She started to say something, when she heard Kathy Nicholson yell at Wendy. Diane turned to find Wendy with a gun on them.
“This is just too much,” said Diane. “Put down the gun.”
Wendy had tears running down her cheeks and was rubbing the back of her neck with her free hand. She looked strange to Diane, uneasy on her feet. She tried to speak but collapsed on the floor.
Diane ran to her and felt her neck. Nothing.
“No pulse,” said Diane.
“What?” said Kathy. “How?”
Samuel Carruthers came over to her and felt for a pulse himself. Then he felt the back of her neck. “She’s gone,” he said.
“The hit by Everett?” asked Diane.
Samuel nodded. “I think it broke her cervical vertebrae. When she started moving, the bones cut through her spinal cord.”
Diane put a hand over her eyes. “God, this is just an awful day,” she said.
“What was she trying to do?” asked Marsha.
“I think, save her son from us,” said Diane. “I don’t know.”
“That man drove her crazy,” said Kathy.
“Did anyone call the police?” said Diane.
“I did,” said Samantha. “Before my big entrance.”
Diane went back over to where Everett was stirring. “Just stay on the floor,” she said.
“What are you doing here?” Marsha asked her daughter.
“I came in through the window upstairs to get some of my things. I was trying to do it without your knowing. Then I heard some crazy stuff down here, so I crept down with my guitar. Good thing.”
Diane heard the police sirens. It was a happy song. She and Kingsley gladly gave long statements to the police that went well into the afternoon. It was dinnertime before she and Kingsley went to their vehicles.
“We’ve got to quit meeting like this,” said Kingsley.
Diane put a hand on the handle of her car door. “I’m giving up private work. Don’t call unless you want a tour of the museum. By the way, that was quite a lecture you gave the Carruthers.”
“They needed it. It really pissed me off when he decided to do some man stuff after his daughter did all the rescue work,” said Kingsley.
“Are they going to be all right?” asked Diane.
Kingsley shrugged. “Samantha will be. I don’t know about her parents. Who knows? Sometimes near-death experiences can change people. Want to meet at the Olive Garden on the way out of town? I’m famished.”
Epilogue
Diane wrote up the final report on all the crime scenes her crime lab team was involved in relating to Everett and Tyler Walters. The police turned up more evidence than they needed executing the search warrants. Everett Walters thought he was being so clever not leaving any evidence. He never checked his feet. They found two more pottery pieces and two burgundy sequins under the floor mat of his truck. Part of the rope he used to truss up Stacy Dance was in the pickup toolbox. His boots were in his office closet at one of his places of business.
Marcella Payden recovered and went back to Arizona for an extended visit with her daughter and son-in-law. She and Jonas Briggs were writing a paper on serendipitous archaeology. Marcella kept her house, even though David, Scott, and Hector turned up remains of nine more bodies. Marcella wasn’t scared away. It was a home with history and she was an archaeologist. As far as she was concerned, it was the house and property that outed the villains.
Jin had gotten DNA samples from all the skeletons recovered-mostly from the roots of teeth, but some from inside the bones. Neva reconstructed all their faces. So far, they hadn’t gotten any hits on who the victims might be. They had been dead well over sixty years. Diane didn’t hold out much hope they would be identified.
Kingsley and his bosses went with Harmon Dance to take his son home from prison-and had a press conference there in the parking lot. Kingsley told Diane that Darley, Dunn, and Upshaw wanted to hire her. She said no.
Maybelle Agnes Gauthier celebrated her ninety-eighth birthday at her retirement home. The authorities were still trying to figure out what to do with her. They no longer considered her a threat, but Diane told Hanks she was not so sure. He agreed.
Kathy Nicholson moved with her son to California. She wrote Diane that Colton was considering transferring to the University of Hawaii and they might move there. Diane guessed that the coast wasn’t far enough away from their bad memories in Georgia. Kathy Nicholson had to come to terms with the fact that she had not seen Ryan Dance drive by, but her own neighbor, Tyler Walters. Tyler told the police in his statement that he and his grandfather knew Kathy would be working in her garden and all Tyler had to do was be in Ryan’s car, wearing Ryan’s hat, and hanging his arm out the window for her to see the fake tattoo-and never turn his face to her.
Tyler Walters recovered and was tried and convicted for raping Ellie Rose Carruthers, murdering Stacy Dance, which he finally admitted to, kidnapping Diane and the others, and conspiring with his grandfather to kill Mary Lassiter and Marcella Payden, and framing Ryan Dance. He received life in prison, and was given the possibility of parole after twenty-five years because he testified against his grandfather. Tyler’s father decided not to run for office. Jonas Briggs said it was a good thing. With the potential candidate’s father, son, and late wife-not to mention his aunt-in his bio, no one but Jeffrey Dahmer would vote for him, and he was dead.
Everett Walters went to prison for life without possibility of parole for killing Ellie Rose Carruthers, Mary Phyllis Lassiter, Ray-Ray Dildy, Stacy Dance, and Wendy Walters, and for framing Ryan Dance, and kidnapping Diane and the others, and trying to assassinate Diane. He confessed to none of it. Tyler said his grandfather shot Ray-Ray to tie up a loose end and liked the idea of using a policeman’s gun to do it. Ray-Ray was a day worker at one of Everett Walters’ businesses. Everett learned about his cousin, Emory, from him. Tyler said that Ray-Ray and Emory were the only two people his grandfather had hired to help with the dirty work and that he had planned to kill Emory after he’d killed Diane in the home invasion.
The authorities were still uncertain whom to charge with killing the eleven people from sixty years ago. The resolution was still undergoing legal wrangling. Everett Walters’ lawyers were saying that because his fingerprints were only on sculpting tools and clay, the state had no basis on which to charge him. His lawyers also claimed that his sister’s testimony was unreliable, since she had been diagnosed on several occasions as being of unsound mind.
Oran Doppelmeyer, Gainesville’s medical examiner, was let go by the city, much to Lynn Webber’s delight. Diane suspected that if Lynn had the opportunity in the future, she would mess with his life again.
Diane didn’t know what Samuel and Marsha Carruthers were up to or how they were coping. But she and Frank went to hear Samantha and the band one evening. They weren’t too bad and Samantha seemed to be doing well. She was still in school and she had dyed all of her hair pink. Kingsley had bought her a new guitar. Frank told Diane it was a very expensive guitar.
Diane sat in her office going over the budget reports when the phone rang.
“Diane Fallon,” she said.
“Dr. Fallon. My name is Clara Chandler. I hope I have the right place. I copied the number off the TV screen and, well, my eyesight’s not too good anymore.”
“What can I do for you?” said Diane.
“My sister, Patsy Chandler, went missing fifty-six years ago and she looked just like the picture I saw on the news of a girl you found down in a well. You said her name might be Patsy. I hope it’s her. I’d like to take her home. We thought our daddy kilt her and buried her somewheres. He was mean like that.”
“Would you come in and give us a DNA sample?” asked Diane.
“What do I have to do?” she asked.
“Let us take a cotton swab and rub inside your cheek,” she said.
“Oh, like they do on those crime shows?” she said.
