Scattered Graves

long drink.
‘‘Well, he did get elected, and I went to work, and things were fine for a while. I liked the people I worked with. Neva and David were really nice to me, and Jin, when I saw him, was funny. We joked around a lot.
‘‘Then I started learning more about Jefferies and the others, and it was scary. I heard them talking about having killed a judge. Whatever that was about happened before I came to work, and I don’t know anything about it. It was just a stray comment I over heard Bryce tell Curtis. Curtis was Peeks’ cousin. He’s kind of creepy in a fun sort of way, and not very smart, if you know what I mean. I never let on that I overheard that.’’
‘‘Where were you when you heard these conversa tions?’’ said Janice.
‘‘Sometimes at the mayor’s house. I was, uh, sort of dating Curtis and we occasionally had dinner at the mayor’s house. They didn’t seem to care what I heard, I suppose, since they figured they had bought my loyalty.’’
She took another drink of water, this time a small sip, and she actually looked as if the memory scared her. Diane imagined it did, but not enough to over come the glamour of the situation and the money that came with it. Along with her salary she was probably paid bonuses under the table.
‘‘Continue, Miss Gillinick,’’ said Riddmann. ‘‘We are anxious to hear about the murders.’’
Riddmann was inclined to be impatient. Diane thought they ought to just let the story unfold, not encourage her to skip over parts of it.
Rikki seemed to ignore him. She continued with her story the way she was telling it. She had the stage and was enjoying her part.
‘‘They were real happy to get the crime lab. Bryce didn’t want to be head of it, but they must have told him he had to. You know in movies how the goodlooking guys will have a dweeb for a sidekick, and maybe he’ll be smarter than them, but he’s still a dweeb? Well, that was Bryce. He was the dweeb. But they told him the crime lab was the most important job of all. And I think they meant that. They weren’t aware that the bone lab didn’t come with it. At first they didn’t pay much attention to it anyway. Then Bryce found out that it had all kinds of fancy equip ment and he realized he could hire their own forensic anthropologist, so he started looking for one.
‘‘But what Jefferies really wanted was the DNA lab. He knew it was owned by the museum, but he and the others had an idea of how to get it. They were first going to get Curtis on the inside to do all their DNA analysis. But Diane Fallon got in the way of that and they decided they had to get rid of her. They hired Harve Delamore to do it. He hated her anyway. Harve was always bragging about how he could have gone semipro. Well, that’s what he was—semipro and not pro. He bungled it. When that didn’t work out, they were going to frame her for his murder.’’ She laughed. ‘‘Then it turned out that the GBI had juris diction. It was starting to get funny. Diane was like the Road Runner and they were Wile E. Coyote.’’
Diane was shocked that Rikki could talk about mur dering someone with such ease, even laugh about it. She shivered. Life meant nothing to this woman. Nothing to Jefferies and his cronies either.
‘‘Jefferies and Bryce drew up plans for what they would do with the whole third floor of the museum building,’’ said Rikki. ‘‘But they had to get Dr. Fallon out of the way.’’
Diane was startled to hear that. How did they ex pect to get the whole third floor? she wondered.
Rikki leaned forward as if Riddmann and Janice could hear her better if she did.
‘‘When Harve failed to kill her, Bryce smuggled a gun into the museum and hid it. It was easy because Bryce had his own guard at the door from the crime lab into the museum. They were planning to kill Dr. Fallon in the museum. They thought that might make it easier to close it down.’’
Diane sucked in her breath. Frank grabbed her hand and squeezed. The chief of police looked over at her, frowning himself, startled.
Rikki looked up at the two-way mirror as if she knew Diane was watching, and delighted in the shock of the revelation.
‘‘You were just going to let that happen?’’ said Janice.
‘‘What could I do? By this time I was thoroughly scared by these guys. If they were going to kill her, they wouldn’t give a second thought about doing me.’’
‘‘How did they think that would get them the DNA lab?’’ said Janice.