Caver Doe’s clean bones looked like ivory ornaments on the shiny silver table. All of them were present-every bone in each hand and foot, the small hyoid bone from the throat, all the tiny bones of the ear. The diener had done a superior job in preparing them. Diane made a mental note to call and thank Lynn Webber and praise her assistant. To use her own words, flattery went a long way with Lynn.
David stood with his hands in his pockets studying Caver Doe, waiting for instructions as Diane collected her calipers, forms and pen and set them on the table in preparation for the examination. She stuck her forms in her clipboard and looked up at him.
“I want you to investigate Annette Lymon. I want to know if she could have stabbed Mike and me or if she could have had it done.”
“Do you think she could have?” he said.
“You want to start with a preconceived notion of what I think?” said Diane, putting a hand on the dome of Caver Doe’s skull.
“I’m not starting with a preconceived notion. I’m investigating. You’re the first witness. She’s someone you are acquainted with.”
Diane laughed and felt another rush of the sublime brain chemicals that soothed her body and cleared her head. She was glad she had opted for the Tylenol and not the Percocet.
“I can’t see her acting with the finesse it took to stab both of us without our knowing it and then getting away clean. I’ve been going over the faces at the funeral in my mind, and I didn’t see her. I would have recognized her. So would Mike. On the other hand, I wasn’t really looking at the faces.” Diane stopped working and thought for a moment. “Lymon is a good bit shorter than Mike and a couple of inches shorter than me. Not the right height, judging by the angle of Mike’s wound.”
David seemed to ponder that for a moment. “Would she know how to hire it done? Would she know those kind of people? I know that is rather extreme, but. . would she?”
“I doubt it, but I don’t know that much about her personal life or her background. Maybe she recruited a graduate student to do it.”
“Is it that easy for professors to get their students to commit murder for them?”
Diane laughed. It was starting to sound ridiculous. David chuckled with her. “I wouldn’t have thought so,” she said. “But who knows what hold she may have on someone. When I was in graduate school, there were a few crazy students.”
David’s face sobered. “This harassment-Mike’s probably not the first. You can’t keep it a secret. You know she’ll do it again.”
Diane stared at the blank form on the clipboard as if it had an answer for her. She nodded. “I know. I haven’t decided yet how to handle it. I need information and time. And first I want to know if she was involved in the stabbing.”
“You can’t protect everyone by yourself. I like Neva too, but. .”
“I can protect people here, and I will.” She said it so vehemently that David was startled. She put the calipers and clipboard down on the table with a clink.
“What’s up with you?” he said.
Diane pressed her lips together and looked away. “First Ariel and all our friends at the mission were slaughtered, then Frank was shot last year, now Mike’s been hurt-again. Except for now, all connected with people I was investigating, so who is the common denominator for all of them?” She turned and stared at David as if daring him not to say it was her.
“The common denominator is men who are willing to kill to get what they want,” said David. “Not you.”
“It feels like me. I know I can’t fix everything, but I can help Neva and Mike. And I can control what goes on in my museum.” She paused a moment, putting a hand to her forehead. “Mike gave me a dynamite job proposal. He didn’t tell me he needed the job because he had lost his assistantship. I gave the proposal to Kendel. She likes it too, so I’m going to hire him.”
David smiled. “Have I told you lately that I appreciate your hiring me?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I do. We’ve brought more people to justice in the short time I’ve been here than we ever did working in human rights, and that’s been very healing for me.”
Diane understood how he felt. When they worked in human rights investigation, they collected mass amounts of evidence, but rarely were they able to take anyone to court.
“It’s been cathartic for me too.”
David smiled at her. “I’m sure Mike will appreciate a job here as much as I do.”
“He’ll be half-time. His Journey to the Center of the Earth display looks like it will be a big success. The advertising is going well. Early response indicates it’s likely to be just behind the dinosaurs and the Egyptian exhibit in popularity. It’s projected to bring in enough extra revenue to pay his salary. He’s earning his keep.”
“I didn’t think you would hire him if he couldn’t do the job,” said David. “Like I know you didn’t hire me simply because I’m a friend.”
“I know. It’s just. . ” She shrugged.
“Just what?”
