been piecing together.
“When I saw her in the hospital, she told me to look at the inside of the pieces. I did and saw they had been molded over a human face.”
“You mean like a death mask?” he said.
“Could have been, but we didn’t know that. It could have been a life mask. But Marcella also told me to look at the sherds,” Diane said.
“You keep using that word,
“Yes, exactly,” said Diane.
“Okay,” he said. “Just making sure I understand. Go ahead.”
Diane started to speak when he interrupted again. “Should he be here?” Hanks pointed to Mike. “No offense, buddy, but you’re a civilian.”
“Mike does consulting with the crime lab because of his knowledge of rocks and soils,” said Diane. “He helped rescue Hector from the well. And the experiment we are working on involves soil samples.”
Mike didn’t even blink. Diane didn’t tell Hanks that she hadn’t actually talked to Mike about the experiment. But she didn’t want to send Mike to wait outside. And it was true, after all, he did know about soils.
“Okay, go on,” said Hanks.
“Marcella told me to look at sherds she had assembled from the back part of the mask. I did, and found what looks like a cast of a sharp-force-trauma head wound,” she said.
“Now that’s interesting,” said Hanks. “So, the artist, or whoever, put the clay on over a head wound?”
“It looks that way. Some of the etching suggests the head was also shaved before making the mask,” said Diane.
“This is getting weird,” he said.
“We haven’t even gotten to weird yet,” said Diane. “Marcella, Dr. Payden, is an expert in pottery. She’s creating a reference collection of pottery sherds and thin sections for the museum. A thin section is a very thin slice of, in this case, a pottery sherd, mounted on a microscope slide to be examined under polarized light so that its various constituents can be identified. Before she came here, her work involved prehistoric pottery from Texas that was tempered with animal bones. She was surprised to find that the pottery she found buried here in her yard also had been tempered with bone.”
“I don’t get it. Are we talking about this being an archaeology-what do they call it-site, an archaeology site? A dig? Why are you telling me this?” he asked without rancor, but with a lot of curiosity.
“No. There is no bone-tempered pottery in the prehistory of Georgia,” said Diane.
She explained about what tempering is, how it gives a distinctive look and characteristics to pottery, and that in Georgia, common prehistoric tempers were fiber, shells, and grit.
“But this is not prehistoric. We are talking about modern pottery here. Are you with me?” she said.
“Not yet, but keep going,” said Hanks. “This is like watching the Discovery Channel. And I’m anxious to hear how your guy Hector got in the well. This is where all this is leading, right?”
Diane smiled. The others had been silent throughout her narration. It was the first time they had heard all of it. Mike hadn’t heard any of it.
“Marcella used a lab in Arizona to analyze her Texas pottery sherds to identify the species of animal bone used for the tempering. It’s a thing archaeologists like to know,” Diane said. “She sent samples of the pottery she found in her yard here to the lab to find out what species of animal was used in it. The lab called me at the museum when they couldn’t get in touch with Marcella. She was in the hospital. They were quite disturbed to discover that the species was human. I believe they faxed you a copy of their report.”
“Well, yeah, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of the damn thing.” Hanks leaned forward, openmouthed. “Are you telling me those pots she found were made out of human bone? Now, that is spooky.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Diane could see the surprise on Mike’s face. Neva smiled at him and patted his thigh.
“The clay used to make them had human bone mixed with it for temper. Yes,” said Diane.
Hanks put his hands on his face and rubbed his eyes. “You people know how to do weird. I’ll give you that,” he said.
“After discovering those two things-the sharp-force trauma and the human-bone tempering-it was incumbent on us to search for human remains on the property. I decided we would conduct a study David had been wanting to do. It involves developing quicker methods for finding buried human remains. Starting in the backyard, he and two technicians from the DNA lab were using stakes and string to grid the property into squares. They would then take soil samples at defined increments and analyze them for their chemical constituents. Decomposing remains leave chemical signatures. We don’t know the range of the affected area for soil conditions in this region. The study was designed to answer some of the questions we don’t yet have answers for, and to locate any remains that are here.” Diane stopped to let it all soak in.
“Couldn’t you use cadaver dogs?” he asked.
“We suspect the remains could be decades old. The context in which Marcella found the broken pottery suggested the 1950s,” said Diane.
“Okay, so I take it your… experiment worked,” he said.
“In a rather serendipitous way,” said Diane. “While they were putting up stakes and strings for the grid, Hector fell into an abandoned well. It had been capped with wood that was covered in dirt and vegetation and had rotted over the years. The bone he discovered was at the bottom of the well. We suspect there are more,” said Diane.
“Couldn’t the bone be from a deer or something?” said Hanks. “People do throw dead animals down dry wells to get rid of the carcasses.”
Diane was surprised at how often she was asked that question. Even Frank had made a similar query at one time. She wondered whether they really thought it was hard to tell the difference between animal and human or if they thought the skull was required in order to make a positive species ID.
“No,” she said simply.
“Seriously, should we get the medical examiner to take a look?” he said.
“You can if you want,” said Diane. “But it’s a right human tibia of someone in their teens. Possibly female, but that’s not certain. What is certain is that it is human.”
“I take it you’ve done this before,” he said.
Diane found it hard to believe that he didn’t know. But he was relatively new to Rosewood and apparently knew her only as the director of the crime lab and the museum.
“I’m a forensic anthropologist,” said Diane.
He winced and saw that David, Neva, and Mike were grinning at him. “Okay, I wasn’t aware. Do you know how long it was in the well?” he asked.
“Probably more than fifty years. There is a particular smell the marrow leaves that lasts for decades in buried bone. That was gone. The bone had taken on the color of the surrounding soil, indicating it had been buried for most of its tenure in the well,” she said.
“Where is it now?” he asked.
“In my car, wrapped in newsprint. We’ll have to get someone out here to stabilize the sides of the well so we can get the remaining bones out.”
“So, now you don’t have to complete your study,” he said.
“Oh yes,” said Diane. “Just because we found bones in the well doesn’t mean the yard isn’t full of buried bodies.”
Chapter 37
“Oh, I see,” said Hanks. “So we could have lots more bodies?” He stared at Diane. “Are you serious? This could be a… some maniac’s burial ground?” He shifted in his chair, winced suddenly, and rubbed his shoulder. “Damn it,” he said. “Sorry.”
