lounge, she ran into Madge Stewart, one of the museum board members, on her way out.
Madge was a small woman, several inches shorter than Diane. Her springy gray hair surrounded her head like a messy halo. She was quite a busybody, and Diane just knew she was in for an interesting run-in.
“I was just looking for you, Diane,” she said.
“Hello, Madge. Did you try my office?”
“Oh, I just came in here to get a Coke and some peanuts.” She held them up for Diane to see.
“What did you need to see me about?”
“I got this strange call. Some woman said you killed her son. Did you?”
“No, Madge, I didn’t kill her son. If I did, I’d be under arrest, wouldn’t I?”
“Well, I thought it might have been in the line of duty, that kind of thing.” She cast a furtive glance toward the crime lab just a few feet away. Many in the museum referred to the top floor of the west wing as the dark side. Apparently Madge did, too.
“No, Madge, I had nothing to do with his death.”
“Why does his mother think you did?” Madge made it sound like an accusation. It probably was. Her small dark eyes bore into Diane like she was looking for any kind of deception.
“How did you hear about it?” said Madge.
From the look on her face, Diane could see that she thought she had caught Diane in a slip of the tongue.
“I was working another crime scene when the detective in charge got the call,” said Diane. Madge looked disappointed and Diane wanted to laugh.
“You know, if you would get rid of that crime scene stuff, this wouldn’t happen,” said Madge.
“Madge, the crime lab didn’t have anything to do with his death. Now excuse me, I need to go.”
Diane walked across the dinosaur overlook and into the hallway that represented the border between the museum and its dark side.
Chapter 24
“OK, I need to know who killed the Stanton kid,” Diane said as she came into the crime lab.
David looked up at her from his computer, Jin from his microscope; Neva was gone-processing her car, she hoped. However she saw a drawing she had been doing that looked like a picture of the back of a man. The Cipriano case, Diane guessed. She wondered about the usefulness of back view, but who knows? Someone may have seen him hanging around.
“Garnett said Stanton is a priority?” asked David. “Because they’re rich, I’ll bet. You know, just because Joana Cipriano’s not wealthy…”
“Garnett hasn’t said anything,” interrupted Diane. “I have.” She explained about Patrice Stanton and Patrice’s new goal in life.
“The woman who attacked you at the hospital?” asked Jin. “Nervy.”
“The woman is a bottomless well of nerve,” said Diane, “She’s already driving me crazy and she hasn’t even gotten started. I want her off my back. In particular, off the museum’s back. Tell me what you found.”
“We aren’t supposed to talk with you about it,” said Jin. “Garnett told us not to. But I will if you ask me.”
“No, I won’t ask you. He’s just protecting the evidence,” she said.
“Did he tell you not to tell David?” asked Diane.
“No, he didn’t,” said Jin.
“Good. Tell David. I’ll be finishing my reports on the explosion remains. Have any of the DNA analyses come back?”
“No,” he said. “It’ll be a while. Now, if we were doing it…”
“I know,” said Diane. “We need our own lab. Find me Blake’s killer and I’ll go to the mat with Garnett for a DNA lab.”
Jin looked at her wide-eyed. “You serious, Boss?”
“Yes.”
Jin rubbed his hands together. “OK, David. Let’s do it,” said Jin.
“You are serious, aren’t you?” said David.
“I am,” Diane said.
Diane retreated to her osteology lab and began checking over all the forensic reports and filing them away in the vault with the pieces of bone.
The only skeleton not yet analyzed was the antique individual who was shot in the head. Diane laid him out in anatomical position on one of her tables. She placed the skull on a doughnut ring. She eyed the brown and black bones a moment, then began examining each one.
Most of the bones were present, with the exception of some very small ones. The tips of all the fingers of the left hand, except the thumb and index finger, were missing. All the distal phalanges were missing from the right hand. Three of the carpal bones-wrist bones-were missing from the left side and one from the right. All the foot bones were present. Diane thought that amazing under the circumstances.
The hyoid bone-the bone in the throat that supports the base of the tongue-was missing. All the long bones were present. They’re harder to lose, of course, if you’re keeping a box of bones. Human skeletons have twelve ribs on each side. The eleventh and twelfth-called floating ribs because they are not attached ventrally-were missing from the left side; the twelfth was missing from the right.
She checked all the ribs for nicks and cuts that might have come from a knife or gunshot wound. She found none. She measured the long bones using a bone board. The left leg bones-the femur, tibia, and fibula-taken together were shorter than the right by half an inch. He may have had a slight limp. Other than that, the long bones were unremarkable.
Two thoracic vertebrae were missing. The coccyx-the tail bone-had a small healed crack. At some point in his life he had fallen and cracked it. It probably gave him trouble the rest of his young life. Diane examined each vertebra. There were no healed breaks, nor were there any signs of lipping or degenerative disease. Other than his teeth, he was basically healthy.
In the middle of the examination David came in and pulled up a chair.
“Neva came back. She told us about your car. You have a hard time with vehicles, don’t you,” he said.
“Apparently,” said Diane not looking up from the bones.
“I had a long talk with both Neva and Jin,” he said. “I assume you would like to be filled in, as Garnett didn’t tell them not to talk to me about the case and he certainly didn’t tell me not to talk to you about it.”
David cast a glance at the skeleton on the table. “Is that the guy who was under the bed?”
“That’s him. I thought I’d analyze his bones. It’s rather relaxing.”
“What do you know about him?” asked David.
“Other than he is male in his early twenties? Caucasian, from the look of his skull and the indexes of his other measurements. He had a slight limp that he was born with. He was fairly healthy; broke his tailbone at one time; stood about five feet six, and was left-handed. I’m going to have a stable isotope analysis done on a sample of his bone to see what I can find out about where he grew up and what kind of diet he might have had.”
“Garnett won’t spring for that,” said David.
“The primate lab will,” said Diane. “What’s the use of being director of the museum and curator of the primate lab if I can’t order a SIA once in a while?”
“Who do you think he is?” asked David.
“Who do I think he is?” Diane repeated. “I have no idea.”
