Dead Secret

examiner’s report into her office and sat down behind her desk. This office, unlike her other one in the museum, was stark, almost bare of personal items. The pale off-white walls and green slate floor did little to warm up the room. She had hoped the burgundy sofa and chair and walnut desk furniture would add something to the atmosphere, but it was a room much like the watercolor of a wolf hunting in the wild she had hanging on one wall—lean and efficient-looking.
    Diane picked up the phone and called the crime lab a few doors away and asked David and Jin to bring her up to speed on what they’d been doing while she was on vacation—and whether they had discovered anything at Mike’s crime scene. She didn’t look forward to that part. Her arm continued to throb.

Chapter 13
    Jin bopped into her office, pulled the burgundy stuffed chair up close to her desk and sat down. David sat down on one end of the sofa and propped his feet up on the other end. He rubbed the top of his bald head as if that would make his hair grow back.
    “How come I don’t have one of these in my office?” said David.
    “Because you don’t have an office,” said Diane.
    “Oh, yeah, that’s right. I have a cubicle with maggots.”
    “You are welcome to use my couch if you leave your maggots behind.” Diane flashed him a grin, then took a deep breath. It was time to get started. “Where are we with the cemetery stabbings? Do we know anything about the perp? Were there any more vics?” She said it as if she didn’t know the victims, as if she herself weren’t one of them.
    “We’ve kept in touch with Garnett. As far as we know you and Mike are the only two,” said Jin.
    Why? wondered Diane. Why the two of them? “Did you find anything at the site?”
    “Nada,” said David. “Not a damn thing. If he was lurking behind one of the monuments or a tree, he wasn’t drinking, eating, smoking, chewing gum or tobacco, spitting or spewing blood—or at least he left no evidence if he was doing any of those things. We found a bracelet with a broken clasp, but it turned out to belong to one of the mourners, and Garnett cleared her. She was eighty-seven and not given to homicidal mania.”
    Diane smiled briefly. “So where does that leave us?” she asked.
    “As far as the crime scene, nowhere,” said David. “Neva brought us Mike’s clothes and your jacket. We’ve processed them. The fibers that we found on Mike’s clothes are from the museum van. Your coat only had fibers from your office chair, Mrs. Van Ross’s clothes and the limo.”
    “So that’s no help,” mused Diane. “Do we have anything?”
    “The doctor said that the weapon you and Mike were stabbed with was as sharp as a scalpel, had a double edge and was at least six inches long,” said David. “My guess is it’s an expensive knife—or rather a dagger, since it was double-edged.”
    “Why do you say it was expensive?” asked Diane.
    “Because you can’t sharpen cheap steel as sharp as the knife that stabbed you and Mike was.”
    “So that’s something.”
    “He’s probably proficient with it,” said David.
    Diane raised her eyebrows and leaned forward. “How so?”
    “Because, relatively speaking, he did minimal damage,” said David. “An unsteady hand could have been much worse on the two of you. The doctor said Mike’s cut showed no evidence of rocking inside the wound, and it came out on the same plane that it went in. That’s a steady hand.” David made an underhanded stabbing gesture. “The angle was slightly upward—about five degrees from a level plane. He wasn’t taller than Mike. I’d say about the same height, maybe slightly shorter, but not by much.”
    Diane pinched the bridge of her nose, forcing herself to visualize Mike being stabbed, trying to get an image of the event. David was right: The guy had to be proficient to do it quickly and not be seen.
    “You okay with this, Boss?” asked Jin.
    “Yes. I’m all right. Go on.”
    “Your jacket had a slice almost equal to the length of your wound,” said Jin. “The knife went in; he sliced down and withdrew. All very neat.”
    Diane winced at his description. She saw both David and Jin grimace as well.
    “So what can we infer—he’s proficient with a knife and had no intention of killing, just maiming?”
    “I can’t say he had no intention of killing Mike,” said David. “He could easily have died.”
    Diane cast her eyes upward to stop the emotion that was