“Nothing. I need to get back to these bones.”
“Jin and I are going down to the restaurant a little later for lunch; you hungry?”
“Thanks. I’ve got some yogurt in the fridge in my museum office. I don’t feel like much more than that.”
“Look, I’ll take you home tonight if you need to take any stronger medication. Is Frank coming over tonight?”
“No. He’s still in Atlanta on a case.”
David started out the door. “I’ll start tomorrow morning on Lymon. I know Garnett’s detectives are questioning Mike’s associates in Geology. They may have picked up on something. I’ll wheedle information out of them.”
“Thanks, David.”
“Sure.” He headed for the door, turned as if to say something, but hesitated. Finally he simply said, “I’ll let you know when I have something.”
Diane focused her attention back to the bones lying on the metal table, forcing everything else out of her mind. She actually knew a lot about Caver Doe just by the things he had with him when he died. She just didn’t know who he was. Nor did she know why he wasn’t rescued, and the question nagged at her.
She picked up the skull and traced her fingers over his frontal bone. Caver Doe had a gracile forehead, more so than when she saw him covered with dried flesh in the cave. If his frontal bone was all she had now Diane would have thought that he was a female. She picked up his mandible and fitted it to the skull and looked at his face. Straight on, it looked like a female skull. His chin had the roundness of a female’s. That was not so uncommon. Not every male had a prominent brow ridge or square jaw. But the placement of other markers-nuchal crests, the zygomatic process, the mastoid process-pointed to male.
She ran a finger along his teeth, counting his dentition. The dental formula for an adult human was two, one, two, three. Two incisors, one canine, two premolars and three molars-the number of upper and lower teeth on one side, thirty-two in all. Caver Doe’s third molars, his wisdom teeth, had not yet erupted, which probably meant he was under twenty-five.
His teeth were uneven-the incisors slightly turned and overlapping, the molars crowded. Had the wisdom teeth erupted, there would have been little room for them. Caver Doe had fourteen gold fillings.
Diane set down the mandible, picked up her calipers and measured all the craniometric points on the face, recording them on her clipboard. Her stomach growled just as she put the skull back down on the doughnut ring. Her arm started to throb again.
She put down her calipers. Yogurt wasn’t going to be enough. She called the museum’s restaurant and asked them to deliver a turkey sandwich, potato chips and Dr Pepper to her museum office. She took off her lab coat and went down to the first floor. The museum was filled with visitors and noise. She always found that satisfying. She stopped in front of the dinosaur room and watched a group of children having their pictures made by the brachiosaur. She smiled and continued down the length of the museum to her office. The restaurant had just delivered the sandwich to Andie when she arrived.
“You doing okay, Dr. Fallon?” asked Andie.
“Fine. . a little sore.” Diane was getting a little tired of people asking if she was okay, but knew they were just being kind and concerned. She hoped she didn’t sound short when she answered. “I’m going to eat lunch in my office.”
“I won’t put anyone through unless it’s an emergency.”
“Thanks, Andie.” She carried the sack from the restaurant into her office lounge and set it down on the table. After putting on a CD of Native American music, she sat down to eat, listening to the peaceful sounds of flutes and drums. Better than drugs, she thought as the harmonic strains took her to a quiet place in her mind.
The food and music had remarkable restorative powers. Diane felt much better after lunch. She went back to the lab, put on her white coat and resumed working on Caver Doe. She picked up each rib, examined and felt along the shaft for any nicks that might have been caused by a weapon. She gently squeezed the ends of the ribs toward each other to check for fractures. Nothing. Tomorrow she would put them under the dissecting microscope and examine them again. Ribs were one of the best places to look for marks left by weapons. Gunshots and knives to the torso could hardly miss them.
Diane gave the vertebrae a quick look. Most were in good condition, what she expected for a young person. Two of the lumbar vertebrae showed minute signs of a compression fracture, probably from the fall. He would not have been paralyzed, but his back would have hurt like hell. His right tibia was broken, and his right calcaneus-his heel bone-and talus-ankle bone-had compression fractures. He had no fractures on the left side of his body. She checked his arm bones and hands. His right side navicular, one of the carpal bones of the hand, was crushed. The end of his radius where it articulated with the navicular was also fractured with forward displacement-a Smith’s fracture.
