“Your jacket had a slice almost equal to the length of your wound,” said Jin. “The knife went in; he sliced down and withdrew. All very neat.”
Diane winced at his description. She saw both David and Jin grimace as well.
“So what can we infer-he’s proficient with a knife and had no intention of killing, just maiming?”
“I can’t say he had no intention of killing Mike,” said David. “He could easily have died.”
Diane cast her eyes upward to stop the emotion that was threatening to spill tears into her eyes. If David and Jin noticed, they said nothing.
“So all we know for sure is that he had an expensive knife and knew how to use it.”
“That’s about it,” said Jin.
“It’s a help. Did you tell Garnett all this?”
Jin nodded. “We keep him up-to-date.”
Diane was surprised at how much they had gotten done in just a few hours. “Good work. Okay. How about the other cases you processed while I was on vacation?
One by one, Jin and David reported on all the pending cases and where they were in the process. When they finished, she complimented them on their thorough work and then asked about Caver Doe.
“He’s not a priority, but did you have time to work on his effects?”
Both David and Jin bobbed their heads. “Oh, yeah,” said Jin. “He was wearing a plain green plaid flannel shirt, but some really cool jeans. Levi’s, pre-1936.”
Diane could see that Jin was dying to tell her about them. She waved a hand at him. “You have the floor,” she said, knowing he’d certainly take it.
Jin stood. “Caver Doe’s jeans had a back cinch.” Jin turned and pointed to the back of his jeans-which did not have a cinch-and looked over his shoulder at Diane. “The back cinch was a little minibelt that tightened the waist. They were called waist overalls back then, not blue jeans.”
Jin turned to face Diane. David sat up on the sofa, resting his forearms on his thighs and leaned forward, listening.
“His jeans also have a crotch rivet.” Jin started to point, but stopped as a flush crept over his face. “Well, never mind. The crotch rivet and the back cinch were removed during World War Two to save on metal and fabric and never used again. That dates them to before the Second World War.
“In 1937 the company changed the way they sewed the back pockets, so the material would cover the rivets. That was because the cowboys complained that the metal rivets scratched their saddles-they were marketing to cowboys, and cowboys were particular about their saddles. Caver Doe’s jeans also had suspender buttons. All that puts them before 1937. Now, what Caver Doe’s jeans didn’t have was a red label.”
Jin turned and pointed to his left rear pocket, where a red Levi’s label was sewn, then faced her again, and for a minute Diane didn’t know if he was going to sit back down or break into a dance. Instead, he walked closer to her desk and looked earnestly at her.
“I checked and there was never a red label sewn on Caver Doe’s jeans. The company started sewing the red label in 1936 so Levi’s could be recognized at a distance. Caver Doe’s jeans did have belt loops. Those were first added in 1922.”
“So the time line for the jeans is between 1922 and 1936,” said Diane.
“Yep.” Jin sat back down and leaned forward in the chair. “I found a lot of animal hairs on the jeans.”
“That’s interesting. . ” Diane winced in pain. Her amusement at Jin’s demonstrative explanation of Caver Doe’s jeans had relieved Diane from some of the pain in her arm, but it was back-sharp pains, as if the knifer were stabbing her over and over again.
“What’s wrong?” asked David. “You don’t look well.”
“A little pain. I didn’t want to take any medication until I got home tonight.”
“Take a pain pill. Jin and I’ll take you home when you want to go.”
“I wanted to start on Caver Doe’s bones this afternoon.”
David got up and went around to Diane’s small refrigerator hidden behind a walnut cabinet, took out a bottle of water and handed it to her. “Take a pill.”
Diane fished out the bottle of extra-strength Tylenol rather than her prescription Percocet, took out a pill and downed it with a long drink of water. “David, it’s a good thing you are a friend.”
“I know,” he said. “It lets me get away with a lot.”
“What kind of animal hairs did you find on the jeans?” Diane asked.
Diane wrinkled her forehead. “So we have rabbit, squirrel, horse and dog. What color horse?” asked Diane, smiling at Jin.
“Brown,” said Jin, grinning back at her. “The dog was black. The horse hair was clustered on the seat-looks like Caver Doe rode bareback and didn’t wash his jeans before going caving.”
“We think he hunted squirrels and rabbits,” said David. “I suppose those were his all-purpose jeans-hunting, riding, caving. The lantern’s kind of nice too. It’s circa nineteen-thirties or — forties. We’re still looking into that.”
“You’d better tell her about the book,” said Jin.
“It was a perfectly reasonable purchase. We’ve bought many more expensive things,” David protested.
Diane looked from Jin to David. “You bought something?”
“A used dog-eared book on railroad-spike collecting, for seventy-five dollars,” Jin said.
“Seventy-five dollars?” said Diane. “For a book on railroad spikes?”
“We didn’t have a database of railroad spikes,” said David. “It was perfectly reasonable to get a book to start one. I couldn’t help it if the only one was out of print and rare.”
“Do we really need a database of railroad spikes?” asked Diane.
“We have two spikes in this case.”
“And he read where last year someone used one as a murder weapon in Nevada,” said Jin in a mock defense.
“I’ll admit there’s not a lot of call for it, but you never know what information a case will hinge on.”
Diane shook her head. “Okay. So what about the button? We do have a database on buttons, as I recall.”
David’s grin was so big that both Jin and Diane laughed at him.
“Our button, it turns out, is rare. And it gives our time line a new date-provided the button actually has some connection to Caver Doe, which is really a long shot, because there were no fingerprints and nothing whatsoever to connect it to the caver, except that they were both in the cave.
“Although our jeans may date from the thirties, our button dates from the forties. It’s a silver-plated plastic officer’s-uniform button specially commissioned for the newly authorized Army Specialist Corps. The buttons were never used because the secretary of war unauthorized-or whatever it is they do-the ASC before it went into effect. The only people to have them besides the manufacturer were the Philadelphia Quartermaster’s Department and a few colonels.”
“I’m surprised,” said Diane. “I had no idea you would get that much from the button.”
“How much is it worth?” asked Jin.
“Couple hundred, maybe,” said David.
“Damn,” said Jin.
“It’s very rare.”
“Tell her about the backpack,” said Jin.
“The backpack was rare?” said Diane.
David shook his head. No. It’s a World War One U.S. Army backpack. It’s what was in it. He had a lot of candles and matches, of course, and get this-a Mickey Mouse flashlight.”
“A Mickey Mouse flashlight?”
“Made by USALite. Shows Mickey Mouse walking in the dark with a flashlight. It dates to 1935. About ruined, though. It used two D-cell batteries, and they leaked all in it. It’s a shame; it was a cool light. He had extra batteries and they leaked too. The battery acid got all over a couple of handkerchiefs, the matches, and some candles.”
