Beverly Connor - Dead Secret

She stepped out of the small room, taking the tray containing the tiny something with her. Mounting the object on a glass slide, she slipped it on the microscope stage and looked through the eyepieces, moving the focus until she could see it. It looked plastic and translucent-almost like a head with a tail. She moved it with her tweezers. It was some kind of tube with a rounded something attached to one end. Diane turned it over, trying to figure out what it could be. The other side was marred by an imperfection. She twisted the focus knob. Not an imperfection, but something stamped or engraved into it. She increased the magnification and refocused. It was a string of digits-a number.

Diane wrote down the numbers, then attached the digital camera to the microscope and photographed the tiny object. When she finished taking several shots on each side and at different magnifications, she took the memory stick from the camera to the vault where her computers were.

The vault was a secure, environmentally controlled room where she stored skeletal remains. It was also where she kept her special computer equipment and software. With her forensic software, using a few bone measurements from a skeleton she could make accurate predictions about a victim’s race, sex and a host of other variables. She could enter skull and facial measurements into another program and it would predict with a fair degree of accuracy what country or demographic region the individual came from.

She also had three-D facial-reconstruction equipment-a laser scanner that mapped skulls, and a dedicated computer with software for building a face from the data. When she discovered that Neva was an artist, she had taught her how to use the equipment, and they had been able to get identification of several victims from Neva’s artistic reconstructions. Neva had also given a face to the mummy that the museum inherited-all with the help of the equipment. It was a pretty high-tech room.

The vault also had a plain, ordinary office computer. As she entered the room she saw Caver Doe on a table in the corner, waiting for his examination to be finished. She looked at her watch. Not today, maybe tomorrow.

Diane booted up the computer, put in the memory stick and looked at the pictures she had taken of the object from Jane Doe’s eye socket. She sat back in the chair and stared at the image-a tube attached to something round, with a number, and found in the eye socket. Something medical? What medical thing would be in the eye?

She logged on to the Internet and ran a Google search on medical devices and eyes. As she browsed through the hits, several words and phrases kept appearing dealing with glaucoma, eye pressure and drainage devices. She searched on those terms, and the first hit contained a diagram of a device that looked remarkably like what she had found-a tube shunt. She searched again using the terms eye shunts and glaucoma and came up with over eight hundred hits. She clicked the Images button in Google, and pictures of eye shunts scrolled across the screen. She didn’t even have to enlarge the pictures to see that she was right. What she was looking at were many variations on the device she had found-an eye shunt, a treatment for glaucoma. If the number on the shunt was a serial number, could it be traced? Diane smiled to herself with satisfaction. She loved unexpected discoveries.

Diane turned off the computer. As she locked the vault behind her, the thought of the thieves crossed her mind, and she shivered with a combination of fear and relief that they hadn’t broken into the vault containing all that expensive equipment-and data.

She secured the shunt in an evidence bag and took it to the lab, along with the gold ring and pieces of clothing. David was there looking for fingerprints on the photograph.

“I found something interesting,” she said as she put the memory stick in the lab computer and called up the pictures.

“What is that?” said David. “Looks sort of like a robotic sperm, or perhaps an android tadpole.”

“It’s an eye shunt. It’s used in glaucoma patients to drain the eye fluid and relieve pressure.”

“Where did you find it?”

“In Jane Doe’s eye socket. The best part is, this little deal has a serial number.” Diane looked at him and grinned broadly.

“Well, damn, I wonder if we can track her from the number?”

“We can try.”

“I’ll get on it when I finish here. I took a swab of the photograph before I dusted it for prints. Besides dirt, there was some other stuff on it.”

“Work’s piling up, isn’t it?”

“Have you thought about hiring an extra person?” said David.

“I’ve thought about it. What I haven’t thought about is how to approach Chief Garnett. Let’s get through this. We’ll do a time audit on ourselves and I’ll make a proposal to him. When he finds out we all have to work overtime just to get the normal work done, perhaps he’ll let me hire additional criminalists.”

“It would be good. You’re only supposed to be part-time. If I’m not mistaken, you work full-time in both your jobs. Not much time for a life away from the office.”

“Frank has to work long hours too, so we’re well suited in that respect.”

“Why don’t you two get married?”

“Why don’t you mind your own business?” she said without rancor. “Things are good the way they are.” Diane wondered why everyone wanted her to marry. Things were just fine.

David opened his mouth and shut it again. “You and Frank seem like a good match to me,” he said finally. “You are always happy together. At least move away from those neighbors.” He looked at the photograph. “No prints, just smears.”

“I have been thinking about a house,” said Diane.

“It’s good to have goals outside of work,” said David. “Dead bodies can start weighing on your psyche. . as you know.”

“How about you? What would you like to do?”

“I’ve been considering teaching some photography courses at the tech school.”

“We have workshops at the museum. Why don’t you work up a plan and submit it to me-like bird photography?” suggested Diane. “You can make an exhibit of your bird photographs.”

David looked up from his work, surprised. “That’s a good idea. I’d like that. I would. There are a lot of nice places on the nature trail to get pictures. Thanks. I’ll do that.” He nodded his head up and down. “Yeah. Good idea.”

“Unless you have any more suggestions about my private life, I need to finish Mrs. Doe.”

“Mrs.?”

“A guess. There’s a wedding band among the detritus. No engraving.” Diane put the evidence in one of the drawers and labeled it JANE DOE.

Diane went back to the lab and worked on Jane Doe. A sad-sounding name , she thought. Jane Doe lying dead in the woods, and no one knowing where you are or who you are.

She examined the pelvis and discovered that Jane had probably given birth. She had arthritis in the knees, hands, shoulders and back. Her pelvis was thin, and so were several of her vertebrae. Her left radius was broken, and there was no sign of healing. Deputy Singer hadn’t done it with his shovel. It had happened around the time she died. The deputy had broken two of her ribs, however.

Jane Doe was Caucasoid, in her eighties, and was about five feet, two inches tall and stooped when she walked. She was left-handed. She was a small, elderly woman, and someone broke her arm, strangled her, cut her with a knife from head to toe and dumped her body in the woods for Deputy Singer to come along and violate with his shovel.

Diane hoped it wasn’t a serial killer. She didn’t want to think about more anonymous people lying alone in the woods waiting to be found. She took Jane Doe’s bones in the other room, where she had a colony of dermestid beetles. Nothing could clean bones like they could. Their mouth parts were enormously strong for their small size, and they loved dried flesh. The dermestarium was kept separate from the room where the bodies were examined to reduce the chance the colony would be contaminated by mites that lived on beetles from the wild. A mite infestation could wipe them out. The museum’s colony came from a supply house and were free of pests.