Dead Hunt, page 19
‘‘I’m sure you catch a lot of people with your friendly charm,’’ said Diane.
‘‘You think this is an act?’’ Jacobs put his hand over his heart in mock pain. ‘‘And here I thought you trusted me.’’
‘‘I obviously do; I spilled my guts to you, didn’t I?’’ said Diane.
‘‘I see, you just weren’t fooled.’’ He was still smiling, but Diane thought he probably had elicited a lot of information with his friendly manner.
She got a light sweater out of the closet and put it on.
‘‘Like all of us, you have a job to do,’’ she said. ‘‘Those artifacts came from somewhere and they are unprovenanced. You have to be suspicious. But I hope you see that neither Kendel nor Jonas could have hoped to get by with anything. If anyone could, it would be me. I control everything here. Or at least I thought I did.’’
‘‘I think it’s too early to fall on your sword,’’ he said as Diane led them out the back door of her office.
‘‘I’m not falling on my sword. I just think Kendel and Jonas need to be protected from whatever mischief is going on here,’’ said Diane.
‘‘Ross said you have a highly developed sense of justice,’’ said Jacobs as they walked through a small door into the Pleistocene room.
A docent was telling a group of Japanese tourists about woolly mammoths. One man was arguing about whether or not the giant beasts were really here in Georgia.
‘‘I hope he didn’t mean I’m prone to take justice into my own hands,’’ said Diane.
‘‘You mean like killing Clymene? No. He said you believe in a justice system. That’s why, when you were a human rights investigator, you collected evidence all those years even when there was no court in which to present it,’’ he said.
So Jacobs knew more about her background than he had admitted, she noticed.
‘‘I’m glad he thinks so highly of me,’’ said Diane.
‘‘He does. All these Richard the Third T-shirts have fair trial written all over this museum’s identity,’’ he said.
‘‘You’re familiar with Richard the Third issues?’’ said Diane.
‘‘I took a lot of history and art history in college. That’s how I ended up in this section of the FBI. These guys were really big,’’ he said as they passed a giant bison.
‘‘You should visit the dinosaur room while you’re here,’’ said Diane.
‘‘I will. I’ll visit the whole building before I leave.’’
‘‘Do you know where the artifacts belong?’’ Diane asked after a moment.
She went through the large entrance to the mammal room, where more tourists were viewing the dioramas of taxidermied and skeletonized animals in artists’ recreations of their natural habitats. This is where I was attacked, she thought. Here among all the animals. It looked so harmless in the daylight.
‘‘No. It’s hard to prove something is stolen when you didn’t know it existed in the first place. That’s the problem trying to deal with looted artifacts. The thing that made the Getty Museum case so great was one of the principals had photographs in his apartment of the artifacts actually being looted. You don’t get that kind of hard evidence often. I need a witness. And with Cunningham Jr. dead, there isn’t one at the moment. Cunningham Sr. apparently knows nothing about what his son was into, and a couple of his employees have vanished. I’ve got BOLOs out for them. So far, nothing. That says a lot. The other employees either know nothing or are not talking. I’m hoping the Clymene thing is a lead.’’
‘‘I hope so too,’’ said Diane.
They reached the elevators in the center of the museum. Several people were waiting. When the doors opened, more people poured out. Diane was always glad to see the museum so busy. Walking into an exhibit room during open hours and finding no one was disheartening.
All the visitors got out on the second floor. The third floor was dedicated to exhibit preparation, library and archives, and offices. Except the west wing. That was the crime lab.
‘‘You know, you didn’t have to cooperate with me,’’ said Jacobs. ‘‘You could have stonewalled me.’’
‘‘We don’t want objects that are not ours. We would like to have the ones that are ours. I couldn’t see how not cooperating would help in any way.’’
They were walking past the staff lounge when a hand reached out and tapped Diane’s shoulder. She jumped back, ready to fight—or run.
‘‘I’m sorry, Dr. Fallon. I didn’t mean to startle you.’’ Diane caught her breath. ‘‘That’s alright, Dr. Albright. What can I do for you?’’
Dr. Albert T. Albright was the curator of dinosaurs and had helped acquire a couple of very nice velociraptors.
