Dead Guilty

‘‘Hello.’’ She hoped her voice was calm.

‘‘It’s me again. Are we alone?’’

‘‘What’s your name?’’

‘‘I can’t tell you that.’’

‘‘Okay. What do you want?’’

‘‘I want you to understand. I want to talk about what you said about killing being evil.’’

‘‘As I recall, I said something about it taking a dedi cated community of criminal investigators to combat the evil of murder...’’

‘‘Yes, but I saw your eyes when you said ‘the evil of murder,’ and it bothered me.’’ The man’s voice was both deep and soft and had a sincere quality to it that was sad.

‘‘What bothered you?’’

‘‘The way you put all killings in the same load.’’

‘‘You say you want me to understand you, but you seem to be talking around the main point. I want to understand you. Can you be more direct?’’

‘‘Is there no one in your life that if you had them in your crosshairs, you would pull the trigger and feel justified?’’

Ivan Santos, the man who murdered her daughter, came to mind. He must know quite a lot about my life, she thought.

‘‘There’s a difference between gut-wrenching emo tion and becoming the law.’’

‘‘Why?’’

‘‘Because there’s a difference in what you know and what you believe. Everyone acts on what they believe, few on what they really know. Taking the law into one’s own hands can lead to ghastly mistakes. That’s why we need an objective process to find the truth.’’ The man wanted dialogue; she would give him dialogue.

‘‘Objective. That’s just another word for richlawyer tricks.’’

‘‘I’ve tried to answer your questions. Will you an swer a few for me?’’

‘‘Shoot.’’

‘‘Did you send the E-mail that said sometimes the dead are guilty?’’

‘‘You know I did.’’

‘‘I believed you did.’’

He let out a soft chuckle. ‘‘Okay. You said you had a few questions? Do you have another one?’’

‘‘Did you hang the people in Cobber’s Wood?’’

He hesitated only a beat. ‘‘This is just a conversa tion. You shouldn’t read so much into it.’’

‘‘Is that a yes or a no?’’ But she was talking to dead air.

She dialed Chief Garnett’s cell phone again. He had told her he was going to tap her phones; she hoped he had one in place.

‘‘I just got a call again,’’ she said when he answered. ‘‘If the phone is tapped, then you’ll have the complete conversation.’’

Garnett was silent for a moment. ‘‘You think it’s our guy?’’

‘‘Yes.’’

‘‘What does he want?’’

‘‘I’m not sure. He seems to want to confess, but he never gets around to it.’’

‘‘So, we do have ourselves a nutcase. Okay, I’m going to have a stakeout put on your apartment. Maybe we’ll get lucky. I’ll call Braden.’’

Yes, maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll come after me, thought Diane. She hung up the phone and sat for a moment, musing over the phone call. He didn’t sound violent. He sounded calm. Many killers are calm. In fact, it is often the killing that calms them.

She shook her head. Time to take a rest from crime. She grabbed her purse and left her office. Maybe to night she could get a good night’s sleep.

Halfway to the lobby she had an idea. Instead of going out the door, she headed for the second floor to the geology section. If she was lucky, someone would still be working there.

She got out of the elevator and walked across the overlook into the Pleistocene room. The visitor light ing was still on in earth science, so someone was prob ably still working.

The earth science room was a warren of display alcoves and partitions. She passed an alcove designed to look like a cave. Facsimiles of stalagmites guarded the entrance. Inside were pieces of real stalagmites and stalactites, gypsum crystal formations that looked like snowflakes, a display on the anatomy of cave fill showing the geological history of the area, a lesson on cave mapping, giant photographs of the major caves in the United States, a virtual tour of Lechuguilla and Carlsbad caverns. Diane liked the exhibit, but it needed more work. It didn’t quite capture the beauty and mystery that she saw in caves. She continued past the exhibits on volcanoes and plate tectonics and one on the water cycle before she entered the rock room.

The rocks and minerals room never grew old. It dazzled her every time she entered. In the center stood a