getting caught. It’s a kind of prestige to have a lot of them. Probably says something about our vic.”
Diane went to the next set of drawings. Neva had placed the last two portraits together-Caver Doe and the girl in his photograph-possibly his sweetheart? Caver Doe looked young. His bones told her that he was, but his portrait really showed his youthful, graceful face-quite a contrast to the face of Quarry Doe. The face of the woman from the photograph was equally pretty. Short wavy hair, bright eyes, full lips with corners turned into a hint of a smile. Her dress had a crocheted collar. There was something about her that looked vaguely familiar.
“These are good,” said Diane. “Poignant to put a face on our caver.”
Diane was pleased with the way Neva was able to draw faces from skulls. Diane had taught her what a fleshed-out face would look like given specific underlying bone structures. She’d shown her how to calculate skin depths on the face, how to use the size of the nasal opening to find out the length of the nose, how to define the eyes. Neva picked up forensic art quickly. Diane also showed Neva how to use the sophisticated scanning software to have the computer draw the face. The computer drawing wasn’t as life-like as Neva’s drawings, but combining Neva’s artistic ability and the computer’s scanning ability made the work a lot quicker.
“Yes, it is sad. His girlfriend too-I’m guessing it’s his girlfriend. I wonder what happened to her. She must not have known what became of him.”
“Probably not.”
“Unless she conspired to leave him in the cave,” said Neva.
Diane laughed. “You’ve been in crime too long. You’re getting a cynical, suspicious mind.”
“It does come with the territory, doesn’t it?”
“When I finish Caver Doe, we’ll do a newspaper article and run it with the drawings. Maybe there is someone around who will recognize them or remember them.”
Diane looked over at Plymouth Doe. “There’s another lost soul. When I’m finished with these measurements, you can take this skull to the vault and let the laser scan her features and start building a face. When you finish, put her skull in that tank sitting on the counter.” Diane looked at all the drawings again before walking back to Plymoth Doe’s bones. “Really nice work,” she told Neva. She sprayed them down again with water.
“It’s really interesting to listen to Korey tell how he’s going to preserve the stuff from the car,” said Neva. “Do you know he froze all the magazines in a little battery-powered freezer he had in the van at the site?”
Diane nodded. “That immediately stopped any destructive chemical or biological processes going on. In his lab he’s using a process called vacuum freeze-drying. He’ll put the frozen magazines in a chamber and pump the air out and form a vacuum-that will dry them at freezing temperatures. It’s a method that changes the ice directly into gas so it never goes through a liquid state. The magazines will be dry documents when it’s finished.”
“That’s amazing.”
“Sometime when we have some downtime-if we ever do-you might enjoy spending some time in the conservation lab. They do interesting work.” Diane measured and recorded all the craniometric points on Plymouth Doe’s skull as she and Neva talked. The laser would do the same, but Diane still liked to take the measurements herself-as with caving, she liked to get to know the bones.
“You know,” said Neva, “I like the older crimes better than the new ones.”
“Less blood and putrid flesh,” said Diane.
“Yeah. And the tragedy is farther away.”
“I know what you mean,” Diane agreed.
Neva gestured toward the skeleton. “How is Korey handling her clothes?”
“There are several methods for working with waterlogged fabric, but I think he’s going to use a process that impregnates the material with silicone oil. Jin’ll have to look for trace and blood before any processing is done. I think he and Korey have come up with an experiment to see how much these methods affect the ability to do blood analysis. I know Korey wants to go to the fabric store to get different kinds of textiles for the experiment. He and Jin are writing a paper together.”
Diane finished measuring the skull and began her examination of the other bones. She started by feeling along the ribs with her fingers, searching for nicks.
“I can see how that kind of information helps us,” said Neva. “But what are Korey and the museum going to get out of the experiments?”
Diane looked up from the skull. “For one thing, archaeologists also look for blood residue. Even after thousands of years, they can still find protein markers from different kinds of animals on arrowheads. Same thing with ancient textiles they run across. It would be good for them to know how preservation techniques affect blood or other kinds of stains that might be on artifacts.”
“How do you know all this stuff?”
Diane looked up from the rib she was examining and paused a long moment, grinning. “I’ve got this really big museum connected to the crime lab and it knows all kinds of stuff.”
Neva hit her forehead with the heel of her hand.
“Speaking of the museum, how’s Mike doing?” asked Diane.
“Antsy and a little obnoxious about having to rest, if you can imagine Mike being obnoxious.”
Diane couldn’t. “He’s only been out of the hospital, what-two, three days?”
“That’s what I keep telling him. He wanted to come in to the museum today. I think I talked him out of it. But he’s really excited about his new job.”
“So is Shelly, the collection manager for Geology. She’s so glad Dr. Lymon is gone that I’m expecting her to be doing cartwheels down the halls. She and Lymon have gotten into it a few times.”
“I wanted to thank you for. . well, you know, keeping me out of the harassment business. I know I shouldn’t have been such a coward.”
“Don’t worry about it. Sylvia Mercer’s witnessing the incident was all the evidence that mattered. David checked out Dr. Lymon, by the way, and she had an alibi for the day of the stabbing at the funeral.”
“That’s a relief.”
Diane was about to hand Plymouth Doe’s skull over to Neva when David called on the intercom.
“Diane, Jin and Korey want us in the conservation lab ASAP. Jin sounds excited.”
Chapter 33
“Jin just loves this job.” Neva grinned. “You know, he’s decided he likes caves too. He said he’d like to go with us sometime. I invited him to come to the caver club meeting at the museum.”
“You did tell him we don’t always discover bodies?” Diane covered the bones with a special absorbent material that she had saturated with water, hung her white lab coat on a wall peg and washed her hands.
Neva laughed. “I did. He and Korey came over for dinner last night and Mike showed him his album of caving photos. Have you seen it?”
Diane shook her head. “No, although I’d like to. I understand he’s been to some interesting caves. I just hope Jin doesn’t get the idea of cave diving,” said Diane.
“I think Mike was worried about that too. Jin mentioned that it’d be neat to combine his scuba diving with exploring underwater caves. Mike told him that when cave divers die, it’s usually from cave diving. That was a real conversation stopper.” Neva pushed the door open and held it for Diane. “I think it kind of hurt Jin’s feelings. He thinks Mike doesn’t like him because of the Luminol incident in the cave.”
“Is it true?” Diane secured the door behind her.
“No. I don’t think so. Mike tends to like everybody. He’s like that little kid who just knows there has to be a pony in a pile of manure that large. . He’s always such an optimist. In the past few months he’s been shot, stabbed, harassed, lost his assistantship, and he still thinks he’s the luckiest guy in the world.”
“That does sound like Mike. I’m sure he was only trying to make a point with Jin about just how dangerous cave diving is.” She and Neva headed for the conservation lab.
“What about ice caves? I understand they’re dangerous too,” Neva said.
“You thinking about this extremophile collecting job Mike is taking?”
“Yes. I know Mike is good, but. .”
“It’s a very reputable company, and he’ll be working with a team. Like stuntmen in movies, they do a lot of