‘‘I had this idea for an exhibit,’’ he said.
Diane could see the excitement dancing in his eyes. She hated to brush him off.
‘‘Dr. Albright,I...’’ she began.
‘‘We make this life-size model of a dinosaur, probably a T. rex—that would be the most exciting for the youngsters. Anyway, we use’’—he motioned quickly with his hands—‘‘whatever that stuff is they use in Hollywood to make dinosaur skin look real. The exhibit would allow the kids to go through the dinosaur, starting through it’s mouth and walk through the throat and down to the stomach—you know, to show digestion—and finally the kids are pooped out the back end. I think they would love it,’’ he said.
‘‘I... don’t know exactly what to say,’’ said Diane. ‘‘I think you need to run your idea by Janine, the exhibit planner. Do you have it on paper?’’
‘‘No, I thought of it just now as I was eating some popcorn,’’ he said.
‘‘See what the two of you come up with and I’ll take a look at it,’’ said Diane.
He nodded happily and went on his way toward Exhibit Preparations.
Shane Jacobs stood trying to laugh silently.
‘‘You going to do it?’’ he asked.
‘‘The exhibit?’’ said Diane. ‘‘I’m going to let Janine take care of it. Right now I’m not thinking about new and unusual exhibits.’’
They walked across the dinosaur overlook and Jacobs stopped to look at the real giants of the museum—the Jurassic dinosaurs. The Brachiosaurus that stood on the first floor came all the way up to the third floor. They were staring at his head. The T. rex was only half as tall. That surprised most kids because T. rex, with his carnivorous behavior, was king.
‘‘Now, this is fun,’’ said Jacobs.
‘‘It is. I enjoy the dinosaurs,’’ said Diane. She stepped away from the fenced railing. ‘‘We’re crossing over to what the rest of the museum staff call the dark side, and the things that go on there are dark matters.’’
She proceeded forward to see what dark matters the marshals and Rosewood police had come about.
Chapter 32
The first thing Diane noticed when she walked into the crime lab was the two tabletop Christmas trees.
‘‘I must have overslept,’’ she said, eying the trees, one with red ornaments, the other with blue. She exchanged glances with Jacobs. He grinned.
The chairs weren’t around the debriefing table but were facing a flip chart. It looked like someone was going to give a lecture. Garnett was there. So was Kingsley. They were talking to the marshals. Jacobs caught Kingsley’s eye and walked over to him.
David was about to look under a piece of fabric draped over some object sitting behind the trees. Instead he stepped over to Diane and whispered in her ear.
‘‘I didn’t know when I talked to Andie that it was
Jin who set up this meeting.’’
‘‘Jin?’’ said Diane. ‘‘Where is he?’’
David shrugged. Diane looked over at Neva. She
shrugged too.
‘‘What’s with the Christmas trees?’’ asked Diane. ‘‘I have no idea,’’ said David.
Again Neva shrugged. ‘‘You know Jin,’’ she said. ‘‘I can tell you he’s really got his motor revved up. And you know how that is.’’
Garnett walked over to the three of them. ‘‘You didn’t know about this?’’ he asked.
‘‘No,’’ said Diane.
‘‘Is he allowed to do this... call this kind of meeting on his own?’’ Garnett asked.
She had never told Jin he couldn’t. It never occurred to her to say, Jin, don’t call meetings of U.S. marshals and the chief of detectives without my approval.
Diane pinched the bridge of her nose. The thing about her crew was you had to be specific with instructions.
‘‘I see he didn’t ask Riddmann to attend,’’ said Diane, looking around her. ‘‘That’s a plus.’’
‘‘I have some news for you about Riddmann,’’ said Garnett in a low voice.
Diane raised her eyebrows. ‘‘He’s moving to Alaska, I hope?’’
Garnett ignored her. ‘‘You know how guilty he looked when you accused him of leaking to the press about the museum issue?’’ he said.
‘‘I remember very well. Don’t tell me he’s behind it,’’ said Diane.
