Dead Guilty

them in.’’
That must be a pair, thought Diane. She knew that Sheriff Braden and the chief weren’t the best of friends. But neither were she and Garnett. These days, it seemed that Garnett was trying to rebuild a lot of burnt bridges. The two of them looked cordial enough as they walked into the crime lab.
‘‘The sheriff was discussing with me a possible link in our murders, and I thought I’d bring him over to see the lab.’’
Sheriff Braden scrutinized the room as he ap proached. ‘‘This looks real modern.’’
‘‘We’re proud of it,’’ said Diane.
‘‘It has the latest equipment,’’ said Garnett.
‘‘You do DNA work here too?’’ asked the sheriff.
‘‘No. We send that to the GBI lab in Atlanta.’’
‘‘I know you aren’t finished analyzing all the evi dence yet,’’ Garnett said, ‘‘but we’d like to see what we have so far.’’
It appeared that Garnett wanted to get down to business before the sheriff asked about any other pro cedures they didn’t do.
‘‘Sure,’’ Diane said, ‘‘but perhaps the sheriff would like a tour of the facilities first.’’
Diane didn’t wait for a reply, but immediately began showing the sheriff the labs and the glasswalled work spaces. She explained to him how each of the different microscopes revealed hidden charac teristics in all manner of trace evidence. The sheriff nodded as she explained to him about opaque mate rial versus transparent material and the type of mi croscopes they required, about polarizing and phasecontrast microscopes.
‘‘The museum has an electron microscope that we contract to use,’’ said Garnett with pride that sug gested that it was his own piece of equipment. Appar ently, this made up for not doing DNA analysis.
‘‘We contract with the museum for several pro cesses,’’ said Diane. ‘‘Pollen analysis, soil analysis, questioned and damaged documents. It’s one advan tage of being in a museum.’’
‘‘But don’t your researchers here do some DNA work?’’ said the sheriff. ‘‘During the museum tour last year, some of the biologists said they were working with DNA.’’
‘‘They’re heavily involved in their own research projects,’’ said Diane, ‘‘and what they do is very differ ent from what we need. They’re not set up to process crime scene evidence.’’
Diane hoped the gas chromatography, spectral anal ysis and electrostatic detection and the amazing range of national and international databases—AFIS for fingerprint identification, CODIS for DNA identifica tion, databases for fibers, shoe prints, cigarette butts, bullet casings, tire treads, paint, hair, plus all the soft ware that matched, categorized, imaged, mapped, and, correlated—was sufficiently interesting to get him off his DNA analysis obsession. The last stop was David’s bug-rearing chambers.
‘‘These are the insects from Cobber’s Wood. They’ll give us a pretty good estimate of time of death.’’
‘‘Dr. Webber said the bodies had been out there about a week,’’ said the sheriff.
‘‘More like three,’’ said David.
The sheriff laughed. ‘‘Three weeks in this climate gets you bones.’’
‘‘Hanging slows decomposition.’’
‘‘I’ve found that Lynn Webber is always right on the money,’’ said the sheriff, still smiling.
‘‘We’ll grow out the bugs and give you a report,’’ said Diane.
‘‘You do that, but I have to tell you, I respect the mind of a human more than I do the mind of a bug.’’
‘‘When it comes to brains, so do I,’’ said Diane. ‘‘But we’re talking about sex, and bugs are very pre dictable in that area.’’
Laughter broke the contentious mood that threatened.
‘‘We’re just starting to process the evidence,’’ said Diane, ‘‘but we’ll tell you what we can about the murders.’’

Chapter 12
    Diane led Sheriff Braden and Chief Garnett to a round table in the corner that she and her crew used for planning and debriefing. She sat across from them. Her crew filled the remaining spaces around the table; David and Jin to her left between her and the sheriff. Neva was the last to sit down. She pulled out the chair between Diane and Garnett and hesitated a moment before she sat, leaving a wide space between her and Garnett.
    The metal top of the table reflected a fuzzy image of all of them. Chief Garnett put his hands on the table and looked at his reflection for a moment. The sheriff’s
through
gaze still shifted