, showing them to Diane-confirmation, ballet, prom, graduation. A life in an instant. Diane wanted to cry.

“I know waiting is painful. The process is slow… We are working as quickly as we can. As soon as we know anything definite…”

“You don’t understand,” she said. Tears welled up in her eyes. “I have to know something. I can’t find my daughter.”

That last statement pierced Diane through her heart. How many times had she uttered the same words in the jungle when she couldn’t find Ariel, her daughter who was killed with many of her friends in the mission-massacred to stop the human rights investigations her team were doing in South America. Diane dropped the doughnut as she grasped the table behind her.

“I’m sorry… ” Diane began fumbling for words.

“Mrs. Reynolds.” Jere Bowden had appeared at the woman’s side and put an arm around her shoulder. “You remember me, we are in the same Sunday school class. Waiting is so hard. Let us wait with you. Please come sit down with some hot cocoa; then I’ll go with you to talk to the police officer again.”

Diane watched Mrs. Bowden lead the grief-stricken mother to a chair and sit down with her. Mrs. Reynolds clutched the photographs in her lap as if she were hanging on to her daughter. Diane supposed she was. Shane took her a steaming cup of something. Diane started toward Brewster with her cup of coffee, but he was walking toward her. She took a sip. It burned her tongue.

“Here, this is more relaxing.” Leslie handed her a cup of cocoa with a marshmallow floating on top, took her coffee, and put it on the table.

“Thank you, Leslie. You and your family are very kind,” said Diane.

Leslie cradled her belly. “I can’t imagine what it’s like waiting to find out if your child has been killed. It’s simply awful.”

“Yes, it is,” whispered Diane.

Brewster reached her and took her arm. “Why don’t we walk back together. This is no place for us. We’ll send out for coffee from now on. I think we need to work only a couple more hours today, anyway. We need sleep to do a good job.”

Diane agreed. She looked back at the woman, who broke down in sobs that racked her body as she was being led to a chair by Archie and Jere Bowden. The short interaction with the mother had tired Diane in a way that working over human remains for hours had not. They walked quietly back to the morgue tent. Diane sipped on her hot chocolate. Leslie was right. It was more comforting.

Diane took up her station again. Rankin and Webber were still going strong. Jin had put another collection of charred bones on her table.

“You need to take a break?” she asked Jin.

“I’m good,” he said.

Diane pulled on a pair of gloves and examined the bones before her and the photograph of them in the location where they were found. Just as she was about to pick up a femur, Detective Frank Duncan, her friend and lover, walked into the tent and headed for her. Back early, she thought as her heart skipped a beat. She smiled at the sight of him, but it froze on her face when she saw his handsome features creased into a frown-and the fear in his eyes.

“I can’t find Star,” he said when he reached her table.

Diane stared blankly at Frank’s face; her mind hit a wall, rejecting what he was telling her. She slumped and barely felt Jin grasp her arm and steer her to a stool just as her legs gave way. Across the expanse of the tent, the tables-Lynn Webber’s, Allen Rankin’s, Brewster Pilgrim’s-all were laid out with bodies, any one of which might be… and the bones on her own table… Please God, not Star, not Star.

The MEs stopped what they were doing and looked from Frank to Diane, worry evident in their eyes as they viewed with new concern the remains of corpses and personal items on the tables before them. The officer organizing the incoming samples seemed about to say something, but closed his mouth, his forlorn expression deepening. Grover looked profoundly sad.

Only a couple of them, Jin and Lynn Webber, actually knew Star, but most knew Frank. A lifelong resident of Rosewood, he served the Atlanta police department as a detective in the Fraud and Computer Crimes unit. And all knew Star’s story. The little runaway teenage girl accused of the murder of her parents and brother. She had become Frank’s ward through her parents’ last will and testament, and he had made her his adopted daughter. Diane had freed her of the murder accusations by finding the real killer. Star was in her first year at Bartram University partly because Diane had promised her a shopping trip to Paris if she would give college an honest try.

“What do you mean, you don’t know where she is?” asked Diane as if his words hadn’t made sense.