‘‘No, I don’t think he is. At least my sources tell me he isn’t. But he did do something to twist the knife a little. He had one of his staff call in to the radio talk show and ask questions designed to embarrass the museum. It was aimed at Mrs. Van Ross.’’
‘‘Well, he hit his mark. It upset her, which is not a good thing,’’ said Diane. ‘‘He has to know that sometimes payback’s a bitch.’’
‘‘That’s why he did it anonymously. And it would have stayed that way, but I have an ear in his department. Just thought you’d like to know.’’
‘‘You never know who’s listening in Rosewood, do you? I’m glad you found out,’’ said Diane. ‘‘And I’m glad you told me. That little pissant.’’
‘‘Any idea what this is about?’’ Garnett gestured to the Christmas trees and the lined-up chairs.
‘‘Not a clue,’’ said Diane. ‘‘Neither does David. When he called I thought you were here to tell me you had found Clymene’s body.’’
‘‘We’ve come up empty so far on that,’’ he said.
‘‘How about my attacker?’’ said Diane.
‘‘Nothing yet. I’m still waiting for DNA results from Jin on the hair snagged on Andie’s purse.’’
‘‘It takes time. We just got the lab calibrated and certified and we already have people sending us samples. The backlog of DNA analysis in this country is . . .’’
Jin appeared through the elevator doors. He was carrying what looked like handouts. What on earth? thought Diane.
‘‘Jin,’’ she said. ‘‘What’s this about?’’
‘‘All in good time,’’ he said, grinning.
He was so hyperactive the marshals might have thought he’d been drinking too much caffeine, but Jin was always like this. Whatever he was up to, he had told neither Neva nor David. This would be interesting.
‘‘Everyone sit down, please. I believe I have chairs for everyone,’’ said Jin as if he were the host at a professional conference.
Diane watched his head bob gently as he silently counted the people and the chairs. Eight people, eight chairs. The marshals were already sitting. Kingsley and Jacobs sat beside them, then Garnett, Diane, Neva, and David.
Kingsley leaned over and spoke to Diane. ‘‘You were right.’’ He pulled up his sleeve and pointed to a bruise on his forearm. ‘‘Barbiturates.’’ He looked up at Jin, then back at Diane and grinned. ‘‘I’ll talk with you after the show.’’
‘‘I’m sure you all are wondering why I called this meeting,’’ said Jin. ‘‘We’re going to have a short workshop on genetics.’’
‘‘What?’’ said Deputy Marshal Dylan Drew. ‘‘You called us here for a workshop?’’
‘‘Now, please bear with me, because the payoff is great,’’ said Jin. ‘‘There’s been some interesting progress made in the world of genetics lately. What I want to talk to you about is epigenetics. Epigenetics studies the changes in gene expression that don’t require changes in the base sequence of the DNA itself.’’
‘‘Okay, son,’’ said Deputy Marshal Chad Merrick, ‘‘you’ve lost me already. What the hell are you talking about and how does it affect me and my partner here? And can you please stop pacing and moving around?’’
‘‘He can’t,’’ said David.
Neva shook her head. ‘‘Nope, he really can’t.’’
Jin ignored his coworkers. ‘‘I’m talking about making changes in the way genes’’—he seemed to be searching his brain for a word—‘‘the things that make genes function differently—when the basic DNA is still the same.’’
‘‘Not helping,’’ said Merrick.
‘‘That’s why I got the Christmas trees,’’ said Jin.
‘‘I’ve been sitting here worrying about that,’’ said Drew.
‘‘Say you have a gene for lung cancer but it is turned off—not doing anything. But because of your environment, say one full of secondhand smoke, a certain chemical group hooks onto your chromosome—like the decorations hooked onto a Christmas tree—and turns the gene on and you get cancer.
‘‘Let’s say these two identical Christmas trees were bought at the same place but taken to two different homes where they were decorated differently. The trees look different to us because of what’s hanging on them, but underneath they are just alike. That’s like two people with the same DNA who have lived in different environments.’’
Jin held a red tree ornament in one hand and a blue ornament in the other. ‘‘For two DNA sample profiles that look just alike on the base indicators, you can do an epigenetic profile, which means taking a little wider focus on the DNA structure, and see these differences,’’ he said, indicating the different colored ornaments.
