Dead Guilty

break off as soon. ‘‘You know,’’ said Frank, when he pulled away, ‘‘this looks like a real comfortable couch.’’
‘‘It is. If you need to rest, I’m sure it’ll be soft enough. I have to look at Red Doe now. If we can find where these people belong, we can discover who killed them.’’
Red Doe sat in the box on a table, waiting. As Diane laid out the bones, Frank walked around the lab looking at the microscopes, wall charts, books and various other lab paraphernalia. When she started the examination, he wandered back over and watched.
‘‘Male or female?’’
Diane looked up at him silently.
‘‘Sorry, I’ve never seen you work before and I’d like to know how you do it. You know, in case I come across some bones.’’ He grinned.
‘‘If you come across any bones, you call in an an thropologist,’’ she said. A moment passed before she spoke again. ‘‘It’s female. You can tell by the pelvis.’’
The pubic symphysis had more wear than the other two, but not enough to throw it into another age cate gory. All the victims were around the same age. Red may have been a little older, but she also may have been more active. The muscle attachments on her pel vis were more developed than Blue’s—and Green’s. Interesting.
Red Doe’s face was orthognathic, with an almost flat profile. Her cranial index—the ratio of breadth to length—was the lowest number in the mongoloid range. In fact, all her cranial indices measured at the low end of the mongoloid range. Red’s teeth had even-edged occlusion, but she did not have shoveltooth incisors. Like Blue and Green, Red had no cavi ties. They all had grown up with fluoride and regular dental checkups.
‘‘She’s Asian,’’ said Diane.
Frank squinted at the skull. ‘‘How can you tell?’’
‘‘There are certain features you look for, but mainly it’s in the math. There are indices calculated from measurements of precise points on the skull. The index numbers fall within ethnic ranges. There are also differences in the rest of the skeleton that fall within ethnic categories. That’s why accurate measurement is important and why I must do so much of it.’’
‘‘Looks like there’d be computer programs that would compute these things.’’
‘‘There are and I have them, but I still have to do the measuring.’’
‘‘Your fancy machine doesn’t take the measure ments?’’
‘‘It does make external measurements for the skull, but I still have to make all the other measurements on the skeleton the old-fashioned way and put the numbers into the program. In the end, I’ll have a very detailed mathematical description of the three skele tons to give Sheriff Braden.’’
‘‘These bones look nice and clean,’’ said Frank.
‘‘Raymond . . .’’ She paused. Her mind went back to the autopsy, his good humor, his competence, his interest in what she did. ‘‘Raymond Waller, Lynn Webber’s assistant, cleaned them.’’
‘‘You all right?’’
Diane met Frank’s gaze and realized he didn’t know anything about Raymond. ‘‘He died tonight—he was murdered.’’
‘‘Is that the crime scene your team’s on?’’
Diane nodded.
‘‘That’s certainly a coincidence—him having just worked on these bodies.’’
‘‘Especially when you consider that one of the men who found the bodies was also murdered and the other one is missing.’’
Frank stared at her a long moment. Having said it out loud to Frank, it didn’t sound like it could possibly be a coincidence, even though she had been kind of buying into Garnett’s theory that Raymond’s murder had to do with his collection of Negro Leagues base ball memorabilia.
From the look on Frank’s face, she could tell he didn’t think it was a coincidence. But Frank never believed in coincidences. In his universe, everything was connected; you just had to follow the train of consequences of that butterfly flapping his wings.
‘‘That’s certainly interesting. And you’re getting calls and E-mails about the murders?’’
‘‘I don’t know that they’re about the murders. Nei ther the E-mails nor the caller mentioned any of the murders.’’
‘‘I’ll trace the E-mail account for you tomorrow.’’ ‘‘Garnett’s working on it—I think.’’
‘‘I’ll have a look too.’’
‘‘The murders could be a coincidence, couldn’t they?’’ said Diane, not really believing it herself.
‘‘Not in a town this size.’’
His comment