Dead Past (3 page)

“Could I get a ride to the crime lab?” she said. I’ll have my forensic people process my car when we’re allowed back in the area.”

“Yeah, sure.” Both of them looked in the direction of the fire as if they had just remembered it and the evacuation order. “We’d better get out of here.”

They saw the ambulance off and, after retrieving Diane’s suitcase, the three of them piled into the police car. She was glad she had put her suitcase in her trunk instead of the backseat where he would have bled all over it. On the way to the crime lab, the two of them took turns admonishing her for not having snow tires in the middle of a North Georgia winter.

They let her out at the entrance to her crime lab. Diane smiled and thanked them, glad to get away from their banter. The sick dread in her stomach, which she had awakened with because of the fire and the fear inspired by the gun-wielding kid, was still with her. Instead of going up to the lab, she walked around the building to the entrance to the RiverTrail Museum of Natural History.

Chanell Napier, head of museum Security, was on night duty and opened the door for her before she had a chance to fish out her key.

“Cold night out there, Dr. Fallon,” the slender, round-faced African-American woman said as Diane entered. “What you doing out here so late?”

Diane explained about the explosion of the house on the street near her apartment and the mandatory evacuation. She left out the part about the carjacker because she felt too tired for the questions that were sure to follow.

“Oh, no. There’s students from Bartram living in those houses, aren’t there?”

Diane nodded. “I’m going to stay in my office the rest of the evening,” she said.

Juliet Price from Aquatics, who managed the seashell collection, came across the lobby toward the doors. She looked like a waif or a wood sprite with her wispy blond hair and slender figure. She fumbled in her purse and pulled out her car keys as she reached Diane and Chanell.

“You working mighty late,” said Chanell.

“I don’t need much sleep,” said Juliet. She nodded at Diane and Chanell as she hurried out the large double doors.

“She’s a scared little thing, isn’t she,” said Chanell.

“Juliet’s a shy one,” said Diane. “She’s good at her job, though.” Diane looked at her watch. “I wish I didn’t need much sleep. Don’t call me unless the museum’s on fire.”

“Sure thing,” said Chanell.

As Diane made her way through the large double doors of the east wing and to her private conference room adjoining her museum office, she expected her cell phone to ring at any moment. It didn’t. She took off her wet boots and socks and lay down on the stuffed sofa. A brown suede and cotton jacket of Frank’s was lying across the back. She picked it up and folded it into a pillow. It smelled of his cologne. He’d been gone only three days, chasing a fraud lead to Seattle. It seemed like a month.

Frank was a rock—always reasonable, always logical, and always loving. She thought about calling him, but he was probably asleep—or maybe playing poker with his detective friends in Seattle. He would ask her how her day was and she would say great, but tomorrow wouldn’t be a good day at all. Tomorrow she’d have to identify charred bodies. Frank would sympathize and say some right thing; then he would tell her how fortunate that the dead have her to speak for them, and he’d tell her he would be home as soon as he could. She wished he were here now. Frank liked to cuddle and she would like to have him here to warm her. She grabbed the throw at the end of the sofa, covered her cold feet, and drifted off to sleep in the middle of her imaginary conversation with him.

Diane awoke with a start. Not because there was an explosion outside her window this time. It was her cell phone vibrating and ringing in her pocket. She fished it out and looked at the illuminated display before she flipped it open and put it to her ear.

“Chief Garnett,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound sleepy.

“I guess you know why I’m calling.”

 

At nine o’clock in the morning the air was just as cold as it had been in the early hours before daylight when Diane fled from her home. The sky was gray-white and sunless. She stood in the ankle-deep snow just outside the yellow crime scene tape surrounding the burned-out husk of a house that was at the center of the night’s events. Unlike the bright, sparkling white mantle in front of her apartment house, the snow here was an ugly blanket of black and gray. The air smelled of chemicals, smoke, and wet ashes.

