The Night Killer Part 8

"I had the lab process the clothes I was wearing at the time," said Diane.

"Says here there was no blood on them. Could have washed off in the rain, I suppose," he said.

"No, it's more stubborn than that. It would take bleach or kerosene to get blood out," said Diane. "I came directly here to the museum and changed clothes in my office. There were half a dozen people here. I didn't have the time or the facilities to wash them."

He nodded and waited, apparently suspecting that she had more.

Instead of giving him another of the reports created by her team, she continued her story of what happened that night, beginning with her getting out of her SUV to look at the skeleton, the tree lying across her hood, and having Slick grab her by the arm. She showed him her forearm with the scratches from his nails.

"Slick has some explaining to do. Said he was trying to help you after the accident," said the sheriff. "Said you pulled away, poked him in the eye, and ran."

"Not exactly," said Diane. "I did hit him and run, but only after he tried to detain me, following his denial that there was a skeleton stretched across the hood of my Explorer."

Diane took a detour from her story to tell him about Slick following her back to the museum and returning the things he and Tammy had taken out of her vehicle. The sheriff just shook his head, reminiscent of the gesture made by his son, Travis, when he heard the story of Slick and Tammy.

She told the sheriff about hearing Slick call for the dogs when she ran, about constantly listening to the barking for hours, wondering how near the dogs were and if they were vicious. She tried to convey how frightening it was, running from some maniac in a downpour, with lightning flas.h.i.+ng all around.

Then she got to the next tricky part-the man in the woods, and why she didn't turn the things he gave her over to Travis.

"I don't know how long I'd been in the woods, but I met a man who said he was camping in the park and taking nature photographs. I never got a good look at his face and couldn't recognize him, but there's a chance I might recognize his voice. I could see that he wore a beard. He told me he had heard the dogs and saw my light and was curious," she said.

"You believe him?" the sheriff asked.

"At the time, I thought he might be with Slick. I was trusting no one. He did tell me the dogs sounded like Walker hounds and that he was familiar with the breed of dog. He seemed to think the chances were pretty slim that they were vicious. I asked him to call your office when he could get to a phone, and apparently he did. He took my jacket to lay a false trail for the dogs away from me, and he gave me some rain gear and a knife."

There it was. A man running around the woods with a knife when, practically within spitting distance from where he was, the Barres had their throats cut. The sheriff sat up straight, but Diane didn't pause. She handed him another report.

"There was no blood on any of the things he gave me. I asked my people to take the knife apart and check every part of it. Had there been blood, they would have found it. Even if it had been washed, the blood still would have seeped through the cracks in the handle."

"Don't recollect Travis telling me about the knife. Told him he should of taken the raincoat," he said.

"I told him about the rain gear. The knife was tucked away in my jeans. I was quite frightened when Travis found me-seeing the Barres like that. I had just had a meal with them a few hours before. They were good people," said Diane.

Sheriff Conrad watched Diane for several moments. "Should have mentioned the knife," he said.

"I agree. If I had been thinking like I should, I would have," she said. "I was near the point of collapse from fatigue and dehydration."

He didn't like it that she had kept the things the mysterious man gave her. But he was also displeased with his son for not taking the poncho-and probably for not taking her in for questioning.

Diane continued her story before he decided whether he wanted to pursue another conversation-one she would prefer he not.

"I thought if I could find the large creek I had crossed the previous afternoon on the way to the Barres' house, I could follow it and find the road. I found the creek-a creek-and eventually I found the Barres' house. I thought I was safe, until I went inside."

Another tricky part. How was he going to feel about her taking photographs of the crime scene and not telling Travis about that either? She wanted to keep outright lying to him to a minimum, but she also didn't want to tell him that everything she did was governed by her belief that he didn't know what he was doing. She knew that wouldn't go over well. He'd probably try to haul her back to Rendell County with him.

"The telephone was out of order. I a.s.sumed the wires leading into the house were cut. I had to go for help, but I was very concerned about the security of the crime scene," she said.

Diane pulled out an envelope marked Photographs Photographs, and took them out.

"So before I left, I snapped some photographs," she said, handing them to him.

He took them, not taking his eyes off her. He wasn't pleased, she saw.

"You had a camera with you? Get that from the man in the woods too-he give you his camera?"

"No. I used my cell phone," she said.

"What?" His frown deepened.

