Jin was there. So were the twins, Hector and Scott Spearman. They were dressed in jeans and pin-striped shirts with pointed collar flaps open at the neck, revealing gold chains. Hector’s shirt was yellow and Scott’s was green. She knew it was Hector because Hector was the older twin and he always wore a shirt color with a higher wavelength than Scott.
Hector and Scott started talking immediately. They always appeared as if they were never let out of the lab and had to jump at any opportunity to talk with anyone other than Jin.
“Hello, Dr. Fallon,” said Scott. “We were just discussing…”
“The merits of using junk DNA…,” said Hector.
“For ancestry testing,” said Scott.
When they were excited they spoke in that alternating way. She thought she might actually get dizzy listening to them, moving her head from one to the other. She understood how it might drive Jin crazy on occasion. They expounded on the disadvantages of using particular strands of DNA often referred to as “junk” because they no longer seemed to serve an active purpose.
“I’m sure Dr. Fallon didn’t come down here for that,” said Jin. “What’s up, Boss?”
“I was wondering if you could analyze the DNA in pieces of pottery,” said Diane.
That stopped the three of them. They stood for several moments just staring at her with completely blank expressions.
Finally Hector spoke. “It has to be something that was alive.”
Diane laughed. “I’m sorry, I started in the middle of a thought.” She laughed again. “The pieces of pottery were tempered with human bone.”
“Who would do that?” said Jin.
“And why?” asked Scott.
Diane gave a minilecture on what little she knew of pottery making, similar to the spiel she gave Hanks.
“I honestly don’t know why the aboriginal inhabitants in Texas used bone for tempering. Nor do I know why the person who once inhabited Marcella’s house did. But do you think you could get any usable DNA out of it?” asked Diane.
“The firing would have destroyed any DNA,” said Jin.
“They were fired in a bonfire kiln, which has a much lower temperature than a regular kiln,” she said. “I know it’s still a high temperature, but I was just wondering.”
“You know,” said Scott, “if the bases of the pots were thick-wouldn’t they have to be thicker than the sides?” He shrugged. “Anyway, if we could find some very thick pieces that just happened to be at a place in the fire where the temperature was lower… like sitting on the ground… I’m just thinking here.”
“Yes,” said Hector, “perhaps the thick pieces might contain some strands that survived. Of course we would have…”
“To use Jin’s protocol for shed hair,” said Scott.
They looked at Jin.
“What do you think?” Diane asked Jin.
“It never hurts to try, but I don’t really hold out any hope. But we may get a paper out of it.” He grinned. So did Hector and Scott.
“I’ll send you some samples,” said Diane. “Thank you.”
“By the way,” said Jin, “I’ve done some analysis on our evidence. That large stain on the floor near the table was a combination of urine and feces, just as you said. Probably the spot where she died.”
Diane nodded. “Thanks, Jin.”
She left them and rode the elevator up to the third floor and walked over to the crime lab.
Neva, David, and Izzy were there. They were getting a lecture on handwriting analysis from a member of the museum archives staff. The sample under discussion was the writing on the back of Marcella’s desk drawer.
Chapter 19
“I personally think that you can’t tell much about what slant means in the young,” Lawrence Michaels, one of the museum’s archivists and their only handwriting expert, was saying when Diane walked into the dimly lit lab. “Children, especially early teenage girls, experiment with different handwriting on a whim-for fun. However, in the adult… Ah, Dr. Fallon. Good to see you. I was just explaining that I get a bit of mixed messages from the handwriting on the desk drawer.”
Michaels was a middle-aged man with striking silver hair. He always dressed in a suit and tie, clothes he apparently found comfortable. Occasionally he wore a bow tie, which Diane thought gave him an entirely different persona. Today he had on a dark brown suit, a light pink shirt with a tie that was a dark shade of pink decorated with small brown fleurs de lis. Diane pulled up a chair and sat down beside David.
“This is a woman’s hand,” Michaels continued. “She is intelligent and creative-as suggested by the rounded
He indicated each of the characteristics with a laser pointer that jumped quickly from character to character, making lightning zigzags of neon red on the dry-erase board where he had projected the image of the note.
“The characters are largest in the middle zone-the ascenders and descenders don’t go much above or below the baseline. This suggests immaturity-could be young at heart. Immaturity doesn’t always have to be a bad thing. The way the letters slant in different directions is a little disturbing. Bottom line, I’m not really sure what you have here. Perhaps an intelligent, creative, selfish, and childishly disturbed woman with something to hide. Or maybe not. This isn’t an exact science. I hope this helps.” He grinned at his audience.
“No offense,” said Izzy, “but I could have gotten most of that from the words she wrote. What adult, but a disturbed one, writes a message like that on the bottom of a drawer? Who did she expect would find it?”
Michaels shrugged. “The handwriting is consistent with the message. I can say that,” he said.
“Thank you, Dr. Michaels,” said Diane. “Quite possibly, it does help. What would really help,” Diane said to all of them, “is if we could get an approximate date for when the message was written.”
“Okay,” said Michaels. “There is one other thing. See the double
“Now, see,” said Izzy. “That’s helpful. You should have said that right off.”
“Sorry,” Michaels said, grinning. He dusted off his hands as if he had been using chalk instead of a laser pointer.
“Well, I think it’s neat,” said Neva. “Thanks, Dr. Michaels.”
Neva escorted Lawrence Michaels to the door that was the threshold between the dark side, the crime lab, and the museum proper.
“I couldn’t help but notice,” David said to Diane when Neva returned, “that you said that quite possibly it does help. What is it you know?”
The others looked at David in surprise. Apparently they hadn’t taken note of what Diane said.
Diane explained about the phone call from the lab in Arizona and what they had discovered about the sherds Marcella sent them. “I don’t know that those were sherds she found in her yard, but for now, let’s suppose they were.”
“Okay,” said Izzy. “That’s a sign of a disturbed person. Crushing up human bones to make pots? It’s downright spooky. Maybe the handwriting guy had something after all.”
“Yeah,” said Neva. “We have a creatively disturbed, immature woman-writing a secret message on the bottom of drawers doesn’t seem to be a sign of maturity. I think we ought to find out who she is.”
“What we need,” said Diane, “is a list of all the people who ever lived in the house. We can start with ownership records.”
“That ought to be easy,” said Neva. “I’ll go down to the courthouse and do a search.”
