Dead Guilty

bopping through the hallway from the crime lab and stopped when he saw Diane and David.
‘‘You tell her about the time and temperature thing?’’
David nodded. ‘‘Just now.’’
‘‘The babe at the scene didn’t have a fever,’’ said Jin.
‘‘You sure about that?’’ asked Diane.
‘‘Sure, I’m sure. How you going to break it to Doc Webber?’’
‘‘Gently,’’ said Diane. She thought for a moment. ‘‘Okay, she’s sure to have noticed at the autopsy if Edwards had any kind of infection.’’
‘‘One would think,’’ said David.
‘‘The medicine on the nightstand with the thermom eter suggests that it was upper respiratory,’’ said Jin.
Diane recalled Chris Edwards coughing a time or two at the Cobber’s Wood crime scene.
‘‘Lynn Webber probably hasn’t alerted Chief Garnett about any possible change in the time of death, so here’s what I want you to do. David, call her at home if she is taking time off, and tell her about the thermometer and the fever, and you are concerned about someone else being in the house and you want to know if Edwards was sick. That ought to give her enough of a nudge to call Garnett herself.’’
‘‘You’re going to tell him too?’’ asked Jin.
‘‘Of course,’’ said Diane. ‘‘I’m just trying to keep the peace.’’ She shrugged. ‘‘I probably shouldn’t bother, and just let the chips fall.’’
‘‘Speaking of letting things fall,’’ Jin said. ‘‘It was cut clean with a sharp knife.’’
Diane stared at him for a moment. ‘‘What was?’’
‘‘King Tut’s jewels.’’ Jin pushed his hair out of his eyes.
‘‘Ouch,’’ said David.
‘‘It was postmortem.’’ Jin grinned broadly. ‘‘That must have been some unwrapping party,’’ Jin contin ued on his way through the museum. ‘‘I’ve sent a sam ple of his blood off,’’ he called as he went through the doors into the museum proper.
‘‘Garnett wants to see me in an hour?’’ said Diane. David nodded. ‘‘Okay. I have just enough time to test an idea about the rope.’’
‘‘Don’t tell me you discovered what kind of knot was tied.’’
‘‘Maybe.’’
‘‘This I gotta see.’’ David followed Diane into her lab.
Diane flipped to the index of her handbook and looked under hitches until she found the knot she was looking for. She found the page and lay the book down next to the rope that she had trussed up with rubber bands.
‘‘They sort of look alike—in a way,’’ said David, comparing the illustration in the book and the rope on the table, tilting his head as if that would give him the ability to see the resemblance more clearly.
Diane took the rubber bands off the experimental rope and looked around the lab for a place to tie the hitch. The cabinets. She studied the rope a moment, looking at the green and red marks that represented kinks and chafes. She secured one end of the rope to the handle of the cabinets above the counter. Then she made a crossing turn at the first green mark and a bight farther down at another green mark. After several complicated twists and loops, she placed one of the loops over the handle of the bottom drawer, tightened the rope, and stood back, surveying her work.
The knots matched up with her green marks. The red marks along the rope also met up with each other, showing that they had rubbed against each other. The loop around the lower cabinet handle also fit with her color coding—a kink with chafing on the inside made by rubbing against something it was looped around.
‘‘Okay, what is it?’’ asked David.
‘‘A waggoner’s hitch. It’s not common, but when I noticed how the chafing spiraled around the rope, something nagged in my brain and I finally thought of this hitch. It’s a hitch for tying down a load in a wagon. It’s kind of a cool knot. It’s very secure under tension. But once the tension is released, the hitch comes loose easily. It has to be tied and set properly for it to work right. One of its characteristics is that if the knot is repeatedly tied in the same place, it really wears down the rope by the friction against it self from movement.’’
‘‘I’m impressed. I really didn’t think you could re create the knot in that scrappy piece of rope. How ever, not to rain on your parade, does this get us anywhere?’’
‘‘It was once used by waggoners. Some truck drivers still use it.’’
‘‘Okay, that does get us somewhere.’’
‘‘It