Dead Guilty Part 17

"I don't like this. You say you kept him talking long enough for the phone company to trace the call?"

Diane hesitated a beat. "Yes. A policeman went to check it out, but I imagine he's long gone."

"I'll call and tell them to talk to anyone who might have seen anybody using that pay phone."

"I got an answer from the E-mail. You know of a policeman named Lenderman or something like that?"

"There's a Marty Lenderman. You saying it's him? He's a very down-to-earth guy. I can't even imagine it's him."

"The person who replied said they didn't send the message and not to bother them, that their father was a policeman. The address was JMLndrmn. I just added some vowels to what looked like it might be the last name. Does he have a kid with the initials J. M.?"

"Sure does. Jennifer Marie. She's only about six teen. You think she did this as a prank?"

"I don't know. Can't spammers hijack E-mail addresses?"

"I'll talk to Marty. In the meantime, I'll have some one trace where the E-mail message came from."

"I can probably do that here."

"Okay. All this may be just some prank, but be careful anyway. I think Raymond was probably killed for his collection. It's pretty valuable, according to your guy David."

"I heard him drooling over the phone."

Garnett laughed. "I haven't heard of most of the guys except Satchel Paige, but that ball by itself should be worth some money."

The museum restaurant was a maze of tall archways made of salvaged bricks that looked like it could have been an ancient monastery library, and yet for all its vaulted height and medieval atmosphere, it felt cozy. Five dark rough-hewn wood tables sat in each of the five chambers made by four contiguous archways at right angles to each other. Booths in arched brick al coves lined the walls. Diane and Frank chose a booth.

Near the entrance in another recess sat a line of four computers-for all its Old World museum look, the restaurant was also an Internet cafe.

The restaurant was known for its great salad and fruit bar. It also had a varied menu. Diane made her self a chef salad with a fruit side dish and took it back to the table. Frank ordered a steak.

"How's Star?" Diane asked as she sat down oppo site Frank.

He tore off a piece of bread and dipped it in herbed olive oil. "She's like that little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead."

"She's not really horrid, is she?"

The waitress brought Frank's steak. As Diane ate her salad, she was beginning to wish she'd ordered a piece of red meat too. She felt the need for a lot of protein.

"Star's doing pretty good, considering her family was murdered a year ago. She wanted to go with me to the West Coast-insisted that she didn't need any one watching her while I was in court. Can you imag ine me letting her loose by herself in San Francisco? Want some of my steak?"

"No, go ahead and eat," she said, but Frank cut off a piece on the tender side and put it on her salad. "Frank, that's the best part."

"If you're going to insist on burning the candle at both ends, you need to eat. So, tell me about your mummy. Know anything about him yet?"

"So far, we've X-rayed him. Jonas is translating the sarcophagus, though it's probably not his."

Diane related what they had discovered, skipping over the details of what abscesses were like at a time when dental care was not what it is today. Frank was laughing over the story of the Victorian pickle jar when Diane took the last bite of her fresh pineapple.

Chapter 20.

"Nice place," said Frank, looking around Diane's os teology lab.

The white walls and overhead lighting did make the room look bright, as the s.h.i.+ny tables, sinks and micro scopes made it look new.

"You've been here. You're one of the few who've had the grand tour."

"I suppose I'm surprised it hasn't fallen into that dingy hospital look. Do you paint the walls every few weeks?"

"I'm very neat in my work. I clean all the blood spatters off my walls every day. You remember where my office is?"

Diane led him to a corner door, unlocked it and turned on the light. The small office had pale off-white walls that, if she remembered correctly from the paint can, was called Candle Glow. The floor was green slate, the desk and filing cabinets a dark walnut. A long burgundy leather couch sat against one wall, its matching chair close to her desk. There was adequate s.p.a.ce, but no more.

Although she needed a private office in the osteol ogy lab, it was her second office, and she hadn't wanted to use more s.p.a.ce than absolutely necessary. She chose the leather and wood furniture so the room wouldn't look as hard-edged as the lab with its stark metal tables and impersonal equipment, but something about the room was still cold. Perhaps it was the lack of a carpet. She didn't have a carpet installed because she wanted neither the static electricity nor the fibers it would generate. The walls were mostly bare-one lone watercolor of a wolf hunting in the wild.

"You can rest in here, if you need to," she said.

"Actually, I got a lot of rest on the plane. Why don't I watch you work?"

"All right. But it's like watching paint dry."

"I think you underestimate yourself." He drew her into another kiss. In the privacy of her office, Diane didn't feel obliged to break off as soon. "You know," said Frank, when he pulled away, "this looks like a real comfortable couch."

"It is. If you need to rest, I'm sure it'll be soft enough. I have to look at Red Doe now. If we can find where these people belong, we can discover who killed them."

Red Doe sat in the box on a table, waiting. As Diane laid out the bones, Frank walked around the lab looking at the microscopes, wall charts, books and various other lab paraphernalia. When she started the examination, he wandered back over and watched.

"Male or female?"

Diane looked up at him silently.

"Sorry, I've never seen you work before and I'd like to know how you do it. You know, in case I come across some bones." He grinned.

"If you come across any bones, you call in an an thropologist," she said. A moment pa.s.sed before she spoke again. "It's female. You can tell by the pelvis."

The pubic symphysis had more wear than the other two, but not enough to throw it into another age cate gory. All the victims were around the same age. Red may have been a little older, but she also may have been more active. The muscle attachments on her pel vis were more developed than Blue's-and Green's. Interesting.