"My cell phone. I used it to take the photographs," she repeated.

"Your cell phone?" He looked puzzled. "You took pictures with your cell phone?"

Now Diane was was surprised. He might not like cell phones, but surely he knew about them. He sat looking at her for a moment, then down at the photographs. surprised. He might not like cell phones, but surely he knew about them. He sat looking at her for a moment, then down at the photographs.

"You have the negatives for these," he said.

Diane hesitated. "It's a digital camera. There are no negatives," she said. Okay, surely they have digital cameras in Rendell County. They're only about an hour away from Rosewood, two hours from Atlanta, for heaven's sake. They don't have a wall built around the county Okay, surely they have digital cameras in Rendell County. They're only about an hour away from Rosewood, two hours from Atlanta, for heaven's sake. They don't have a wall built around the county. They have television. They have television.

"Travis knows about these things," he muttered, going through the photographs. "They're not real sharp," he said.

"You don't get the best resolution with the camera in a cell phone," she said.

"Why did you take them?" He looked up at her.

She thought to herself that if his gaze had been a spear, she'd have been impaled.

"I had to leave and go for help. I didn't know if the killer might come back and move the bodies, burn the house, or otherwise disturb the crime scene. Or someone else might stumble into it. I thought there should be a record of it as it was, undisturbed," said Diane.

"You telling me you didn't have the presence of mind to tell Travis about the knife, but you were clear-thinking enough to take pictures?" he said.

"That describes my entire night. Going from hours of panic to moments of clarity. I was terrified running from Slick. I tried to get my wits about me enough to figure a plan to find the Barres' house and get help. When I did, well . . . this is what I found." She gestured to the photographs.

"I was panicked all over again. I tried to get control of myself enough to do the right thing. I took the pictures, because that's what I do-preserve crime scenes. I meant no offense. I didn't mean to overstep authority. I wanted to make sure there was a record in case anything happened to the scene before I found help. When Travis and I got back to the house, it was undisturbed. I knew official photos would be made of the crime scene, and I knew mine were of limited quality. They just didn't seem important at the time."

He leaned forward in the chair and glared at Diane. His face was flushed, but his voice was quiet. "What's done is done. But I don't want you in my county investigating on your own. I don't want you coming into my county for any reason until I solve this. And if I find that you've lied to me or kept things from me again, you'll find yourself in my jail. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, I understand you. I hope you understand that I, like you, am a sworn officer of the court. I have my authority and responsibilities, and you have yours."

They stared at each other for a moment without either of them speaking or breaking eye contact.

Here I am in a p.i.s.sing contest with the sheriff. Just where I did not want to be, she thought to herself. Better ease back. Better ease back.

"If I remember anything that might be helpful from my conversation with the Barres or my trek through the woods, I a.s.sume you would want me to call you," she said.

"Make sure you do."

With that, he gathered up all the evidence, including Diane's clothes, and turned to go. Protocol would require that the sheriff sign out any evidence he took from the crime lab, but Diane decided not to impede his exit. It was his case; he had the evidence in his possession; he was now responsible for it.

She showed him the way out of the building. As she watched him drive away, she breathed a sigh of relief, deciding it had gone better than she had expected.

Despite his warning, she fully intended to pursue the matter. She couldn't drop it, not after she had seen the Barres sitting there in their dining room. She wouldn't go into his county, as he phrased it, but she had the photographs. She could do a lot with those. She wondered whether Travis was amenable to sharing information.

Chapter 16

Diane knew David would have sent copies of the crime scene photographs to her computer. So after she watched the sheriff drive away from the museum, she walked back to her osteology lab, went straight to the vault, and keyed in the security code.

The vault was an environmentally controlled room where she stored skeletal remains sent to her for a.n.a.lysis. Diane had some pretty fancy equipment there too. It was where she kept the jazzed-up computer with the forensic software. And where she also kept 3- D facial-reconstruction equipment-a laser scanner for scanning skulls and a different dedicated computer with software for reconstructing a face from the scan.

Diane steeled herself for what she was about to look at-grasping for her objectivity and tucking away her emotions-and turned on her computer. As she was waiting for it to boot up, she looked wistfully at the other computer and wished that she could draw well enough to reproduce the skull she had seen on the hood of her car, and then perhaps her facial- reconstruction software could come up with a reasonable facsimile of what the person looked like.

