Scattered Graves

‘‘The museum would still own it.’’
‘‘But Dr. Fallon was the force behind the crime as pect to it. They figured the next director wouldn’t be a forensic anthropologist and wouldn’t be interested in the labs. They knew some of the museum’s board of directors didn’t like the forensic stuff being there.’’
‘‘How were they planning to take over the whole third floor?’’ asked Janice. ‘‘Killing Diane wouldn’t get them that either.’’
Diane could see that Janice was skeptical. Ridd mann looked like he was getting impatient with Ja nice’s questions. Diane wanted Janice to continue. She wanted the answers to those questions.
‘‘That wasn’t all they had planned. I heard them say that little old ladies could get mugged and what a trag edy that would be. They had planned to take out Vanessa Van Ross too.’’ She sat back in her chair. ‘‘See, Mr. Riddmann, I told you this was a good story and worth a little time off for good behavior,’’ said Rikki.
Diane stepped back and leaned against the back wall. She felt a strange retroactive fear of what might have happened. Frank put an arm around her shoulder and she leaned into him.
‘‘How did we let this happen?’’ said Chief Monroe. ‘‘How did we miss all of this?’’
He didn’t really expect an answer and Diane didn’t give him one. She didn’t have one. She hadn’t voted for Jefferies. With her it was just a vague mistrust, something she couldn’t put into words, a gut feeling that she acted on at the voting booth. But he had appealed to a lot of people.
Diane could see that the three sitting in the room with Rikki were just as stunned. She couldn’t see Ridd mann’s and Janice’s faces, but she saw them straighten up and exchange glances. She saw the shock on Patsy LaCroix’s face. She had been periodically patting Rikki on the hand, encouraging her. She took her hands away and put them on the table in front of her. Patsy LaCroix and Vanessa were friends.
Rikki saw their reaction, delighted in it for a mo ment, then straightened her own face to reflect the seriousness of the situation.
‘‘That’s one of the reasons they were so furious with Bryce when he gave Dr. Fallon the ammunition to get the crime lab out of the museum building. They could see all their carefully laid plans just collapsing. That’s when they started fighting with each other. They tried to get Garnett to help them but he wouldn’t. And that really pissed them off.
‘‘They were trying to get rid of him anyway, and had planned to frame him for Dr. Fallon’s murder. Bryce came up with the idea of substituting one bullet for another. He said it would be tricky. Bullets some times ricochet around in the body and you don’t know where they might end up, but if it’s done right, Bryce thought he could make it work by short loading the bullets, or something like that. He said he could re duce the energy of the bullet when it entered the body. He was just full of fun ideas.’’ She laughed again.
‘‘You think all this is funny?’’ said Janice.
‘‘I do,’’ said Rikki. ‘‘Do you want my story or not?’’
‘‘Please go on,’’ said Riddmann.
Rikki nodded. ‘‘Just in case that didn’t work—or they couldn’t get the bullet out—they got a gun that couldn’t be traced back to them. They also took Garnett’s bullets from the Ballistics Department and were going to use them, but those were all in perfect shape and Bryce thought it would look suspicious. So they collected Garnett’s bullets from the gun range.’’
‘‘So all their plans collapsed,’’ said Janice.
Rikki nodded. ‘‘First, Dr. Fallon shut down the crime lab and locked them out, so they couldn’t get through the connecting door to get into the museum where the gun was and where they wanted to kill her. They didn’t want to risk going through one of the main entrances. That meant passing under the video cam eras and past people who might remember them. They thought about doing the Van Ross woman first, but she was out of town. They were trying to work all that out when Jefferies was murdered. That threw Peeks and Bryce for a loop. Let me tell you, it shook them bad. That’s why I don’t think they did it.
‘‘After they got over being scared that they might be next, Peeks decided to take over where Jefferies left off. He was going to make Bryce the dweeb side kick again, but Bryce wasn’t going to have it. Him and Peeks were at