Dead Past

living room and from the carpet in her bedroom. Gray, beige, turquoise, red, and cobalt blue. Jin has identified them as carpet fibers coming from a Saturn, a Chevrolet, two high-end floor coverings, and a cheap floor covering. Again, we need to check exemplars. I did check the husband’s car. He has a 2002 Saturn with gray interior. Jin is matching the fibers now. The cobalt blue is from a 1999 Chevrolet Impala. So far, neither her mother or any of her friends have a Chevrolet Impala with a cobalt blue interior carpet. Her mother does have an expensive beige carpet throughout her house. The Maryland authorities will take a sample of her carpet, too.”
    “That’s something. Anything else?”
    “Neva sat down with Jere Bowden and has a sketch of the man she saw. It was from the back, so I don’t know how much good it will be, but Mrs. Bowden said it is accurate. The police are canvassing the neighborhood and put the picture on the news. I’m sure that drew a lot of laughs from viewers—the back of a man. Right now the detectives are asking the public about the stranger and a 1999 Chevrolet Impala.”
    “How about the books?”
    “I’ve looked through a number of them, and so far nothing jumps out. It would help if I had some idea what I am looking for.”
    “If we had the solution, we’d have the solution, wouldn’t we?” said Diane.
    “Cute. I’ll keep you informed on all the cases,” said David.
    “I’ll take the Cipriano case, and you three work on the rest. Garnett will probably tell you what the GBI finds at the McNair crime scene if you ask him nicely.”
    “You think the cases could be linked?” asked David.
    Diane shrugged. “Right now I can’t see how. The only commonality between Stanton and McNair is me, unfortunately. And I really can’t see a connection with Cipriano—maybe Stanton and the meth lab, but you can’t get too far with rhyming words.”
    David stared at her for several moments. “What? Did I miss something? Was there something in one of the poetry books about the meth lab explosion?”
    Diane smiled. “No. I just wondered to myself, What if Jere Bowen heard wrong? She said the voice was muffled and she couldn’t hear exactly what he said.” Diane went over her rhyming list with him, stopping at cook. “It was just a thought.”
    “Interesting. Long shot, but could be true.” David looked like he was going to laugh.
    “OK, it was crazy, but who knows,” she said. “It will be a while before the GBI processes the trace from McNair, but maybe you can get some of the details of the crime scene from Garnett.”
    “I’ll get to work.” David stood up. “We’ll solve this,” he said.
    Diane could tell from his voice that he meant it.
    “I’m glad you’re confident. I don’t relish people casting wondering glances at me for the rest of my life.”
    “Like I said, we have Jin. I tell you, I don’t think you know how you motivated him.”
    “Yes, I do,” said Diane.
    Diane sat staring at the lone wolf for several minutes after David left her office, hoping that some pattern would form in her mind. She concluded that she didn’t have enough information. Blake Stanton, she was sure as she could be with so little information, was hit to keep him from talking. If the meth lab had exploded with only the cook inside, there wouldn’t be near the seriousness as it exploding with a house full of young people. It would be worth killing to keep secret any connection with that—provided that there was someone behind the lab besides the poor fellow who got blown to smithereens. The meth lab connection was a good place to start, she thought.
    She opened up her bone vault where her computer equipment for reconstructing 3-D facial images from skulls was stored. She turned on the computer and the laser scanner.
    Three partially reconstructed skulls were sitting in boxes of sand. One was from bones found in the burned-out basement. Not much was there—the brow and top of the eye sockets, the cheek and lower socket on the right side that included part of the nasal area. Part of a maxilla—the bone anchor for the upper teeth—and a fragment of a mandible—the lower jaw.
    She was able to match the upper and lower parts because the wear patterns on the upper and lower molars and premolars fit exactly. Luckily, those teeth had been still in their sockets. Unfortunately, no dental records had been submitted that matched the remains she had.
    Diane used clay to prop up