Little remained of the house—its stone foundation, a few blackened pieces of wood framing, twisted shapes of water pipes, broken and blackened ceramic plumbing fixtures, the remnants of a brick fireplace, and a section of charred floor hanging over the dark pit of debris that had been the basement. She could pick out the forms of blackened disfigured bodies like a hidden picture puzzle among the rubble. She dreaded the next few days.

“The fire chief tells me it was a meth lab that exploded in the basement.” Chief Garnett, well dressed as usual in a dark brown topcoat, stood beside Diane, surveying the damage. He shook his head. “There was a party going on upstairs at the time. The house was rented to a bunch of college students.”

Douglas Garnett, chief of detectives, was Diane’s immediate supervisor for her position as director of the Rosewood Crime Lab.

“How many people inside? Do you know?” she asked.

White steam rose in front of their faces with each breath. Diane’s nose was growing numb.

“That’s what you’re going to have to tell us.” He paused a long moment. “The neighbors say there was loud music going all evening. They saw kids on the front and back porches. I’m afraid to guess how many.”

“Dear God,” Diane whispered.

“We have a few survivors. Kids who were out in the yard when the house exploded. They’re all badly injured, but alive. So far, our best lead for information is the kid who tried to jack your car. He’s in the best condition of all of them. I understand he’s out of surgery. I’m going to talk with him after I leave here.

The cold was beginning to seep into Diane’s fleece-lined jacket. She bent her knees and rubbed her gloved hands together. The cold didn’t seem to bother Garnett. He stood scanning the burned-out building, his hands in his pockets.

“I’ve called in all the area medical examiners—Rankin, Pilgrim, Webber—we need to do this fast. Anxious parents are calling wanting to know if their child is among the victims.”

At the sound of a generator motor starting, Diane looked a couple of doors down the street at the morgue tent being raised where she and the MEs would work. The white canvas structure covered the entire front yard of an empty house with a FOR SALE sign out front, which made it a good choice to occupy.

City workers were quickly erecting a forensic city in the neighborhood. They had installed blue and white Porta-Johns near the morgue tent. A command post in a small travel camper sat in the driveway. In the street they’d parked a refrigerated trailer from a semi to keep bodies, evidence, and equipment. The forensic complex looked expensive and Diane said so.

“We’ll have to bring in a portable x-ray machine and other equipment to do our job. All this could be done at one of the hospitals for a lot less money and aggravation.”

“Good publicity is priceless,” Garnett said, nodding his head toward the local and Atlanta news media setting up their own tent city on a lawn across the street. “Nothing like seeing your leaders taking immediate action.”

“I guess.” Diane’s attention was caught by a circular saw blade lying half-buried in the snow at the base of a thick oak tree. She squatted beside it. Garnett peered over her shoulder. Diane took a plastic bag full of orange marker flags from her jacket pocket.

“What do you have there?” asked Garnett.

Diane stuck a flag in the snow beside the saw blade. “The red color on the edge here . . . I think it’s frozen blood.”

Just as she was about to stand, she saw just beyond the blade something else covered in a thin layer of snow but unmistakable in its appearance. She planted another flag beside the object and stood up.

“Is that a hand?” asked Garnett.

“It is. And if I’m not mistaken, I know who it belongs to. The kid who tried to take my car. It would appear that the saw blade came flying from the explosion and caught his wrist. Looks like a clean cut. If he had had his wits about him and taken his hand with him, I wonder if it could have been reattached.”

Garnett didn’t say anything for a moment, but just stared at the hand with his mouth turned down in a frown. “At least he’s alive,” he said.

Diane looked over at the burned-out house. “At least that,” she whispered.

Carefully retracing her previous steps, she walked away from the tree, back out to the road. Next to the media tent a shelter of green-striped canvas was being erected. More media? The tent city just kept growing. “Who are they?” she asked.

“Local church groups are setting up a tent to keep you guys in sandwiches and coffee. A sort of comfort station.”

Diane shook her head and looked him in the eye. “You know, Garnett, this is getting too large. It’s going to get out of hand.”

