Dead Past

took out a couple of Dr. Peppers and gave one to Diane. “I need something to drink, and they won’t let me drink and take care of patients at the same time. And I don’t like to drink alone.” She glanced at her watch.
    “Do you have an appointment coming up?” asked Diane.
    “In about fifteen minutes. Go on,” said Laura.
    Diane opened the drink and took a sip. It was ice-cold. “I think the memories are connected by fear, at the least.” Diane took another drink.
    “Look, Laura,” said Diane. “I’m not really saying anything, except that it’s something to investigate. I agree, you shouldn’t mention this to Juliet. Right now it’s just a flight of fancy of mine, but I’d like to look into it.”
    “Well, I must say, you’ve surprised the hell out of me,” said Laura.
    “I could be completely wrong and probably am. I’ve certainly not been able to do much with the other cases I’m working on now,” said Diane.
    “And why are you working on them at all? I thought your job is to analyze bones and collect evidence from crime scenes. Is Rosewood having a shortage of homicide detectives? Come to think of it, I wouldn’t be surprised, the way Adler has been attacking the police.”
    “I got interested in solving those crimes when Patrice Stanton vandalized my car,” said Diane.
    “The woman’s obviously crazy. She really thinks you killed her son? I know she said that, but I thought she was just sticking it to you for turning the little carjacker in.”
    “No, she actually thinks I killed him. The only bright spot is that she’s stopped her harassment because she thinks I also killed McNair and she’s afraid I’ll come after her.”
    Laura threw her head back and laughed out loud.

    It was getting colder outside. Diane was glad to be back in her office and warm. She reached for the phone to call Garnett when Andie knocked on her door and stuck her head in.
    “You have some visitors from the dark side,” said Andie.
    “Send the creatures in,” said Diane.
    David, Jin, and Neva all came into her office, pulled chairs away from their places against the wall, and sat down. Jin turned his chair around so that he sat straddling it, resting his arms on the back.
    “Is this some kind of protest?” said Diane. “Have I been working you too hard?”
    “We came to see the skull,” said David.
    “OK.” Diane picked up the crystal skull and handed it to David.
    “Wow,” he said. “This is nice.” He turned the skull over in his hand and caressed the surface. “Is it ancient?”
    “No way to tell,” said Diane. “All quartz is ancient, so there’s no help there. And there’s no way to effectively analyze the tool marks. They could have been made a thousand years ago or yesterday using tools of ancient design. That’s part of the mystery of crystal skulls.”
    “This is just about the neatest thing,” said David. He handed it to Neva.
    “It’d be pretty with a light shining through from the bottom,” she said. “Pretty mysterious, too.”
    “Yes, it would,” agreed Diane. “Did you guys come just to look at the crystal skull, or was there some other reason?”
    Neva handed the skull off to Jin. He turned it over and looked at it from all sides. Then he held it up to the light and looked deep into it.
    “We’re just stuck, Boss,” he said when he finished looking through the skull. “We thought if we sat in the skull’s aura . . .”
    “We thought no such thing,” said Neva. “We just thought getting our mind off the cases for a while, some idea might surface.”
    “I’ve had the same problem,” said Diane. “I was just about to call Garnett when you came.”
    She lifted the phone and dialed his number.
    “Garnett,” he answered.
    “It’s Diane. Do you have anything you can share with us? What’s going on with the Stanton and McNair cases?”
    “I can tell you this. The meth lab evidence didn’t make it to the arson lab and I don’t know where it is.”
    “What? Did McNair steal it? How was he expecting to get away with that?”
    “Maybe he’d say his truck was stolen. I suppose his plan was to say someone came into the dock at the arson lab and took it.”
    “He left it in the truck? Why wasn’t it transferred?” asked Diane. Her three criminalists stared at her.
    “The evidence is gone?” mouthed David.
    Diane nodded.
    “I don’t know,” said Garnett, “but the meth lab explosion is pretty much at a standstill, and guess who’s getting