She turned her attention back to her computer and called up the photographs that David had sent. To her surprise, he had also created a 3-D reconstruction of the two rooms from the photographs.

"When did he have time to do that?" she whispered to herself.

Since Diane hadn't entered the dining room to take photographs, David had to extrapolate much of the room and the distances between objects. He had less work to do in the living room, where she had taken a 360-degree panorama of shots.

Diane looked at David's 3-D rendering first. She toured the dining room where the Barres, in virtual form, were seated, dead, at the dining room table. David had superimposed dotted lines over objects and labeled dimensions. It appeared that he'd used the doorway as a reference for distances. She was sure he had, among his mult.i.tude of databases, the length and width of doors in a house of that age. There were other objects in the room that he used to cross-reference the ratios of the photographs with the real world. David had not known what was on the walls that the camera hadn't seen. But Diane did know. She entered the program, put in the relevant information, and restarted the virtual tour.

She looked at the blood spatter first. It was highlighted and labeled for directionality. She was sure David had noted the same things she did-such as the cast-off spattering and the rumpled hair on the top of their heads.

She asked the program to reenact the crime. The killer, represented as an indistinct androgynous form, appeared in the room. He came up behind Ozella Barre, grabbed her hair with his left hand, pulled her head back, and slit her throat left to right. Diane watched the blood drip from the knife, casting off small droplets of clues. The killer then went over to Roy Barre and stopped. A small clock appeared on the screen with a message indicating an indefinite pa.s.sage of time. Then the killer repeated the act with Roy. Why had the killer stopped? What had David seen? Diane flipped over and looked at the photographic images she had taken of the crime scene.

She saw the blood spatters. She had already concluded, when she saw the real scene, that the killer was probably right-handed-or at least he held the knife in his right hand. That was Blood Spatter 101. But how had David arrived at the sequence in the deaths for the two of them? She could have called him and asked, but obstinacy on her part stopped her for the moment.

She squinted at the screen as if that would help her see better. She looked at the photographic imagery, grid by grid, as she would if she were working the scene itself. Ozella, her eyes clouded in death, was facing the doorway that Diane had looked into. Roy was to Diane's left. She could see only the right side of his face. Across from him was a dark-wood china hutch. Diane enlarged it.

The first thing she saw was herself with a camera-her own image reflected in the partially opened, curved gla.s.s door of the hutch. She enlarged the image again and saw what David had seen-Roy Barre's face reflected in a silver serving tray inside the hutch . . . his eyes unclouded. Ozella had died first, and then Roy sometime later. Why?

Diane continued her systematic examination of the photograph. She looked closely at the hutch and tried to figure out whether any of its contents seemed to be missing. She couldn't really tell. She searched the floor. There was a light blue Persian-style carpet under the dining table. It had several smudges on it, each about the size of an orange. The margins of the prints were indistinct. She looked at the location of each smudge. One was behind Roy, and two were near the door. She called up the photograph of the living room and examined the hardwood floor. There were no smudges near where she had stood. She was sure she would have seen them at the time if there had been.

Diane enlarged the living room floor. It looked like there could be a couple of light smudges going down the hall. Okay, they could be b.l.o.o.d.y footprints, but they weren't exactly in the shape of footprints. They were more rounded and indistinct. Only part of a foot stepped in the blood that had soaked into the dining room rug-the heel or the ball of the foot. The killer was trying to be careful. But it was hard to be careful with all that blood.

But what about the shape?

The killer was wearing shoe coverings. Tyvek, perhaps? It wouldn't pick up much blood, so there wouldn't be much tracking of blood from one place to another, and a shoe covering would account for why the outer margins of the print were so indistinct.

Okay, this was a possibility-the killer had his shoes covered so he wouldn't pick up anything or leave anything at the crime scene. Did he also wear Tyvek coveralls covering his body? That would mean he knew something about forensics. It would also mean that he left no trace evidence nor took any away from the scene. This would make it harder to find usable evidence.

Diane went back to the 3-D animation and played it out. It showed the killer leaving and going down the hall to the back of the house. David had noticed the smudges too. Of course he did Of course he did. Diane smiled.

She finished examining the photographs of the dining room crime scene and found no other images she could identify as clues. She turned her attention to the living room, first briefly looking at the 3- D rendering. Nothing leaped out at her. She turned to the photographs. David arranged them so that she could look at them as a panoramic virtual tour. It made it easier than looking at the photographs individually, one after another.

