Beverly Connor - The Night Killer

“How did Tammy explain putting her own name on the account?” asked Diane.

“Tammy said it would make it easier for her to put a little money in Mrs. Fuller’s savings account, help pay her bills, and get her medicine for her if Tammy’s name was on the account too,” said Ben. “And that’s where we can get her.”

“The morning they took Mrs. Fuller back to the shelter, Tammy refused to go by the bank to change the account back to the way it had been. She said she would do it later,” said Frank. “Norma Fuller is worried about her money. She doesn’t remember which bank they went to and she doesn’t have the checkbook. And remember, she knew Tammy as Tracy Tanner. Mrs. Fuller doesn’t know how to get in touch with Tammy. She doesn’t really know where Tammy took her in the mountains. Tammy gave her the fictitious name of some town she made up. She’s afraid the shelter is going to put her on a ward in a nursing home. She is a very frightened woman.”

“We spoke with a friend in the GBI and we think we have enough to classify this as an Atlanta crime and require Sheriff Conrad to cooperate.”

“Leland Conrad is going to hate that,” said Diane.

“He can hate it all he wants,” said Ben. “He is about to be forced to do his job.”

They spent the remainder of the evening talking about a recent trip Frank and Ben had made to Nashville to find an embezzler who was stealing in order to fund his ambition to become a country music star. The two of them had Diane laughing so hard it hurt by the time Ben was ready to leave.

Tammy had been right about one thing: Laughter was good medicine. Diane was back to her centered sense of peace by the time she got in bed and cuddled up against Frank.

Diane spent all the next morning telling the police and Chief Garnett her harrowing tale of road rage. She didn’t expect there was much of anything they could do. She just needed the report on record.

The patrolman who took her statement seemed to think it was probably a garden-variety maniac and that it wasn’t personal. He opined that it was a long stretch of road with not a lot of traffic, and so it was a good play-ground for dragsters, and he would put the area under regular patrol so that it wouldn’t happen again.

Diane thanked him and the chief and drove to the museum, parking her battered vehicle in the impound lot at the west end of the museum.

Earlier that morning she had collected paint samples where the truck had rear-ended and sideswiped her. She headed to the crime lab with the samples and checked them in. David and Izzy were busy, and she waved at them through the glass partitions and locked the evidence in the safe.

Diane went to the restaurant to grab a quick lunch. She was standing near the front, near the bank of Internet computers, waiting for her takeout. Just as the waitress handed her boxed lunch to her, she heard a voice that drifted her way, and the sound went though her like an electric shock. A voice that was deep, smooth, with a slight nasal quality and not a hint of North Georgia twang to it. The voice of the mystery man in the woods the night of the storm. He was somewhere nearby in the restaurant.

Diane’s gaze swept the room in the same methodical manner she searched a crime scene. But it was another voice that led her to him, one she knew even better. It was the voice of Andie, her assistant. He was sitting with Andie, sans beard and rain gear. It was Andie’s new boyfriend, the one she was falling for, head over heels.

The lighting in the restaurant, with its dark decor, was kept dim even at lunchtime. Diane stepped back into the shadows of one of the Gothic arches and watched. A waitress brought them more tea. She picked up the old glasses and put them on a tray. Diane didn’t take her eyes off the tray, and when the waitress was within a few feet of her, Diane stopped her and, taking a napkin from her take-out bag, lifted the glass from the tray, holding it as near the bottom as she could with the clean napkin.

“An experiment,” she said, and smiled at the waitress.

The waitress didn’t seem to find it odd and just smiled as Diane took the glass. Diane quickly turned on her heel and walked from the restaurant to the bank of elevators. She used her key to take the private elevator to the third floor, where she walked to the crime lab. On the way she called Deven Jin, her director of the DNA lab.

“Jin, meet me in the crime lab immediately,” she said when he answered.

“Sure, boss, is something-”

“Now,” she said, and closed the phone.

Diane pocketed her phone, punched her code into the security keypad outside the entrance to the crime lab, and opened the door. There was no one in the lab. She was about to call David when the elevator doors opened and he entered, followed by Izzy. They were carrying their crime scene cases. She sat down at the meeting table while they stored their evidence bags and washed up, drumming her fingers on the table as she waited.

Her mind reeled with a combination of surprise, anger, and triumph at finding the stranger in the woods. He had helped her when she desperately needed help and she had felt gratitude. But now it looked as if he was using Andie.

How? her mind asked.

She couldn’t answer that, but his presence at the museum, easing himself into Andie’s life, was too much of a coincidence. It had to have something to do with Diane herself.

What? I don’t know , she answered herself.

She was afraid he was involved with the Barres’ death-and he had Andie falling in love with him.

Jin came in through the museum side, followed by Scott and Hector. Diane wondered why they had tagged along. The DNA lab was a very busy lab. Then she remembered it was lunchtime and conceded that even her lab personnel had to eat.

“What’s up, boss?” asked Jin.

“Hey, Diane,” said David.

The two of them sat down opposite Diane and stared at her. Scott and Hector pulled up chairs nearby but away from the table.

“You look like you’re ready to rip someone a new one,” David said.

Diane cocked an eyebrow. “Do I? I’ll have to work on hiding my emotions,” she said. “I want you to run the fingerprints on this glass. Use all methods at your disposal to identify them. It’s your highest priority.”

David looked startled; so did Jin. Diane didn’t think Izzy was in the loop on David’s access to databases. But Jin was. Some of David’s resources were rarely used, because he wasn’t supposed to have access to them. They were to be used in dire emergencies only.

“Okay,” David said, stretching out the word.

Diane turned to Jin. “I want you to take the DNA from this glass and give me a photograph of what this man looks like,” she said. She emphasized the word photograph .

“Dr. Fallon, one can’t get a photograph from an analysis of. .”

Diane shot a look at Scott. She had learned to tell them apart without noticing what color shirts they had on-Hector, the older one, always wore a shirt with a color of higher wavelength than Scott. Of course, their names on their lab coats helped.

“She’s speaking in hyperbole,” said Hector.

“Oh,” said Scott.

Diane looked back at Jin. “I want a complete genetic profile,” she said. She encompassed both David and Jin with her gaze. “And I want it three days ago.”

“Wow,” said Jin. “Whose glass is this?”

“That is what you are going to tell me,” she said, and stood up, still unconsciously drumming her fingers on the table. “I have to get back to the museum. Is everything running smoothly here?”

“Slick as can be,” said David.

“Izzy, I left my SUV in the impound lot,” she said.