The hairs on the back of Diane’s neck stood up. She glanced over at Kingsley, who looked wide-eyed.
Chad Merrick straightened up in his chair. ‘‘This has to do with Clymene or we wouldn’t be here. Are you saying that Clymene is a twin?’’
‘‘No, not a twin,’’ said Jin, grinning.
Now Diane was confused. That is exactly what she thought he was saying. So did Kingsley and the others.
David looked at her as if to say, I can’t do anything with him.
The marshals frowned at Jin.
‘‘Let me tell you what got me to thinking about this,’’ he said.
‘‘If it clears things up, go to it, son,’’ said Merrick.
‘‘Too many things didn’t add up. For one thing, why didn’t anybody in Dr. Fallon’s apartment building hear anything? Were they all drugged? Let me tell you, if the odd couple across the hall heard a life-and-death struggle going on, they would have been over there, and so would the people from downstairs. And why was Dr. Fallon drugged to make her sleep through the whole thing? You have to ask yourself that.’’
Jin paused and looked out at his audience, who were giving him their attention in hopes that it would be made clear why they were sitting there listening to him.
‘‘We study blood patterns in this unit,’’ continued Jin. ‘‘If you have enough blood, it can tell you all kinds of things, from the shape of the drops to the pattern on the walls. And Lord knows there was a lot of blood. One thing I noticed was the cast-off blood was more like a beating than a stabbing, but what we found was a cleaned-up knife.
‘‘And what about all that blood? We found no arterial spray, no spurting. Not too unusual. People can just lie there and bleed out after an attack, but what did the perp do while that was happening? Sit in Dr. Fallon’s living room and wait? Then finally, at four pints of blood on the floor, got tired of waiting and dragged the body out? Why didn’t we find more blood on the way to Dr. Fallon’s car? Even if Clymene’s heart had stopped, she would still have been leaking blood from her wounds. We only had a smear.’’
They all leaned forward, attentive now. Diane wasn’t sure where he was going, but his analysis of the crime scene was interesting.
‘‘But what really got me to thinking was, why clean the knife with kerosene—which is better than bleach, by the way, for getting rid of blood. Why clean it and then leave it in the trunk to be found alongside the blood? That made no sense. Then it hit me. They weren’t trying to hide what was on the knife, but what wasn’t on the knife.’’ Jin paused for dramatic effect.
‘‘Skin cells. It was a serrated knife. There should have been a lot of skin cells if that was the murder weapon. We found no skin cells.’’
‘‘I take your point,’’ said Garnett, ‘‘but what does this mean?’’
‘‘I’m getting to that,’’ said Jin. ‘‘All of these questions led me to go back and resample the blood and do an epigenetic profile. And low and behold...’’
Jin flipped over a page on the chart, showing a drawing that looked to Diane to be an outline of the blood pattern on her living room floor. But Jin had drawn another pattern inside the outline.
‘‘The blood on Dr. Fallon’s floor came from two contributors with the same DNA. The blood was poured out of two containers that left overlapping patterns something like this.’’ He traced the patterns on the chart with his finger. ‘‘But the real kicker—Are you ready for this? I told you it would be great—both blood sources matched Clymene’s DNA . . . but neither matched her epigenetic profile. It wasn’t her.’’
Chapter 33
All eight of them sat staring at Jin as he lifted the piece of white fabric, revealing a third Christmas tree. This one was decorated with candy canes. There was silence for several moments. Finally Kingsley spoke up after looking at the three trees openmouthed.
‘‘Are you saying she is a triplet?’’ he said.
Jin’s grin broadened. ‘‘She could be one of a set of quintuplets as far as we know. I just have three contributors.’’
‘‘More important, are you saying she’s alive?’’ said Merrick.
He and Drew exchanged glances and leaned forward as if somewhere in the three trees they might catch a glimpse of her.
‘‘She could have gotten hit by a truck this morning and be dead, but she didn’t die in Dr. Fallon’s apartment,’’ said Jin. ‘‘No one did, as far as the evidence shows. But two very anemic people left there.’’