Several of the hutches were open. She'd seen that at the house. Nothing was in disarray particularly, just open. She tried to remember exactly what it had looked like when she was there to pick up the artifacts. Unfortunately, she didn't have a perfect photographic memory. All she could say was that, although the rooms didn't look tossed by any means, someone had searched for something.

She took a virtual "walk" around the room, then started a systematic search, enlarging spots of interest. No good clues here like there were in the dining room.

She toured the room again, grid by grid-looking for drawers pulled out, cabinets opened, something dropped on the floor, stains, anything wrong. On her third pa.s.s she noticed something as she examined the hutch where Roy kept his collection of things. A cigar box filled with rocks his grandfather had collected was missing. She remembered it because Ozella mentioned that she'd offered Roy a pretty gla.s.s jar so he could see the rocks, but he wanted to keep them in the cigar box where his grandfather had stored them. Pretty gla.s.sware couldn't compete with fond memories Pretty gla.s.sware couldn't compete with fond memories, thought Diane.

The cigar box was not there. In addition, other items had been moved to conceal the s.p.a.ce where it had been. She tried to remember the rocks that were in the box. Roy had opened it to show her, but she had merely glanced inside. Nothing had jumped out at her. She had been more interested in getting her business over with before the storm hit. Now she wished she'd paid more attention.

Chapter 17

Diane was soaking in a bubble bath when Frank got home from Atlanta. He'd called earlier and said he was picking up dinner from a new Polish restaurant he wanted to try.

"I'm glad to see you weren't arrested," he said, swis.h.i.+ng his hand in the warm water.

"I think I came close," she said. "All in all, it went well with the sheriff, but he wasn't pleased. He barred me from his county."

"His county? He said that, did he?" commented Frank. He bent down and kissed her. "Dinner's here whenever you're ready."

She sighed and got out of the tub.

Diane and Frank rarely talked about forensic work over dinner, and never discussed Diane's crime scene work, which was invariably more gruesome than his fraud cases. They often talked about the museum. When things were going well at RiverTrail, it provided an endless supply of happy conversations. That evening Diane told him about the fossils Kendel and Mike were acquiring from Africa, Kendel's e-mail saying she bought several large specimens of Archaeopteris macilenta, Archaeopteris macilenta, several insects caught in amber, and a variety of stromatolites. several insects caught in amber, and a variety of stromatolites.

"Nothing big, like a brachiosaur. Mostly a collection of plants and insects," she said.

She and Frank ate cabbage rolls, potatoes, and Polish cheesecake. They decided the eatery was good enough to be put on their list of preferred restaurants.

After dinner, curled up on the couch with coffee, Diane told him the details of her visit with the sheriff. She liked cuddling next to Frank, except when she talked about her crime scene work. Somehow, cuddling and gruesomeness at the same time offended her sensibilities. Instead, she tucked her legs under her and leaned sideways against the back of the couch, facing him.

"Leland Conrad does not seem to know anything about modern technology," said Diane. "Really, he doesn't. I've never seen anything like it. It was so strange. Rendell County isn't that far away."

Frank looked amused. "A lot of folks are intimidated by new technology, either because they fear they won't be able to understand it or, like some of the people in Rendell County, they are afraid that it brings with it a window into all manner of wickedness."

Diane visualized the population of Rendell County looking into the screen of a computer or cell phone and being greeted by a scene straight from a Hieronymus Bosch painting. She made a face and sipped her coffee.

"They're not necessarily wrong. On occasion, technology does bring problems. But it's not good for someone in Conrad's position to disdain professional tools and help." Frank took a drink of his coffee and set the cup down on the coffee table. "Hot," he murmured. "But like Leland Conrad said, it's his county. Besides, I'm sure it will all change sooner or later. They're just lagging behind."

"I think his son, Travis, convinced him to let the GBI work the crime scene, but I'll bet he moved the bodies before they got there," said Diane. "I have a feeling this is a cunning killer, and I'm not sure the sheriff is up to catching him. He warned me off, but I can't just drop it."

"You may have to. How are you going to investigate when you are persona non grata over there? True, it's illegal for him to forbid you to come into the county, but he can really make your life difficult if you do," said Frank.