One Grave Too Many

pace.

Korey was in his office on the phone. Barbara, one of his staff, came up as she entered.

“Korey told me to help you photograph the skeleton.”

“Good. It shouldn’t take too long.”

They went into the vault where Barbara or Korey had already set up the camera equipment on a long arm so it would reach over the bones.

“I heard someone tried to break in the faunal lab,” said Barbara. “What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure,” said Diane. “Security’s working on it.”

“We seem to be generating our own crime wave. Who’d’ve thunk it in a place like this?”

“It’s going to stop,” said Diane. “I believe some of it has to do with this guy here.”

They set up a shot of the shoulder girdle.

“You think someone’s looking for him? His murderer?”

“Maybe. I’ve just promoted Chanell to head of security, and I’m going to hire extra people. I don’t want anyone to work alone at night until this is solved.”

They photographed the entire skeleton, including close-ups of all the remarkable characteristics. As they worked their way around the bones, Diane explained the history of the skeleton and the steps they’d taken to discover its story.

“Cool stuff. You know, some museums have a forensic unit,” Barbara said.

“So I’ve been told,” said Diane.

She packed up the bones and labeled the box. Just for added security, she put the box in a large empty supply box, taped it up and stored it next to the excess supplies apparently ordered by Leonard Starns. She wrote the initials J. D. on the outside of the box.

When she left, Korey was still on the phone.

As she got back to her office, Sylvia Mercer darted through the closing door.

Chapter 40

“Hi,” she said breathlessly. “Is there such a thing as a forensic zoologist?”

“A forensic zoologist? Is that what you’ve become?” Diane showed her faunal curator into her office. Sylvia sat down at the table under the Escher prints and began spreading out her papers. Diane pulled up a chair, sat down beside her and picked up one of the sheets of paper.

“This looks like a copy of the Abercrombie taxidermy records.”

“It is. I’ve been looking at the animals directly under and over the main part of the human skeleton. We have a Canis lupus directly above, and on that same level we have a Vulpes fulva and four Odocoileus virginianus. Below we have a Sus scrofa and two O. virginianus.”

“Wolf, fox, deer and pig?”

“Right. That was lucky, really lucky. It could have been nothing but O. virginianus above and below, and that wouldn’t have given us much to work with. I’ve been working with Whit Abercrombie on his father’s records. They’re a bit difficult to read.” She paused and looked over at Diane. “By the way, Whit’s a babe. I don’t like what he does for a living-the taxidermy stuff.” She shrugged. “But then again, I collect roadkill.”

“He’s also the county coroner.”

“There’s that too. You know he carves the taxidermy armatures himself from wood? He’s really an artist. He gets all the musculature beautifully. I told him it’s a shame to cover them up with the animal skins.”

“I didn’t know he carves. Sounds like you two had a good time.”

“We did, actually.” Sylvia sounded surprised. “Any-way, the wolf wasn’t a problem. They mounted only three in the past six years. Of the two most recent, one was mounted last winter and the other one just last spring. So, thinking that the one we found was the one mounted for the museum, we looked up the date it was mounted: June 6, 1998.”

“So we know the human bones were dumped no later than that date,” murmured Diane.

“Right. Now S. scrofa was a bit of a problem.”

“How’s that?”

“One, the skull was missing.”

“I understand that problem.”

“Yeah, Jonas said they’re still looking for your skull. I can see how that makes identification harder.”

“It’d certainly be nice to have it.”

“Another problem is that they mounted several pigs in the target years. Some were feral pigs shot by hunters, and some were pets.”

“People mount their pet pigs? People have pet pigs?”

“I found it hard to believe too. A couple just last week had their pet potbellied pig mounted. Whit said he and his dad have done several potbellies. Some were in our time frame, but, unfortunately, Luther recorded only pig or deer or whatever, the name of the client, the date, kind of mount and what he charged. He didn’t differentiate by genus and species and certainly not subspecies.” Sylvia seemed to think that it was amazing of Luther not to include that information. “And, of course, he didn’t include where he dumped the carcass.”

“So what did you do?”

“Went on a road trip with Whit.” She grinned. “First, I identified the subspecies of S. scrofa-the pig bones. I had to take them to the university’s faunal collection for that. We have a more complete range there for comparison. One of the things I’d like to do here is increase the collection of reference skeletons for the lab.”

“I think that’s a good idea.”

“From the bones we recovered, we identified our pig as a potbellied pig. So we went to visit all the people on the taxidermy list to look at their stuffed pigs to see which ones were potbellies. Interesting-of most of the pigs that were hunted, only the heads were mounted. The people with pets had the whole animal done. That should have given us a clue in the records, but we were having a good time and didn’t stop to make that deduction. Only two on the list had a stuffed potbellied pig. One was significantly larger than ours. The other one looked right. The date was March 1, 1998.” Sylvia had a look of triumph on her face.

“Excellent,” said Diane. “You’ve impressed me.”

“Jonas said your skeleton is young-late teens, early twenties, maybe?” Diane nodded. “I was thinking. Between March and June lies the dates of spring break for some schools, ours included.”

“Damn, Sylvia, you’re right. Good thinking. You’ve got a knack for this.”

“I thought so. Go figure.”

Sylvia left her notes with Diane. She also left an evidence bag filled out by Jonas with a cross-section in it of the tree whose roots skewered both the wolf and the human skeleton and, as it turned out, the pig. She took it out and looked at the rings-four years. Another verification. The skeletons were there before four years ago, or else the tree could not have planted its roots between their ribs.

She very nearly had a date. After calling Frank’s partner, Ben, and leaving a message about the time frame that Sylvia had discovered, Diane took the evidence up to the conservation lab and slipped it in the box with the bones. In just a few days she had amassed quite a bit of information. She had no doubt she could find out whose bones they were, and for the first time she felt really close to a breakthrough.

“Is Korey around?” she asked his assistants on her way out.

“Somewhere. He’s been acting kind of strange all day,” said Barbara.

“Been on the phone all day talking to a string of people,” said another assistant.

“I hope everything’s all right. Tell him I was looking for him.”

“Sure thing.”

Diane walked down to the first floor. While she was in the main lobby she decided to go talk to the herpetologist to see if he was any closer to finding the snake. It made her shiver just thinking about it. She had