Judging by the bones, it looked like he’d fallen, landed on his feet, favoring his right side, then fell backward, catching himself with his hands, again favoring his right side and fracturing his wrist. When he sat in the cavern in pain, Diane wondered if he pondered the foolishness of caving alone. Or did he sit waiting in the darkness, expecting help to arrive?
Or was he with someone? Did his caving partner have some accident on the way to get help, or was Caver Doe deliberately left there to die, with all traces of his partner wiped away, leaving only a lost button behind? Or had Diane imagined the faint lines in the silt? Maybe, but she hadn’t imagined the button.
Her pain came creeping back, so she decided to pack it in and go home early. It was only six o’clock and she was exhausted. She’d just locked the door of her lab when her cell phone rang. She looked at the display.
“Hey, Frank.” Diane walked down the hallway from her lab leading to the dinosaur overlook.
“Diane, why didn’t you tell me you’d been stabbed too? I had to hear it from my partner.” The annoyance in Frank’s voice was clear, even over the cell phone.
“How did he know?”
“He heard it from the Rosewood police. Don’t change the subject.”
No secrets around the police department, thought Diane. She had forgotten that Frank said his partner was working with a detective here. “I didn’t want you to worry,” she said. “It’s not serious.”
“I heard that you had several stitches.”
“Yes, but I was treated and released.”
“What am I going to do with you?” His voice was softer, more concerned.
Diane smiled into the phone. “What did you have in mind?”
“Don’t change the subject.” He paused. “It’ll be late when I get home. I’ll come over.”
“That’s why I didn’t tell you. It’s over an hour’s drive. Stay in Atlanta.”
“I’ll see how things shake out here.” There was a pause, but she could hear him breathing. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. Frank, you know that because they didn’t know where the knife had been, I had to have blood tests-you know, for hepatitis and other stuff. . ”
“When I heard what happened, I assumed you would. A couple of years ago I got bitten by a man I was arresting.” He laughed. “You wouldn’t think white-collar perps would do that kind of thing. He was HIV-positive and I had to go through those tests. Don’t worry. We’ll get through it fine. It’s just a precaution.”
Diane stood on the third-floor overlook to the dinosaur room, trying to think of something to say to Frank that would put his mind at ease and at the same time attempting not to tear up over his kindness. “I was just leaving work, on my way home.” The words sounded choked.
As she spoke, she looked across at the hallway connecting to the opposite overlook. Dr. Annette Lymon had just rounded the corner facing Diane and went into the staff lounge. She usually worked for an oil company in the summers, so Diane was surprised to see her. But it was nearing the start of fall term at Bartram, so perhaps she had just gotten back. In any case, Diane was surprised to see her in the museum.
“Try not to worry,” he said. “I’ll see you tonight-it may be late. Call me when you get home.”
“I will.”
Diane slipped her cell back in her pocket, walked around the overlook and headed down the hallway to the lounge. By the time she reached the doorway, she’d rearranged her face into a welcoming smile that she hoped didn’t look as fake as it felt. She didn’t want to alert Lymon that she was under investigation, but she did want to stop the rumor that Mike had abused his former girlfriend.
Annette Lymon was standing in front of the candy vending machines, rattling one of the knobs. She raked her hands through her auburn hair to get it out of her face. She was a lean woman with toned muscles and a tan from spending time outdoors. She appeared to Diane to be in her forties, but Diane found the older she got, the harder it was to estimate age-at least in a living person. Dr. Lymon wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, and brown trousers. To Diane she looked vaguely as if she might have been going horseback riding.
“Dr. Lymon,” said Diane. “I’m glad I saw you.”
Annette Lymon looked at her and frowned, then smiled thinly, smoothing out the lines around her lips. “Yes, I needed to speak with you too. But, please, what did you want?”
The woman looked haggard, her face drawn. She smelled of cigarette smoke. Diane hoped she had been doing her smoking outside. Probably so, because if the collection manager had ever caught her smoking in the museum, she’d definitely have told Diane about it.
“Neva, one of my crime scene specialists, came to me with a disturbing story you told her about Mike.” Diane paused and watched Dr. Lymon’s lips turn up in what looked like gratification.
