at Jonas.
“Okay, let’s see what we have here,” said Jonas. “She’d have sorted and examined all of them first. You may find more information in her computer. She has a pretty sophisticated three-dimensional program she uses to assist in reconstructing pots.”
“Do you know how to use the program?” asked Diane.
“You want me to take a look?” he said.
“Would you?”
“Sure,” he agreed. “I imagine you guys have one similar to it up there.” He looked up with his eyes, indicating the crime lab on the floor above.
“I have one in the osteology lab for skull reconstruction,” Diane said.
As she conversed with Jonas about the merits of computer programs, Diane examined the sherds. A few had imprints reflecting irregularities similar to what might appear on the back of a shaved human head.
In the second sample she unpacked were three pieces that immediately caught her eye-broken fragments, each with a protrusion. She picked them up and examined them and then fit them together. Diane had made many casts of skulls for her forensic cases and she recognized what she was looking at-the cast of a sharp-force-trauma wound.
“Well, damn.This is what Marcella was concerned about.” Diane showed it to Jonas and explained what it was.
He examined the piece under the light and with the microscope, then stood up. “This is terrible, just terrible. Couldn’t it be something else?” he said.
“I don’t know. Maybe,” said Diane. She looked at all the broken pieces laid out on the table. “It looks like the potter sculpted the clay around a head. How did he get it off?”
“Cut it in half,” said Jonas. “Artists sculpting in clay will often create a work, then cut it in half so they can scoop out the center clay. Thick pieces of clay tend to blow up or crack in the kiln, so they scoop out the inside to make it hollow and then they put the pieces back together and sculpt over the seam. This artist could have sculpted the clay around the head to get the form he wanted, then cut the clay into pieces to remove it from the head, and then put the pieces back together to make the piece whole again.”
“I see why this was on her mind,” said Diane, almost to herself. “It may not be involved in what happened to her, but it still needs to be looked into.”
As Diane was leaving the hospital room, Marcella had said the word
“Do you think you could reconstruct the whole pot-pitcher-whatever it is?” she asked.
“Sure,” he said.
“First, let me take some photographs,” said Diane.
She studied the face again. Even up close and even speckled with the bone inclusions, it was a beautiful face. She traced her finger along the curve of the lips and chin. The clay represented the elastic skin of youth, nothing sagging, nothing lined.
“I asked Jin to try to extract DNA from the bone in the pottery fragments. Hector and Scott suggested some strands might have survived in a very thick piece of the pottery. Could you select a piece that can be destroyed and is thick?” asked Diane.
“I can, but a bonfire kiln heats up to about thirteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Can DNA withstand that kind of heat?” asked Jonas.
“No, it can’t. I’d probably just be wasting their time,” she said.
“What exactly did they have in mind, if you don’t mind my asking?” said Jonas.
“They were hoping we might luck up and get a piece that was in a cooler place in the fire, and look to see if any DNA strands in the middle of the fragment were protected. They were going to use a protocol some friends of Jin worked out for analyzing the DNA of shed hair.”
“I didn’t think shed hair had DNA,” said Jonas.
“It has such a small amount that it gets destroyed using traditional methods of extracting DNA. There’s a method in which processing takes place on the slide that can save what little DNA exists. It would be a long shot anyway, but if bonfires get that hot, there would be no place cool enough for DNA to survive,” said Diane.
“Might be worth a try anyway,” said Jonas. “You know, in case it does work.”
“I’ll put it to them and let Jin and his crew make the decision,” said Diane.
“How are the Elvi working out?” asked Jonas, grinning broadly.
“Their work is very good.” Diane smiled back.
“I think they are a hoot. I’ve talked with them. They aren’t nearly as far-out as they put on.”
“I sort of suspected that,” said Diane. “You know the thing about the shirts, don’t you?”
“Color wavelength,” said Jonas. “They’re just showing off-making everything a puzzle. They’re kids really. Of course, most of the people around here are kids to me. You’re a kid to me.”
Diane laughed.
“Tell me, can we find out how old these pottery sherds are? How did Marcella know they are modern?”
“Context, for one. She found them in a pit mixed with bottles and cans. The cans were pretty well rusted out. The bottles were dated to the fifties,” said Jonas.
“Context? Is that it?” asked Diane. “Couldn’t this be much older and have gotten mixed in somehow?”
“No evidence of any mechanism for strata getting mixed. Remember, the pottery sherds she found were of pots she could put back together. All the pieces were there. They were probably broken in situ. Also, we pretty well know all the prehistoric ceramics. Even something this unusual in Georgia would have been known long before now.”
“Really, nothing left to discover?” said Diane.
“I didn’t say there is nothing left to discover, but we’re not going to find any lost civilization of bone-tempered face-pot people. It’s like mounds,” said Jonas. “People are always telling me they have an Indian mound in their field, and I tell them no, they don’t. We know where all of them are. What I’m trying to say is that we know an awful lot about the prehistory of Georgia. Yes, we still have questions, but none so profound as lost civilizations of mad potters.”
Diane smiled. “That’s what Hanks called this unknown artist-a mad potter.”
“He did, did he? Then I guess he isn’t completely off his rocker,” said Jonas.
“So you think these pieces date from the fifties?” said Diane.
“I think so. I didn’t help excavate, and she hasn’t said a lot about them. I didn’t know they were bone tempered, for instance. She just mentioned to me the context she found them in.”
Diane used the phone on the desk to call David and asked him to come down and photograph the sherds and the face when he had free time. She briefly explained to him what she had discovered.
“I need some high-contrast pictures,” said Diane. “I need to see the topography of the sherds.”
“Sure thing,” he said. “Spooky case.”
“No kidding,” said Diane. “If you could hook up Marcella’s computer, that would be helpful too. The one we found in the house.”
She hung up the phone and turned to Jonas. “I appreciate your help in this.”
“We should all get a chance to work on the dark side. Lawrence Michaels is just all tickled to have been asked to lecture on the other side.” Jonas laughed.
“I need to give everyone in the museum a tour of the crime lab so they won’t think it is so mysterious.”
“It won’t help. What you do there is mysterious by definition,” said Jonas.
Diane shook her head and sighed. “I’m going up to call Hanks. I need to keep him apprised of the latest developments. He’s going to love this one.”
Diane left Jonas working in Marcella’s office. She didn’t get up to her own office as quickly as she would have liked. Too many people stopped her to ask questions. Docents stopped her to introduce her to the group they were giving a tour to. She happened across one of the curators, who wanted to know the status of a requisition. Diane did eventually make it to her office, but not to her phone. Ross Kingsley was waiting for her.
“I thought we could go interview some of the people Stacy Dance talked with during her investigation,” he said.
