Dead Past

couldn’t play with something she stole. I was going to give it back to the child she took it from, but I never was able to find out who she was playing with. I asked some of the little girls on the beach, but they didn’t know Juliet. The child might have belonged to a tourist family. We get a lot of them here. They come and rent cottages on the beach. Lots of people come and go here. Will it help Juliet if I send you the doll?”
    “Yes, I think it will help,” said Diane.
    “I want to help Juliet. I don’t see her often enough. She thinks I blame her for her mother’s death. Maybe I did at one time, I don’t know. Anna Marie was my only child, and it’s awfully hard to lose a child. No matter how old they are, they never quit being your child. When Juliet was kidnapped, it just killed Anna Marie—the worry. She never got over it. She wasn’t a strong girl.”
    Mrs. Torkel was silent for a long while. Diane waited.
    “I’ll send you that doll. Let me get a pen and take your address.”
    Diane heard rattling noises as though she was searching in a drawer.
    “Here . . . no, the ink’s dried up. Just a minute.”
    Diane heard her lay the phone down. The television was playing in the background. It sounded like a soap opera. After a minute she was back.
    “Here, this one writes. Go ahead.”
    Diane gave her the museum address.
    “Mrs. Torkel,” Diane asked when she had written down the address, “this question may sound strange, but around the time Juliet was there, did any murders take place?”
    “Here in Glendale-Marsh? Why, no. I don’t know that we ever had a murder. We’re just a small tourist town. People come here with their families. The folks who live here year-round all know each other. No, we never had any murders. Did Juliet say we did?”
    “No, she didn’t. It was just an idea. Thank you for talking with me,” said Diane.
    “Tell Juliet to call me sometime. Georgia’s not that far from Florida. Maybe she can come down to visit me and we can go collecting shells on the beach like we used to.”
    “I’ll tell her,” said Diane. “Thanks again.”
    She hung up the phone and sat in her office thinking. She was expecting to hear that there had been a murder in the Glendale-Marsh area just prior to the time Juliet was kidnapped. She had it so neat in her mind what had happened. She was disappointed that she was wrong. But she would double-check with the Florida crime records.
    Diane went back to her lab to continue her work piecing together bone fragments. The bones were as she had left them—laid out and waiting. The sandbox she used to keep the pieces upright sat on a nearby table holding what she had pieced together so far. Another sandbox holding the first partially reconstructed skull sat next to it.
    David had set the box he brought from the warehouse on the counter. She opened it and laid all the bones out on the table, filling in many of the missing parts of the strange double skeleton. The warehouse evidence contained many of the bones and fragments that were missing.
    The fragmented skull was like a puzzle, but instead of a picture, she looked for diagnostic details—foramen, canal, fossa, margin, crest—all the road signs that told what bone the fragment was from, and where it should be on the skull. Most of the pieces came from the bones that David, Neva, and Jin had collected at the crime scene. She doubted that McNair could identify small bones, certainly not burned small bones.
    She found several fragments that belonged to the first face and glued them in place. It was almost complete now. On the second skull, in addition to the back of the head, she pieced together the entire left cheek, eye socket, and bridge of the nose. She stepped back and observed her work—definitely taking shape. She worked on the reconstruction through the afternoon. By the end of the day she had a significant part of the face complete. By tomorrow it would be ready to scan. She looked at her watch. It was still a decent hour. Tonight she was going to get a good night’s sleep in her own bed.

    When Diane arrived at her apartment, she smelled Italian food before she even opened her door. Frank, she thought. She smiled as she put her key in and opened the door.
    “God, that smells good,” she said.
    “It should,” Frank called from the kitchen. “It’s my famous Frank Duncan Spaghetti Supreme.”
    “I’m ready for it. I had a great breakfast in the restaurant, but I skipped