“We’ll have to see that it doesn’t.” He nodded at the new tent. “It’s also there for the parents. You know that anyone who can’t get in touch with their kid is going to come down here. This will give them a place to sit and wait and someone to talk to besides us.”

Diane conceded that might be a good idea. “What about the people who live in these houses?” She encompassed the neighborhood with a sweep of her hand. “They are going to want back in their homes.”

“Most of the people on the street have been given permission to come back. The houses next to the explosion suffered damage and their owners are staying in a hotel until they can return. A cordon will be put up and the police will keep people out of your way.”

Diane still didn’t agree with the way the city was handling the tragedy. But the decision was made. The mayor loved a good show. It looked like he was going to have one. Instead of arguing the point further, she turned her attention back to the crime scene.

“We won’t be able to walk on what’s left of the floor of the house. What we’ll do is build a network of boards just over the floor, anchored outside. . . .”

The ambient noise went up several decibels; Diane stopped talking and looked up the street. A line of vehicles was driving through the police checkpoint. The white van she knew. It belonged to her crime lab. It and two cars approached and parked next to the curb in front of a neighboring house. The last vehicle in the line belonged to the arson investigator. Diane groaned inwardly. He parked across the street from the others, pulling up in the yard to keep the street from becoming a bottleneck. The new arrivals drew members of the news media like flies to a corpse.

Diane wanted to tell Garnett that this was going to be trouble, but she remained silent. Nothing she could do. Marcus McNair was the arson investigator, after all. He had right of access to the scene. But Garnett apparently had his own apprehensions. His frown deepened the creases in his forehead and around his mouth when he saw Marcus emerge from the red city vehicle and grin broadly at the swarm of reporters hurrying in his direction.

“I have to cut this off,” he said, and strode across the street to intercept the press.

Diane stayed and waited for her crew who, carrying their crime scene cases, were climbing out of the van. The last thing she wanted was to come between Marcus and publicity.

Marcus McNair wanted her job. He had applied for it when the city announced it was creating a crime scene unit. He thought his bid for the director’s position was a certainty—he was an arson investigator; his brother-in-law was a city councilman with a lot of pull; he was athletic and handsome; and the only person he was up against was a civilian female museum director.

What McNair didn’t know was that the job was wired for the director of the museum where the forensic lab was to be located. He didn’t know about all the political shenanigans the mayor and police commissioner had conjured to force Diane to provide building space in return for relief from an overburdening tax assessment. He didn’t know that the museum director was a former human rights investigator, a crime scene specialist, and an internationally known forensic anthropologist. Judging from the reception he gave Diane at every encounter—scowls, sarcasm, or just plain ignoring her—losing the position had been a blow.

Diane greeted her team and ignored the conversation Garnett and Marcus were having with the news media. David, Jin, and Neva stopped, set down their cases, and scanned the scene before them. They were all bundled in their dark blue winter jackets with CRIME SCENE UNIT printed in large yellow letters across the back. All but Jin wore knit caps and boots.

Jin was bareheaded and wore sneakers. He had worked in New York City as a crime scene specialist, and during the past few weeks he had tried to explain to them many times that this wasn’t really cold weather; they didn’t know what cold weather is. He had wanted to live in a smaller city for a while and Diane felt fortunate to have him. “I hate fires,” he said. “I really hate them.” He covered his straight black hair with the plastic cap that Diane had them wear at crime scenes.

Neva pushed a lock of brown hair under her knit cap and donned the plastic cap. “People are already calling my parents, cause they know where I work,” she said, “and they want to know who’s been killed. This is just terrible.” Neva came to the crime scene unit from the Rosewood police.

David and Diane’s eyes met briefly. She knew what he was thinking. This is too much like the life they left. David worked with Diane at World Accord International doing human rights investigations all over the world. They had seen too many piles of burned bodies.

“We’re going to work the area around the house first. I’ve marked a couple of things I’ve found,” Diane said, pointing to the orange flags—silent sentinels guarding the severed hand and the saw blade. “Work inward. After we clear the way to the house, we will have to build a scaffold over the floor. It’s not stable.”