Scattered Graves

whole body seemed to sag under the weight of his situation. Then again, he prob ably looked better than she did.
    ‘‘There’s something wrong.’’ He began talking be fore Diane could say what she came for. His reticence with Janice apparently didn’t roll over to Diane. His feelings poured out of him.
    ‘‘Something’s wrong. I didn’t kill Edgar Peeks. I don’t know who to trust. These are people I’ve known for a long time, and I can’t believe they would be part of a conspiracy. But they have to be. I didn’t shoot him. Not even my own lawyer believes me. Even my family is doubting me. This is a nightmare.’’
    ‘‘I know,’’ said Diane. ‘‘I believe you and I’m work ing on proving it. Let me tell you what I think happened.’’
    There was more surprise on Garnett’s face than re lief. He stared at Diane, not speaking.
‘‘I shouldn’t be speaking to you, but just in case you may be able to remember something that will help, you need to know what’s going on. You also need to have some hope. It must be like you’ve entered the Twilight Zone, or fell into a Kafka novel.’’
‘‘You can explain this?’’ he said after a moment.
‘‘I think so,’’ said Diane. ‘‘The main problem you have is that a bullet from your gun was in Peeks’ head. Janice and Izzy, both good, reliable witnesses, saw Shane Eastling remove it from Peeks’ brain. And when they ar rested you, you had your gun with you,’’ said Diane.
‘‘In a nutshell, yes, that’s my problem. But they’ve made a mistake—’’
Diane held up a hand. She wasn’t sure where to start. She couldn’t really tell him that she got the idea from fiddling with a loose rock in her fountain, or changing a lightbulb. But that was what triggered her idea: taking something out and putting something back in.
‘‘I think someone got hold of one of your spent bullets when you were qualifying at the gun range. They killed Peeks with their gun, dug out their bullet with a pair of forceps, and replaced it with your bullet.’’
Garnett looked surprised and disbelieving, even though this would show him to be innocent. It was too far-fetched, he was probably thinking. And it was far-fetched. But he said nothing. He just waited for Diane to explain herself.
‘‘I wondered why your bullet wasn’t a through-and through. Your gun has enough power to shoot a bullet all the way through the head at the close distance from which Peeks was shot. It didn’t—but that can happen. Then I thought, what if he was really shot with a much smaller-caliber gun—something like a .22 would be powerful enough to pass through the skull bone and lodge in the brain, but would not be strong enough to break through the bone on the other side of the head. And there was the question of why there was so much damage to the brain tissue. There was no ricocheting of the bullet inside the skull cavity, just one straight path, with more damage to the brain tis sue than you would expect. That can happen too.
‘‘But all that got me to thinking. I began with the assumption that everyone around here is telling the truth. If that’s the case, what happened?’’
‘‘Do you have any evidence?’’ said Garnett.
The wistfulness in his voice was pitiful, thought Diane.
‘‘Jin and David found a bloodstain on the floor under the chest in the foyer where Peeks’ body was found. It had a pattern in it. I think the pattern was made by a pair of bloody forceps.’’
She didn’t mention that ice tongs and pancake bat ter make a similar pattern.
‘‘Pendleton told me he saw Rikki Gillinick pocket something shiny at the crime scene. I think she found the forceps. Either she killed Peeks and was re claiming evidence she left behind, or Bryce did it and she collected the forceps for him, or perhaps to keep and hold over him. If that’s the case, the forceps are somewhere and we can find them. The forceps in our crime scene kits have a nice solid, shiny, flat place at the top that is great for fingerprints. And they would leave a pattern like the one Jin and David found in the blood.’’
Garnett looked a little less skeptical. In fact, he seemed to be warming up to the idea.
‘‘How did they get one of my spent bullets?’’ he asked.
‘‘At the shooting range,’’ said Diane. ‘‘The logbook at the range shows that the last two times you were there, the only other person shooting was Edgar Peeks. Both of those times were before Jefferies