Beverly Connor - Dead Past

“Look, Garnett, don’t lock me out of this. I need to know what you know. We can help and I’m very motivated.”

“I’m telling you all I know. This find in the warehouse here puts you back in the game. Right now I need to get back to the media. I’m hoping for some press that’ll stop Adler in his tracks. He’s hurt a lot of good men.”

“Would you get one of the patrolmen to give me a ride back to the lab? I’d like to start working on these bones.”

“Sure,” said Garnett. “Izzy’s here; I’ll get him to take you.”

“He’s working? I thought he’d be off mourning his son.”

“He’s due time off, but he wants to find out who did this, and I’m letting him help. I think he needs to be involved.”

“Poor guy,” said Diane. They emerged from the van and Garnett went to get Izzy. Diane got the box of bones and, hoping to look inconspicuous, stood behind the van. She looked up on the ridge and saw a beam of light extending from the ground upward like a small spotlight. She watched it for several moments. It didn’t move. Jin! she thought.

Diane opened the van, shoved the box of bones in, and raced up the hill. She slipped on the snow and scraped her knees through her pants.

“Damn!” she exclaimed, picking herself up and hurrying up the embankment.

At the top of the ridge she saw the flashlight leaning against a rock. She searched the ground quickly with the beam of her flashlight. Just as her light played on a hiking boot at the bottom of an embankment on the other side of the ridge, she heard a groan.

“Jin!” she shouted.

She ran down the embankment, half sliding on the rocks and snow, fortunately not falling.

She knelt beside him as he struggled to his knees. “Jin, what happened?” she asked. “Did you fall?”

“Fall?” He said confused. “No. I don’t think so.” He sat up. “Damn, my head hurts. He rubbed his hand on the back of his head. “Ouch!” He brought his hand back around. “It’s wet,” he said.

“Let me look.” She aimed her flashlight at the back of his head and parted his hair. “You have a cut and it looks like you’re going to have a sizable bump. You’re sure you didn’t fall? What’s the last thing you remember?”

Jin tried to stand up.

“Just sit there for a moment, and tell me what you remember.”

“I was kneeling down, digging at something I found,” said Jin.

“More evidence?”

Jin shook his head. “An arrowhead.”

“An arrowhead?”

“Yeah, milky quartz, looked like, from what Jonas called the Old Quartz Culture, about eight thousand years ago. There’s a zillion of those kinds of points in Georgia. Don’t you visit your own museum?”

“Yes, I know what the Old Quartz Culture is. That’s the last thing you remember-digging out the arrowhead?”

“Yes.”

“Someone hit you,” she said.

“Hit me?” Jin stood up suddenly and checked his pockets. “The cigarette butts are gone. Someone stole my cigarette butts. It had to be the killer. He was right here with me and I let him get away.”

“We don’t know it was the killer…,” began Diane.

“Who else would give a shit about cigarette butts? Jeez, I don’t believe this.” Jin retrieved his flashlight and began searching the ground.

“You all right up here?”

Diane looked up at the top of the ridge. It was Izzy Wallace. He was followed by Archie, the policeman from the morgue tent, and another patrolman Diane recognized as one of the two who helped her when Blake Stanton was locked in her car. The three of them came down the slope.

“We saw you running like a bat out of hell up the embankment,” said Izzy. “What happened?”

“It looks like someone hit Jin over the head and stole some evidence,” said Diane.

“Here?” said Archie. “While we were all down at the warehouse? Somebody was up here?”

“Looks like it,” said Diane.

Izzy saw Jin searching the ground. “What do we need to be looking for?” he asked.

“An evidence bag with cigarette butts,” said Jin. “Maybe I did fall and it just fell out of my pocket.”

“From the bump on the back of your head, I think you were hit,” said Diane. “You were unconscious for a while. You need to see a doctor.”

“I’m fine.”

“You need to do what she says, son,” said Archie. “We’ll search up here. If there’s anything to be found, we’ll find it.”

“Let them look, Jin.” She saw something on the ground and picked it up. It was the quartz arrowhead. She handed it to Jin.

“I’m sorry, Boss,” he said.

“That’s all right, Jin. None of us expected anyone to be up here, with all the police around.”

“There’s all kinds of roads and paths around here,” said the patrolman.

“He could have come and gone up any one of them,” he said.

“He was sure quiet,” said Jin.

“This snow,” said Archie. “It cushions your footsteps.”

“Come on, Jin,” Diane said. “I need to get back with the bones and you need to see a doctor.”

“Really, Boss…”

“That’s an order, Jin,” said Diane.

She, Jin, and Izzy worked their way down off the ridge by the light of their flashlights.

“I’ll be back for you, Archie,” called Izzy.

“No problem, Izzy,” he called back.

“You and Archie riding together?” said Diane.

“Yeah, temporarily. I’m not really back officially, and Archie usually works in the evidence locker. We’re just a couple of old guys waiting for retirement, trying to make a difference.”

Izzy wasn’t that old; neither was Archie for that matter-perhaps in their early fifties at most-but Diane imagined Izzy felt old right now. The death of a child puts the weight of the world on you.

Diane put Jin in the front, and she rode in the backseat.

“How are you and your wife doing, Izzy?” asked Diane.

“Not good. Her sister’s come to stay with us for a while. I need to find out who did all this. I’m supposed to protect people, and I can’t even protect my own son from the people I should be arresting.”

Diane could relate to that. She couldn’t protect her daughter from the man she’d been trying to bring to trial for the atrocities he committed. To say it makes you feel like a failure doesn’t even begin to describe the impact it has on you.

“Bobby Coleman’s mom tried to kill herself,” continued Izzy. “They’re saying it was an accidental overdose, but we all know different. You don’t plan on outliving your kids. It’s just too awful.”

It is, agreed Diane silently. Just too awful.

Izzy dropped Diane and Jin off at the museum and she drove Jin to the emergency room. She stayed in the waiting room until he came out.

“Nothing to it,” said Jin. “The doctor put three stitches in my head and told me to call if I have pain, nausea, or dizziness-usual stuff.”

“Didn’t he say to go home and rest?” said Diane.

“Well, yeah, but they always say that. They’re just covering themselves. I’m fine.”

Diane drove him home and watched as he went into his apartment building. She headed back to the museum, but just as she was about to turn the corner, she saw his car backing out of his parking space. He was going back to the warehouse. She shook her head, reached for her phone, and dialed David.

“How’s Jin?” said David.

“He’s fine. Got three stitches. I just called to tell you that I think he’s headed back to you guys. Watch him,” said Diane.

“We will. Neva will get on his case. That usually works.”

“Finding anything interesting?” asked Diane.

“The basement of the apartment house had a kitchen, so we’ve got lots of metal. We’re looking for anything we can trace back to a person, but mostly it’s just stuff that’s part of the house. We’ve found some bone. One looks like a piece of one of the long bones. But it’s slim. Has kind of an oval cross section.”