“I’m not starting with a preconceived notion. I’m investigating. You’re the first witness. She’s someone you are acquainted with.”
Diane laughed and felt another rush of the sublime brain chemicals that soothed her body and cleared her head. She was glad she had opted for the Tylenol and not the Percocet.
“I can’t see her acting with the finesse it took to stab both of us without our knowing it and then getting away clean. I’ve been going over the faces at the funeral in my mind, and I didn’t see her. I would have recognized her. So would Mike. On the other hand, I wasn’t really looking at the faces.” Diane stopped working and thought for a moment. “Lymon is a good bit shorter than Mike and a couple of inches shorter than me. Not the right height, judging by the angle of Mike’s wound.”
David seemed to ponder that for a moment. “Would she know how to hire it done? Would she know those kind of people? I know that is rather extreme, but. . would she?”
“I doubt it, but I don’t know that much about her personal life or her background. Maybe she recruited a graduate student to do it.”
“Is it that easy for professors to get their students to commit murder for them?”
Diane laughed. It was starting to sound ridiculous. David chuckled with her. “I wouldn’t have thought so,” she said. “But who knows what hold she may have on someone. When I was in graduate school, there were a few crazy students.”
David’s face sobered. “This harassment-Mike’s probably not the first. You can’t keep it a secret. You know she’ll do it again.”
Diane stared at the blank form on the clipboard as if it had an answer for her. She nodded. “I know. I haven’t decided yet how to handle it. I need information and time. And first I want to know if she was involved in the stabbing.”
“You can’t protect everyone by yourself. I like Neva too, but. .”
“I can protect people here, and I will.” She said it so vehemently that David was startled. She put the calipers and clipboard down on the table with a clink.
“What’s up with you?” he said.
Diane pressed her lips together and looked away. “First Ariel and all our friends at the mission were slaughtered, then Frank was shot last year, now Mike’s been hurt-again. Except for now, all connected with people I was investigating, so who is the common denominator for all of them?” She turned and stared at David as if daring him not to say it was her.
“The common denominator is men who are willing to kill to get what they want,” said David. “Not you.”
“It feels like me. I know I can’t fix everything, but I can help Neva and Mike. And I can control what goes on in my museum.” She paused a moment, putting a hand to her forehead. “Mike gave me a dynamite job proposal. He didn’t tell me he needed the job because he had lost his assistantship. I gave the proposal to Kendel. She likes it too, so I’m going to hire him.”
David smiled. “Have I told you lately that I appreciate your hiring me?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I do. We’ve brought more people to justice in the short time I’ve been here than we ever did working in human rights, and that’s been very healing for me.”
Diane understood how he felt. When they worked in human rights investigation, they collected mass amounts of evidence, but rarely were they able to take anyone to court.
“It’s been cathartic for me too.”
David smiled at her. “I’m sure Mike will appreciate a job here as much as I do.”
“He’ll be half-time. His Journey to the Center of the Earth display looks like it will be a big success. The advertising is going well. Early response indicates it’s likely to be just behind the dinosaurs and the Egyptian exhibit in popularity. It’s projected to bring in enough extra revenue to pay his salary. He’s earning his keep.”
“I didn’t think you would hire him if he couldn’t do the job,” said David. “Like I know you didn’t hire me simply because I’m a friend.”
“I know. It’s just. . ” She shrugged.
“Just what?”
“Nothing. I need to get back to these bones.”
“Jin and I are going down to the restaurant a little later for lunch; you hungry?”
“Thanks. I’ve got some yogurt in the fridge in my museum office. I don’t feel like much more than that.”
“Look, I’ll take you home tonight if you need to take any stronger medication. Is Frank coming over tonight?”
“No. He’s still in Atlanta on a case.”
David started out the door. “I’ll start tomorrow morning on Lymon. I know Garnett’s detectives are questioning Mike’s associates in Geology. They may have picked up on something. I’ll wheedle information out of them.”
“Thanks, David.”
“Sure.” He headed for the door, turned as if to say something, but hesitated. Finally he simply said, “I’ll let you know when I have something.”
Diane focused her attention back to the bones lying on the metal table, forcing everything else out of her mind. She actually knew a lot about Caver Doe just by the things he had with him when he died. She just didn’t know who he was. Nor did she know why he wasn’t rescued, and the question nagged at her.
She picked up the skull and traced her fingers over his frontal bone. Caver Doe had a gracile forehead, more so than when she saw him covered with dried flesh in the cave. If his frontal bone was all she had now Diane would have thought that he was a female. She picked up his mandible and fitted it to the skull and looked at his face. Straight on, it looked like a female skull. His chin had the roundness of a female’s. That was not so uncommon. Not every male had a prominent brow ridge or square jaw. But the placement of other markers-nuchal crests, the zygomatic process, the mastoid process-pointed to male.
She ran a finger along his teeth, counting his dentition. The dental formula for an adult human was two, one, two, three. Two incisors, one canine, two premolars and three molars-the number of upper and lower teeth on one side, thirty-two in all. Caver Doe’s third molars, his wisdom teeth, had not yet erupted, which probably meant he was under twenty-five.
His teeth were uneven-the incisors slightly turned and overlapping, the molars crowded. Had the wisdom teeth erupted, there would have been little room for them. Caver Doe had fourteen gold fillings.
Diane set down the mandible, picked up her calipers and measured all the craniometric points on the face, recording them on her clipboard. Her stomach growled just as she put the skull back down on the doughnut ring. Her arm started to throb again.
She put down her calipers. Yogurt wasn’t going to be enough. She called the museum’s restaurant and asked them to deliver a turkey sandwich, potato chips and Dr Pepper to her museum office. She took off her lab coat and went down to the first floor. The museum was filled with visitors and noise. She always found that satisfying. She stopped in front of the dinosaur room and watched a group of children having their pictures made by the brachiosaur. She smiled and continued down the length of the museum to her office. The restaurant had just delivered the sandwich to Andie when she arrived.
“You doing okay, Dr. Fallon?” asked Andie.
“Fine. . a little sore.” Diane was getting a little tired of people asking if she was okay, but knew they were just being kind and concerned. She hoped she didn’t sound short when she answered. “I’m going to eat lunch in my office.”
“I won’t put anyone through unless it’s an emergency.”
“Thanks, Andie.” She carried the sack from the restaurant into her office lounge and set it down on the table. After putting on a CD of Native American music, she sat down to eat, listening to the peaceful sounds of flutes and drums. Better than drugs, she thought as the harmonic strains took her to a quiet place in her mind.
The food and music had remarkable restorative powers. Diane felt much better after lunch. She went back to the lab, put on her white coat and resumed working on Caver Doe. She picked up each rib, examined and felt along the shaft for any nicks that might have been caused by a weapon. She gently squeezed the ends of the ribs toward each other to check for fractures. Nothing. Tomorrow she would put them under the dissecting microscope and
