Beverly Connor - Dead Past

“Sounds like it might be a radius.”

“We’ll bring all the bones to you. We’re thinking we’ll leave the other evidence here with a guard. Garnett’s bringing in an arson investigator whom he trusts to have a look.”

“Keep me informed.” Diane hung up the phone and drove the rest of the way to the museum. She parked by the outside elevator dedicated to the crime lab.

The night guard was already in the small first-floor reception room that contained the elevator. She spoke to him and rode up to the crime lab, keyed in her code, and, carrying the box of bones, walked through to her lab.

Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket just as she set the box down on the table. The display said LAURA HILLARD.

“Hi, Laura,” said Diane.

“I just called with some information. Juliet’s grandmother’s name is Ruby Torkel. She’s still alive and lives in Glendale-Marsh, Florida. She’s lived there all her life.”

“Just a minute, let me get a pen.”

Diane fished a pen from her purse, uncapped it, and looked around for a piece of paper. She found a pad in a drawer and wrote down the information.

“I don’t suppose you have a number.”

“Sure do.” Laura gave Diane the phone number. “Juliet says she’s rather cranky.”

“I deal with cranky every day. How is Juliet?”

“She’s good, considering the crime spree we’ve been having. I’m getting a lot of calls from people just needing to debrief and, unfortunately, from people needing help with their grief. Poor Juliet’s trying not to freak out over the murder in her apartment complex.”

“Her apartment complex? Where does she live?” asked Diane.

“Applewood Apartments. You know, where the Cipriano girl was murdered.”

“Juliet lives at Applewood? The poor girl. As if she doesn’t have enough problems.”

“Yes. She says it has everyone in the apartments calling locksmiths. All the people with a 131-something address similar to the victim’s are a little upset, including Juliet. She lives in 131 H. It was several buildings away from the murder apartment, 131 C, but it’s still spooky to have an address so similar to the murder victim’s.”

“What a coincidence,” said Diane.

“Yes, that’s what I told Juliet. When they ran out of the alphabet on those buildings, they started designating them AA, BB, and so on. Imagine how spooked the people are in 131 CC. Anyway, I know you’re busy, I just wanted to give you the info on her grandmother.”

“Thanks. I’ll get on it tomorrow,” Diane said. She flipped her phone shut and just stood in place for a moment. That’s odd, she thought. She slipped on a pair of gloves. It was an odd coincidence, too, that Joana Cipriano had blond hair and blue eyes-not as light as Juliet’s, but still, it was an odd coincidence. Diane felt a sense of unease as she started laying the bones out on the table.

Among the bones from the warehouse, a lot were missing and most were broken, either from the explosion and fire or from McNair’s handling. None of the carpels or tarsal bones were present, nor were the terminal phalanges of the hands and feet. In fact, all the smaller bones of the skeleton were missing.

There were more than one of several bones-two left femora, two first, ninth, and eleventh thoracic vertebrae, two right ulnae, four innominates, and three scapulae. Diane didn’t try to separate out the skeletons, but laid duplicate bones beside each other. It was a strange and sketchy skeleton, an incomplete bony overlapping of two victims.

Diane went into the vault, retrieved the bones collected from the apartment house basement, and laid them out on another table-not mixing bones that had a clear provenance with those that did not. She also brought out the partially reconstructed skull, fully expecting to find some of the missing parts among the new batch of bones.

She selected out all the skull fragments from the warehouse bones and began piecing them together. It was another long, painstaking process, but one she hoped would come close to putting the whole picture together. She had the back of the second cranium assembled when she looked at the clock on the wall and saw that it was in the wee hours of the morning. Time to quit. She left everything in place and locked the door behind her.

Because of the late hour and her exhaustion, she decided to stay the remainder of the night in her museum office. She’d slept on her couch before and had blankets and pillows for that purpose. She had a full bathroom, and a change of clothes in the closet.

The staff lounge was on the way to her office and she stopped to raid the vending machines of candy bars and peanuts to make up for missing dinner.

“What are you doing here so late, Dr. Fallon?” said the third-floor night security guard.

“Working. I think I’ll just stay the night here in my office,” she said.

“I don’t blame you; it’s too late to go home now,” he said.

Diane made her way back to her office, locked all the doors from the inside with the locks that only she had a key to, and settled in.

It was hard to get Izzy out of her mind. They’d never gotten along, but she felt great sympathy for him and his wife. Losing a child is something you never get over. This whole episode was just too tragic.

As she threw away her candy and peanut wrappers, she became aware of a chain of thought that had been trying to surface from somewhere deep in her mind. All along, she and Garnett had assumed the most likely motive for the murders was to shut Stanton and McNair up, to protect the kingpin behind the meth lab. Everyone assumed Blake Stanton was involved with the meth lab because when he tried to hijack her car he was obviously fleeing from the scene of the explosion. Then when the museum thefts came to light, the likely motive for Stanton’s murder changed and appeared to have something to do with his thievery.

But there was another, more compelling motive they needed to consider seriously-revenge for the killing of all those students.

The explosion touched a lot of people in ways that they would never get over. She could understand the righteous anger that would lead someone to want to wipe out the people behind it.

Jin was right, it probably was the killer’s cigarette butts. He-or she, but probably he-had suspected McNair and tailed him. The killer spied on McNair in the warehouse, saw how he was destroying evidence, and became convinced of his guilt.

Why did the killer suspect McNair in the first place? Because he spent more than he could afford on an arson investigator’s salary? If everyone thought his wife had money, why would his spending raise a red flag? There was something else, or perhaps a lot of little things, that pointed to him. Someone knew more than the police investigation about what was going on with McNair and, rather than revealing that information, they killed him.

Diane made up the couch, slipped on a sweat suit, and snuggled under the covers. She drifted off into a restless sleep and awoke in the morning with a feeling of anxiety. In the shower, she realized it was the Joana Cipriano murder that was bothering her-and the coincidence of the house numbers. And even though Juliet and Joana didn’t look alike up close, their descriptive similarities-same age, blond hair, and blue eyes-were disturbing. From a distance they would be very similar. However, there were many blond-haired, blue-eyed young women in the city. Half of them, thought Diane, worked in the museum. She tried to shake the feeling, but it wouldn’t go. Mainly because she didn’t believe in coincidences.

She got out of the shower, dried off, and dressed. The clothes hanging in her closet were a brown linen pantsuit and cream-colored silk blouse. The clothes weren’t as warm as she would have liked, but the suit had been in the closet since fall, and she hadn’t thought to change it for warmer clothes. She finished dressing, folded up her bed clothes, and unlocked her doors. She was at her desk working when Andie came in, followed by Garnett. Good.