“I was concerned about her welfare.”
“And I wanted to thank you for your concern and put your mind at ease.”
“Oh?”
Diane measured her words carefully. “I have personal knowledge of the circumstances of his last girlfriend. Mike was not abusing her. I know for certain who was. Mike tried to help her; so did I.”
Annette Lymon’s lips turned down again. She gave the knob on the machine another jerk and a candy bar dropped into the tray.
“I thought it was important for you to know that,” finished Diane.
Lymon grabbed up her candy. “Did you? Well, I’m glad. I hated to think that of him.”
“You needn’t. Mike is a fine young man.”
“I had to terminate his assistantship.”
“Is that so?” said Diane. It was an effort making sure anger didn’t show on her face. Even so, her own words sounded harsh to her ears. Dr. Lymon didn’t seem to notice, for she went on talking without missing a beat.
“He just doesn’t work as hard as he should, and there are others who really need the assistantship who will do the work.”
“I’m surprised to hear that. I’ve heard nothing but good things about Mike from the geology collection manager.”
“She’s female, isn’t she? Females tend to like Mike.” Dr. Lymon eyed Diane up and down.
Please, you can be more subtle than that, thought Diane as she smiled grimly at her. “Everyone likes Mike. Males and females. I’ve gotten reports of his work not only from the collection manager, but from the exhibit planners and other staff as well. I pretty much know who in the museum works and who doesn’t. His work on the Journey to the Center of the Earth exhibit has been exemplary.”
“But that’s just play, isn’t it? It’s not real geology, and that’s his problem.”
“It’s instructional work and research, the kind of work we do here. However, we don’t need to argue the merits of research versus fieldwork. You wanted to see me about something?”
Dr. Lymon glared at Diane a moment before she spoke. “Yes. I’ve been appointed head of the Geology Department.”
“Congratulations.” Diane’s smile was getting harder to maintain.
“I’m going to be making some changes. This. . ” She made a broad gesture with her arm. “This relationship the department has with the museum isn’t working out for us as well as it has for you, I’m afraid, so I’m cutting it out of next year’s budget.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“The extra lab space is nice, of course, but splitting my time between two labs just makes more work. And the office space is terribly small. I’m sorry to inconvenience you, but it’s the best thing for the Geology Department.”
“I understand completely. It’s not an inconvenience for us.”
“I didn’t want to leave on bad terms.”
Throughout the conversation, Diane tried to gauge whether Annette Lymon was the type of person to knife someone. It struck her as odd that not once during the conversation did she mention Mike’s being in the hospital. Maybe she didn’t know, but the news was all over the museum.
It was a good place to end the conversation; there were suddenly several voices in the hallway, and it looked like they were about to have company.
“We almost had him the other day.”
Diane recognized the voice of Spence Mitchell, the herpetologist. He rounded the corner with Jonas Briggs, the archaeologist, and Sylvia Mercer, the zoologist, and came face-to-face with Diane. He stopped abruptly and smiled weakly, rubbing a nervous hand over his bald head. Diane knew he dreaded seeing her.
“I was just telling Dr. Mercer and Dr. Briggs that we almost had our snake.”
Against Diane’s better judgment, she had allowed the herpetologist to put in a live exhibit when the museum opened last year. Unfortunately, one of the live exhibits, a black snake, Elaphe obsoleta, had escaped and taken up residence in the museum walls and cabinets, showing himself at inopportune times.
“Almost?” said Diane.
He shrugged as if to say, Almost is as close as we’ve gotten so far.
“What I don’t understand,” said Diane, “is why he doesn’t go outside.”
“Well, uh, I’m not sure.” He smiled brightly. “But I’ll bet we don’t have any rodents in the museum.”
“Small compensation.” As Diane spoke to the herpetologist she noticed Dr. Sylvia Mercer eyeing Dr. Lymon, who had just grabbed a Coke from another machine and was now hurrying out of the lounge.
The herpetologist nodded at Diane and backed away toward the candy machine, followed by Jonas, who was laughing. Sylvia Mercer stopped in front of Diane.
“I need to speak with you. I should have sooner. Can we talk somewhere?”