Red Doe's face was orthognathic, with an almost flat profile. Her cranial index-the ratio of breadth to length-was the lowest number in the mongoloid range. In fact, all her cranial indices measured at the low end of the mongoloid range. Red's teeth had even-edged occlusion, but she did not have shoveltooth incisors. Like Blue and Green, Red had no cavi ties. They all had grown up with fluoride and regular dental checkups.

"She's Asian," said Diane.

Frank squinted at the skull. "How can you tell?"

"There are certain features you look for, but mainly it's in the math. There are indices calculated from measurements of precise points on the skull. The index numbers fall within ethnic ranges. There are also differences in the rest of the skeleton that fall within ethnic categories. That's why accurate measurement is important and why I must do so much of it."

"Looks like there'd be computer programs that would compute these things."

"There are and I have them, but I still have to do the measuring."

"Your fancy machine doesn't take the measure ments?"

"It does make external measurements for the skull, but I still have to make all the other measurements on the skeleton the old-fas.h.i.+oned way and put the numbers into the program. In the end, I'll have a very detailed mathematical description of the three skele tons to give Sheriff Braden."

"These bones look nice and clean," said Frank.

"Raymond . . ." She paused. Her mind went back to the autopsy, his good humor, his competence, his interest in what she did. "Raymond Waller, Lynn Webber's a.s.sistant, cleaned them."

"You all right?"

Diane met Frank's gaze and realized he didn't know anything about Raymond. "He died tonight-he was murdered."

"Is that the crime scene your team's on?"

Diane nodded.

"That's certainly a coincidence-him having just worked on these bodies."

"Especially when you consider that one of the men who found the bodies was also murdered and the other one is missing."

Frank stared at her a long moment. Having said it out loud to Frank, it didn't sound like it could possibly be a coincidence, even though she had been kind of buying into Garnett's theory that Raymond's murder had to do with his collection of Negro Leagues base ball memorabilia.

From the look on Frank's face, she could tell he didn't think it was a coincidence. But Frank never believed in coincidences. In his universe, everything was connected; you just had to follow the train of consequences of that b.u.t.terfly flapping his wings.

"That's certainly interesting. And you're getting calls and E-mails about the murders?"

"I don't know that they're about the murders. Nei ther the E-mails nor the caller mentioned any of the murders."

"I'll trace the E-mail account for you tomorrow." "Garnett's working on it-I think."

"I'll have a look too."

"The murders could be a coincidence, couldn't they?" said Diane, not really believing it herself.

"Not in a town this size."

His comment just hung in midair, effectively ending this part of the conversation. Diane returned to her measurements.

As she examined the postcranial skeleton, all the bones except the skull, Frank watched everything she did with a keen interest.

"Red Doe may have been a ballet dancer," Diane said, breaking the silence.

"How's that?" asked Frank.

"She has very well-developed attachments from her calf muscles, greater than any other part of her body. That's a major muscle used in ballet dancing."

"Calf muscles, that'd be the gastrocnemius," said Frank.

"Very good. You know your muscles?"

"You have them on the chart over there."

"You memorized the chart while I was laying out the bones?"

"I just saw a couple of names I recognize. Besides, anyone who ever lifted weights knows the names of the major muscle groups-you know, deltoids, pecto ral, biceps, six-pack."

Diane laughed and shook her head.

"There must be more evidence than that-I mean, maybe she just did a lot of calf exercises."

"Red Doe's had some serious inflammation in her right flexor hallucis longus, probably due to the plan tar flexing involved in being en pointe. en pointe."

Frank stared at her a moment, amus.e.m.e.nt dancing in his eyes. "Okay, she had sore muscles from dancing on her toes."

"Frank, you surprise me. That wasn't half bad."

"Well, I know what flexing means, and jumping around on your toes can't be good for you-besides, I'm a detective."

"The hallucis longus tendon starts on the fibula, one of the lower leg bones, goes under the foot and con nects to the big toe. That constant hyperflexed posi tion can do damage to the tendons severe enough to leave lesions on the bones. You're right-it's not good for the toes or any of the joints. During a dance, the dancer can increase the forces on her joints as much as ten times her body weight.

"Red Doe's toes show signs of stress from that kind of pounding. That goes along with other lesions I found on the left femur, where she had chronic tendi nitis of her psoas tendon from the repet.i.tive turn-out position of the leg. I suspect, but don't know, that Red went en pointe en pointe too young." too young."

"Why in the world would anyone put their body through that?"

"Would you like to discuss football?"

"Yeah, well, that's different."

"Right."

Frank finally took her up on the offer to nap on her couch and Diane worked in silence, examining, measuring and recording each bone-along with any identifying characteristics that manifest themselves in the bones. She looked for nicks or perimortem breaks that might be a.s.sociated with an injury inflicted by the murderer. She found none.

As she examined the vertebrae, she found a stress fracture on the pars interarticularis of the fifth lumbar vertebrae. More evidence that Red Doe had been a ballet dancer. The arabesque position places an inordi nate amount of stress on the lower spine, and fractures on one of the lumbar vertebrae are not uncommon.

Finally, Diane examined the cut end of the phalan ges under the microscope. Four bore the mark of the same tool that was used to cut off the fingers of the other two victims.

She was taking photographs when Frank came back, sleepy eyed. "Don't you ever go to bed?"

"Is that an offer?"

"Yes, definitely."