Beverly Connor - One Grave Too Many

People in leadership gather like-minded people around them-not simply like-minded, but people of similar morality. With good leaders, it can be a good thing. With ill-intentioned ones, it is a nest of vipers. She’d seen it in petty dictators, petty bureaucrats and now here in her hometown’s government. She resolved right at that moment to defeat it-to defeat them, to humiliate them, to rub their noses in their own incompetence.

“Andie,” Diane called without taking her gaze from Warrick’s. Andie hurried into the room, and from the look on her face, she had clearly been listening. “Show this woman out, and she is never to set foot in this private area of the museum again. If she does, call security.”

“Ms. Fallon. .” Warrick began. Her face looked suddenly less angry. “I’m just trying to do my job.”

“Anything else you have to say to me is irrelevant. We’re finished.”

“I can see my way out.” She turned on her heels and walked out of the office.

“You all right?” asked Andie. “I heard what she said.”

“I’m fine. But I’d sure like to arrange for one of the dinosaurs to fall on her.”

A knock on the door brought both their heads around. It was Jonas, looking like he just came in from the field.

“We brought the bones in,” he said. “I just left them with Korey, and he locked them in the storage vault.”

“Were you able to find the skull?”

Jonas shook his head. “Not yet. But we’ve got a ways to go to get to the bottom of the pit.”

“I really can’t thank you enough,” said Diane.

“No, it’s me who’s grateful. My old department wasn’t mine anymore. When you retire, they seem to think all your knowledge retires with you. I got hints every day about how they needed office space. This is heaven-sent for me. It’s like starting a new career.”

“Why don’t you spend the night at your house tonight?” said Diane.

“I’m going to do just that. Have a long soak in the tub and then listen to some Bach with a bottle of beer.”

“Sounds like something I’d like to do.”

After Jonas left, Diane headed for the conservation lab. Korey was still working on separating the papers found in the basement. He had several single sheets laid out on a table.

“You working alone tonight?”

“Yep. Hope I don’t need an alibi later on.”

Diane smiled at him, as though it was a joke, but she could see he was only half joking. “Anything interesting in the papers from the basement?”

“I haven’t read any of them thoroughly yet. A lot are written in this spidery handwriting that’s hard to read. But yeah, there’s some requisition forms to a veterinary college for a series of calf fetuses, and one to a guy in Utah about some fossil dinosaur eggs. I wonder where those ended up. I guess in someone’s private collection. There was a cool 1849 map of the United States. I sent that and an interesting collection of drawings off to be processed at another lab. The drawings looked like they were the original plans for the dinosaur murals in the big rooms.” Korey grinned.

“That is interesting. Go ahead and let the exhibit planner-” Diane had gotten into the bad habit of referring to her staff by their titles rather than their names. She needed to break herself of that. “Let Audra know the kind of things you’re finding so she can start on some ideas.”

“I talked with her this morning.”

“Good. Korey, I hope you don’t mind if I use the lab here to look at these bones. I was going to set up a separate one on the third floor, but the storage vault in this room is one of the safest places. The last intruders couldn’t open the vault.”

“You think maybe the break-in was about your bones?”

“Yes, I do. I think they were looking for the clavicle that started all this.”

“There’s a table in the vault. I can clear it off and you can use it. That way you won’t have to keep packing it up and taking it out. It’s kind of cool in there, though.”

“I’ll wear a sweater.”

Diane helped Korey rearrange the storage room so she could work. They collected all the measuring equipment Andie had put in the third-floor room and brought it back to the vault.

“Need any help?” asked Korey.

Diane shook her head. “I’ve already pulled Jonas and Sylvia in. I can’t tie up the entire museum staff.”

“It’s kind of interesting, though.”

Korey watched Diane lay the bones in anatomical position on the metal table.

“It’s hard to imagine the poor guy was ever alive. You think you can get him to talk to you?” he asked.

“Oh, yes. He’ll tell me all about himself. Murderers don’t know how eloquent bones can be.”

Most of the bones of the human skeleton were accounted for, with the notable exception of the skull. Even the atlas, the bone that the skull rests on, was there. Diane examined it with her hand lens. She closely inspected each of the other bones of the neck.

“No marks,” she said.

“So that means that the murderer didn’t cut off the head and take it with him?” asked Korey.

“Probably not. It’d be hard to do it without making cutting marks on the vertebrae.”

Her excavators even found the small hyoid bone; the bone that anchors the tongue and the only bone not attached to any other bone. However, most of the terminal phalanxes of the toes were missing, and all of the terminal phalanxes of the right hand were missing. She suspected that many of the smaller bones would show up in the sifted material.

With the bones laid out and the right scapula, humerus and clavicle juxtaposed, there was a clear pattern of damage that she had seen in the collarbone when Frank first showed it to her. The damage included the second, third, fourth and fifth ribs, which were broken where the scapula body would have covered them. At the place where those bones cluster together some force had crushed them.

She examined the scapula with the hand lens. Part of the damage to it had left a straight indentation in the crushed bone.

“That looks like it hurt,” said Korey.

“I imagine he passed out, if he was conscious at all.”

“Can you tell what happened?”

“Whatever force hit him came from his rear and was focused over the scapula and not distributed.” Diane gestured with her hand, pretending to hit the scapula. “It’s more damage than a person swinging a weapon could inflict.”

“What then?”

“I don’t know.” She placed the bones back in their place. “He also has a healed break in his left tibia. Maybe he’s got an X ray somewhere. It will positively identify him, if we ever get a clue to who he is.”

“What else do you know about him?”

“He was muscular.” She pointed out the well-developed muscle attachments on his arms and legs. “Bones are plastic and continue to remodel throughout life. Something like hard work or hard exercise shows up on them. Stronger muscles need larger attachments to hold on to.”

She told him the results of the stable isotope analyses she’d had done on the clavicle.

“Now, that is totally cool. You know, you should add a forensic unit to the museum. We have plenty of room on the third floor.”

“One of the board members suggested the same thing. I came here to get away from forensic work.”

“Didn’t work, did it? Maybe the universe is telling you something.”

“Yeah, that I’m an idiot.”

Diane would like to have used the skull to determine race. Without it she’d have to use other methods-most of which involve measurement, and all of which are less than precise.

She started with the long bones. She placed the left humerus on the osteometric board-a wooden device consisting of a platform on which the bone is laid, a “headboard” against which one end of the long bone is positioned, and a sliding “footboard” to mark the length. She recorded the measurement on her computer.