“Talk about slaying dragons,” said Diane.
Laura rose. “I’ll go out your rear door and leave you to it,” she said. As she glided out the door she said, “Have fun. Off with his head.”
“I’ll see him in my office,” Diane told Andie, straightening her clothes and running her fingers through her hair.
“I need to go to archives,” said Andie, “but I’ll stay if you want.”
Diane smiled at her. “I’ll be fine.”
“He’s not going to arrest you or anything, is he?” asked Andie. “I mean, you just found the bodies.”
“It will be all right,” insisted Diane. “Go to your meeting. This is the meeting with the collection managers, right?”
Andie nodded. Diane had been giving Andie more responsibilities because she had asked for them. Andie was in charge of a webcam project they were starting up for the schools, and she also met with the collection managers. She had been doing quite well and Diane was proud of her.
Diane walked into her office with Andie, closing the door to her meeting room behind her. She sat down behind her desk before she asked Andie to bring Sheriff Conrad in.
Andie opened the door and introduced Diane’s guest, Sheriff Leland Conrad. Diane had heard about Sheriff Conrad, but had never met him. His son looked nothing like him. The sheriff had a large, square, stern face with permanent frown lines on either side of his small mouth. He had smooth skin pulled tight, almond eyes, and high, rounded cheekbones. He had a small nose and deep nasal folds. His thick brown hair was reminiscent of the fifties hairstyles in men. He wore his brown sheriff’s uniform, which looked like it had been starched. Leland Conrad was a tall, barrel-chested man who looked as if he liked to scare people into a confession. Diane found his whole demeanor to be off-putting, but it may have been simply that she didn’t like the things she had heard about him. He didn’t look like a happy man; nor did he look like he thought he ought to be happy.
“Afternoon, Miss Fallon. I usually ask people I interview to come to my office. Most people find that intimidating, but I reckoned that you wouldn’t, being in the business yourself, so to speak.”
Diane raised her eyebrows. So, he was interviewing a suspect. Best not to show any fear, she thought.
“No, I wouldn’t,” she said. “I used to work in human rights investigations in South America. You’d be hard-pressed to be more intimidating than some of the people I had to deal with down there.” Although Slick gave it a good go, she thought. And you’re not doing too bad a job, just walking in here.
“That so? Interesting.”
“Please sit down, Sheriff,” she said.
He’d wandered over to the photograph of her dangling at the end of a rope, rappelling into a cave.
“I like to get a look at where a person works. Tells me a thing or two about what makes them tick. What’s this photograph?”
“It’s of me. I’m rappelling into a cave that has a vertical entrance,” she said.
“Entering a cave. That right? Looks dangerous,” he said.
“Not if you know what you’re doing. It’s really very relaxing. Strenuous, but relaxing.”
“That what you do to relax?”
It was more of a comment than a question. Diane was used to people thinking that caving was anything but relaxing.
“Yes,” she said.
“Interesting,” he said. “Don’t look too relaxing to me.”
Diane wondered what assessments he had made of her so far. He moved to the other side of the office and looked at her Escher prints: a castle with an endless ascending and descending staircase, an impossible self-filling waterfall, and a tessellation of angels and devils. It was the angels and devils he stared at.
“You religious?” he said.
“Depends on what you mean by it,” she said.
“Simple question.”
“I believe in God,” she said. “I sometimes go to church. When I do, I go to the Presbyterian or First Baptist, because I know and like the people who go there. I consider religion personal and private.”
“Humm. .” was all he said.
Diane saw that he was trying to get to know her, trying to place her in perspective in his own worldview. Religion was important to him.
“What does this mean?” he said, pointing to the angels and devils drawn in such a pattern that there were no overlaps of the individual angels and devils; nor were there any voids between them.
“I suppose it means something different to whoever looks at it. For me, it’s like the work I do in forensics. It could be seen as the endless struggle between good and evil. It’s also an interesting interlocking pattern.”
“It’s either an angel or a demon. I like it.”
The way he said it left Diane with the impression that he was surprised that he could like a piece of art. It didn’t surprise her, however. He probably believed deep in his soul that there was a clear delineation between good and evil, and no overlapping or voids in between.
“Let me show you the crime lab,” she said.
“Not interested in your crime lab. Won’t avail myself of its services,” he said.
“I’m not asking you to use it. You said you like to look at where a person works, to understand them. This is only part of the picture.” Diane gestured with a sweep of her arm. “There is a whole other part of what I do on the other side of the building.”
“Have a point there,” he said.
Diane led him out of the office wing and into the lobby of the museum. Several tour groups were looking at the Pleistocene Room just beyond the lobby. Andie stood near the mastodon. She appeared to be giving directions to a man dressed in Dockers and a golf shirt. Several of the collection managers were with her, probably going together for a meeting up in Archives. It was not uncommon to get sidetracked just walking through the lobby.
Korey Jordan, her head conservator, was talking to one of the groups, with a docent standing beside him. His long dreadlocks were pulled back in a low ponytail that swung when he turned his head. He was probably explaining what they did to conserve some of the specimens. Visitors often enjoyed talking to the curators themselves, or in this case the conservator.
Diane saw one of the docents glance over at her and watched a look of alarm spread over her face. Diane realized that Sheriff Conrad had been in the museum before. They’d had some visitors who were in church groups take exception to the ages of the dinosaurs and the rocks. On one occasion a woman even yelled at the docent who was giving them the tour.
The sheriff, however, didn’t appear to recognize the docent. In fact, Diane thought he looked scared. Not of any particular person, certainly not of Diane. And it wasn’t that he had fright plastered on his face. But there was a subtle look of dread that changed his appearance from the overconfident man she had just had in her office.
She frowned and looked around at the people going and coming, using cell phones, iPods. Some had laptops tucked under their arms. Some of the children held models of dinosaurs they had gotten from the museum shop. There was also a lot of noise. The lobby was usually noisier than the rest of the building. People tended to quiet down near the exhibits.
With a flash of insight, Diane wondered if what he was afraid of was the world turning into something he didn’t understand. Here, amid all the colors of clothes and skin tones, amid the different accents and appearances, it was the opposite of the black-and-white picture of the angels and devils. And quite a different place from his kingdom in Rendell County.
“Lot of chaos,” he muttered.
“You should be here on a busy day,” said Diane, as they walked to the elevator. She decided she would take him to the third floor from this side of the building and walk across the third-floor overlook, which gave a wonderful view of the dinosaurs.