deal with.’’
Diane noticed that all the sharing was going one
way. Janice was not giving any information from her
end of the investigation—which was as it should be,
but it reminded her of what Izzy had said. The detec
tives had a problem with her butting into an investiga
tion. As she thought back, most of the ones she had
been heavily involved in were ones where the perpe
trator had involved her by coming after her, or the
FBI had asked her to get involved. She had never just
up and announced that she was going to take on a
case and they could all report to her. By far, most of
the crime scene data she and her team gathered was
sent to the detectives in charge of a case and that was
the end of her involvement. Diane felt a bit falsely
accused.
‘‘I think it’s about time I brought Bryce in for a
talk,’’ said Janice. ‘‘I’d like you to keep Rikki Gillinick
on at the lab for a while. I think the longer they have
hope they’ll find what they are looking for, the more
information we can get from them.’’
‘‘All right,’’ said Diane. ‘‘You might want to get the
GBI to do your crime scenes until we wrap this up. I
can’t allow her to work on anything beyond what we
are doing now. We probably will have to rework cases
that came under Bryce’s tenure the way it is.’’ ‘‘I see what you mean. Do you think she’ll get suspi
cious, not working cases?’’ asked Janice.
‘‘The first thing I did after I was reinstated was to
ask David to contact TechClean to do a top-to-bottom
cleaning of the lab,’’ said Diane. ‘‘There was a layer
of dust on everything, and that can only mean the air
filters aren’t working. We have to fix that problem. I
also told them we have to recalibrate all the equip ment. That will take as long as I let it. Rikki was present during all that discussion, so she knows we
won’t be doing much outside the lab for a while.’’ ‘‘Okay. That’s what we will do. You let us know
when you’re ready to take new cases. Any luck with
the computer?’’ asked Janice.
‘‘David and Frank are working on it, and they’re
very good,’’ Diane said. ‘‘Apparently it’s slow going.’’ ‘‘Okay. Keep me informed and thanks for the infor
mation,’’ she said.
‘‘Sure,’’ said Diane. ‘‘How is Garnett?’’
‘‘Lawyered up. Which is a good thing. This has been
very hard for us to deal with. I told him that if the
new chief tries to hang it on him, we’ll all back him
up,’’ said Janice. ‘‘He probably thought I was playing
him like a perp. Frankly, I think he’s protecting some
one. So does the chief.’’
‘‘That makes more sense than him being a mur
derer,’’ said Diane.
Diane put the phone back in the cradle and immedi
