Dead Guilty

true.’’
He put Diane’s key on her desk. ‘‘The orange carpet fiber was on your couch, and on the bloody towel.’’
Jin frowned suddenly and pulled up a chair and sat down, switching gears from his usual hyperactive mode.
‘‘I’ve been looking at the evidence from Kacie Beck’s scene. The rape kit was negative. He used a condom. I didn’t find anything on the body that be longed to the perp. Her house was clean too. No prints, no fibers that we can identify—we got the same cotton fibers, but that’s all. The guy skinned her fin gers pretty bad getting the ring off. I’m betting he got some blood on him—clothes, gloves, something. Doesn’t help us now, but it might later. You know, Boss?’’
‘‘What?’’
‘‘I’ve been thinking about a DNA lab.’’
‘‘You have. Been thinking about the money to put one in?’’
‘‘No. Haven’t been thinking about that. The Girl Scouts raise a lot of money selling those cookies. Maybe we could get some crime cookies—some shaped like a gun, a knife, a bone, maybe. The sand wich cookies could have red filling. What do you think about that?’’
‘‘I’m starting to think you don’t have enough to do.’’
‘‘How about tee-shirts? We could sell tee-shirts— People are just dying to see us .’’
‘‘Good-bye, Jin.’’
Diane watched him go out the door. She looked at her blank wall and decided she needed to do some thing to decorate this office—it seemed like she was spending a lot more time in it.
The reports her team generated were stacked up on her desk. She’d been through them several times hop ing for a revelation. There was none, but it was the slowly trickling evidence that was taking the day. They were getting close—more than close. They could put whoever it was in the hospital with the hanging victims on two separate bits of evidence—the orange fibers and the DNA. That was a home run.
Her thoughts went to Raymond Waller. He seemed such an unlikely person to be involved in crime. But who knows? She’d really only met him a couple of times. Lynn Webber knew him, though. Worked with him every day. She’d trusted him. Diane shoved it out of her mind and stood up. All this was really in Garnett and Braden’s purview.
She started back to her other office but made a detour to the rock lab and looked at Raymond’s dia monds in the safe. Even uncut they shone against the black velvet.
The diamonds kept intruding into her thoughts. That must have been what Steven Mayberry meant when he said his ship had come in—and what Chris Edwards was so happy about. They must have gotten their hands on several valuable diamonds—not only the one in Kacie’s ring. Bet they had more. Raymond had to be a part of it somehow. However unlikely a criminal ring the three of them seemed to be, they must have stumbled into something.
But how in the world did a serial killer fit into all of this? Unless he wasn’t a serial killer. The other thing Chris, Steven and Raymond had in common was the hanging victims. Chris Edwards and Steven Mayberry found them. Raymond Waller helped with their autopsies. That connection was accidental. It came after the Cobber’s Wood victims were dead—or did it, really? Maybe Edwards and Mayberry simply led the sheriff to the people they had killed—but then, how did the man in the hospital play into it? He was there too.
It hit Diane suddenly. Maybe he was supposed to be in the fourth noose, the forgotten victim—but what were the E-mail, phone calls, flowers and the attack in her apartment about? If he was a victim, why didn’t he just walk into a police station instead of calling her?
No matter what scenario she came up with, there was always some part of it that didn’t make sense. She gave up and went back to her museum office.
She’d been going over budget figures for an hour when Garnett called and asked her to meet him and Braden at the hospital.
‘‘He might tell you something he hasn’t told us,’’ he said. ‘‘He was anxious to talk to you before.’’
    ‘‘You’re not talking to my client.’’
    John Doe’s court-appointed attorney stood in front of the door leading to critical care, barring Diane, Sheriff Braden and Chief Garnett from entering.
    ‘‘Your client,’’ said Sheriff Braden, ‘‘killed three young people barely out of their teens in my county. One of us is going to talk to him.’’
    The attorney, Tim Preston, looking hardly out of his teens himself, stood