Dead Past

in the snow beside the saw blade. “The red color on the edge here . . . I think it’s frozen blood.”
    Just as she was about to stand, she saw just beyond the blade something else covered in a thin layer of snow but unmistakable in its appearance. She planted another flag beside the object and stood up.
    “Is that a hand?” asked Garnett.
    “It is. And if I’m not mistaken, I know who it belongs to. The kid who tried to take my car. It would appear that the saw blade came flying from the explosion and caught his wrist. Looks like a clean cut. If he had had his wits about him and taken his hand with him, I wonder if it could have been reattached.”
    Garnett didn’t say anything for a moment, but just stared at the hand with his mouth turned down in a frown. “At least he’s alive,” he said.
    Diane looked over at the burned-out house. “At least that,” she whispered.
    Carefully retracing her previous steps, she walked away from the tree, back out to the road. Next to the media tent a shelter of green-striped canvas was being erected. More media? The tent city just kept growing. “Who are they?” she asked.
    “Local church groups are setting up a tent to keep you guys in sandwiches and coffee. A sort of comfort station.”
    Diane shook her head and looked him in the eye. “You know, Garnett, this is getting too large. It’s going to get out of hand.”
    “We’ll have to see that it doesn’t.” He nodded at the new tent. “It’s also there for the parents. You know that anyone who can’t get in touch with their kid is going to come down here. This will give them a place to sit and wait and someone to talk to besides us.”
    Diane conceded that might be a good idea. “What about the people who live in these houses?” She encompassed the neighborhood with a sweep of her hand. “They are going to want back in their homes.”
    “Most of the people on the street have been given permission to come back. The houses next to the explosion suffered damage and their owners are staying in a hotel until they can return. A cordon will be put up and the police will keep people out of your way.”
    Diane still didn’t agree with the way the city was handling the tragedy. But the decision was made. The mayor loved a good show. It looked like he was going to have one. Instead of arguing the point further, she turned her attention back to the crime scene.
    “We won’t be able to walk on what’s left of the floor of the house. What we’ll do is build a network of boards just over the floor, anchored outside. . . .”
    The ambient noise went up several decibels; Diane stopped talking and looked up the street. A line of vehicles was driving through the police checkpoint. The white van she knew. It belonged to her crime lab. It and two cars approached and parked next to the curb in front of a neighboring house. The last vehicle in the line belonged to the arson investigator. Diane groaned inwardly. He parked across the street from the others, pulling up in the yard to keep the street from becoming a bottleneck. The new arrivals drew members of the news media like flies to a corpse.
    Diane wanted to tell Garnett that this was going to be trouble, but she remained silent. Nothing she could do. Marcus McNair was the arson investigator, after all. He had right of access to the scene. But Garnett apparently had his own apprehensions. His frown deepened the creases in his forehead and around his mouth when he saw Marcus emerge from the red city vehicle and grin broadly at the swarm of reporters hurrying in his direction.
    “I have to cut this off,” he said, and strode across the street to intercept the press.
    Diane stayed and waited for her crew who, carrying their crime scene cases, were climbing out of the van. The last thing she wanted was to come between Marcus and publicity.
    Marcus McNair wanted her job. He had applied for it when the city announced it was creating a crime scene unit. He thought his bid for the director’s position was a certainty—he was an arson investigator; his brother-in-law was a city councilman with a lot of pull; he was athletic and handsome; and the only person he was up against was a civilian female museum director.
    What McNair didn’t know was that the job was wired for the director of the museum where the forensic lab was to be located. He didn’t know about all the political shenanigans the mayor and police commissioner had conjured to force Diane to provide building