Dead Guilty

said Chuck. ‘‘I see she’s giving the timber guys a hard time.’’
From the stiff posture Chris and Steven had taken, folded arms, head down, Diane guessed Chuck was right.
‘‘Would you get that damn thing out of my face? You trying to get a view of my tonsils?’’ Chris’ voice carried clearly down the road to where Diane and the deputies were securing the crime scene tape.
‘‘Looks like Chris Edwards needs a little backup,’’ said Leon.
The three of them walked up to them at a fast pace. ‘‘Everything all right here?’’ asked Leon.
‘‘I’m just conducting an interview,’’ said Pris Halloran.
‘‘We’ve got to get back to work.’’ Steven opened the door and slid into the driver’s seat.
‘‘You know,’’ said Diane, ‘‘if the sheriff gets up to the road and you aren’t there, you’re not likely to get another chance to talk with him today.’’
That got the reporter and the cameraman moving. They jumped in their SUV and backed up to the turn around and left before Chris and Steven could make their getaway.
    ‘‘Fill me in,’’ Diane said to Jin when she finally got back to the main crime scene.
Jin handed over the sketches he and Neva had made.
‘‘We found something interesting.’’ He led her to the bodies through the path they had searched and cleared. ‘‘Notice anything funny?’’
Diane scrutinized the corpse in front of her, tuning out the aroma of decaying flesh. She looked at the hands tied at the wrist, well on their way to becom ing skeletonized.
‘‘Well, damn,’’ she said.
The killer had cut off the fingertips, leaving an open wound for the flies to lay their eggs and the maggots to infest quickly. The flesh on the hands was eaten away before the rest of the body.
‘‘Damn’s right,’’ said Jin. ‘‘No chance of getting prints.’’
‘‘I suppose the others are the same.’’
‘‘Yes. Lots of good opportunities for getting some thing from the ropes, though. I’d like to watch you examine them. Been wanting to learn to do that.’’ ‘‘Finding anything on the ground?’’
‘‘Lots of bugs. David’s got quite a collection. That’s about all so far.’’
Neva stood up from the farthest grid square from Diane. ‘‘I have something here.’’
Diane
searched
covered.
crossed the grids that had already been and stooped to see what Neva had dis
    ‘‘It’s just a rope,’’ she said, ‘‘but . . . well, there’s a lot of rope here, and...’’
The rope had been covered in leaves and lay in a loose tangle on the ground. It was hemp, like the death ropes, had no knots and showed signs of chafing in several places.
‘‘This is good,’’ said Diane. ‘‘The killer might have dropped it. Take a picture of it, do a sketch, but let me take it up.’’
‘‘Sure.’’
‘‘When you sketch it, take note of how the rope crosses itself.’’
Neva nodded. ‘‘David and Jin said you do forensic knot analysis. I’ve never heard of that.’’
‘‘It comes in handy. It’s amazing how many you run across in criminal investigations.’’
‘‘Can you really find out anything from knots?’’
‘‘You can make some good guesses about the per son who tied them. How good he is at tying knots, perhaps what kind of job or hobby he’s had.’’
‘‘I always thought a knot was a knot.’’
‘‘Oh, no, there’s a specific knot for every purpose. Some are commonly used, and some are rare.’’
‘‘This rope doesn’t have any knots in it. Will you be able to tell anything from it?’’
‘‘I doubt it, but you never know. There might be bloodstains or fibers on it that’ll give us information. If we’re lucky, we might be able to find out where it came from. It’s a good find.’’
Neva nodded. ‘‘I was afraid it might be just trash.’’
‘‘There’s no such thing as ‘just trash’ at a crime scene.’’
After Neva photographed the rope, she lay a grid over it and began drawing a sketch of it onto the graph paper.
Diane stepped out of the crime scene and walked around the perimeter toward David. She noticed that Neva occasionally cast nervous glances in her direc tion. Neva was a friend of Janice Warrick. Warrick’s mishandling of the Boone family crime scene had re sulted in her demotion in the Rosewood police depart ment, a demotion that was blamed on Diane by almost everyone in the department.
‘‘How’s it going?’’ she asked David.
‘‘We’re ready to take them down.’’
He