Scattered Graves

changed the key code on the doors to the lab. Safely locked in, she went to the drying racks to look at the wood-chipper bones.
She put on her lab coat and gloves, stopping mo mentarily to see whether she could hear any more closet conversations. All was quiet. She checked the bones. They were mostly dry, and she began laying them out on the table in basically anatomical position. They looked like a fossil find—like Lucy laid out with her tiny ribs and scant bones. Diane had only seventytwo pieces of bone to work with.
She picked up the petrous part of the temporal bone, the bone she hoped would reveal the sex, made measurements of the fragment, and recorded them. She mixed up casting compound and began making a cast of the acoustic canal. She set the poured cast aside and examined the rest of the fragments one by one, looking for any anomalies, any cut marks that might not have been made by the wood chipper, anything that might have identification value. She reached for a piece of the hip bone that included the pubic symphysis—the place where the two sides of the hip bones join. The surface was rugged with well-defined grooves, which meant the person was young—late teens, early twenties.
Diane turned to get the camera to photograph the piece when she was suddenly jarred out of her thoughts by very loud yelling coming from the crime lab next door.

Chapter 9
    Diane stood for a moment, uncertain what to do. The voices were coming from deeper within the lab and not the closet. She reached for a phone to call the crime lab when she heard her name.
    Okay , she thought, it’s somehow about me. I am the landlord, so to speak, and this sounds serious. Land lords check into serious noises.
    She walked to the adjoining door, unlocked it, and entered the crime lab. It hadn’t changed much, still all glass and metal cubicles and fancy equipment. The voices were clearer now. One was Sheriff Canfield’s; he was red faced and very angry. He was standing in front of Bryce, yelling at him. Bryce was backed against a desk, staring wide-eyed at the taller sheriff.
    A woman with long blond hair in a ponytail, wear ing khaki slacks and a pink polo shirt, sat in one of the cubicles with her door open. Her eyebrows were raised and her lips turned into almost a smile. Must be Rikki. Diane thought the look on Rikki’s face was far too excited. She was obviously enjoying the con frontation. Diane glanced around the room but didn’t see Neva.
    ‘‘Did you really think you could get away with this? What goes on in the heads of you people? We didn’t elect you...’’
    Bryce caught sight of Diane. He straightened up and pointed a finger at her.
‘‘What are you doing here?’’ he said.
‘‘I heard the yelling,’’ she began.
Sheriff Canfield turned and saw Diane’s face. ‘‘You’ve
    been hurt,’’ he said. ‘‘What in the world happened to you?’’ His concern was obvious and sincere. ‘‘Police brutality,’’ she said.
Bryce shook his finger in her direction. ‘‘Get out. This is none of your business.’’
Bryce’s callousness angered Canfield just that much more. ‘‘It is most certainly her business,’’ said Canfield. ‘‘Now, get the bones and give them to her right now. Do you hear? Now!’’
‘‘Sheriff, we’ve hired a forensic anthropologist to analyze our bones, if you will give her a chance,’’ said Bryce. His voice and manner were remarkably calm, considering the situation.
‘‘I don’t give a shit if you hired Britney Spears to buy your underwear. You don’t get to decide who the bones go to; I do.’’
‘‘What’s going on?’’ asked Diane.
‘‘This son of a bitch waylaid my deputy on the way to bring you the rest of the bones we’ve found so far—and it was a lot of them, with some hair and fingernails mixed in. My deputy was on his way to your lab with them when this dirtbag stopped him and took them away from him. He and a security guard damn near wrestled them out of my deputy’s hands. My deputy told me Bryce said he would deliver them to you, but I knew better.’’
‘‘We didn’t wrestle them from him,’’ said Bryce.
‘‘How did you know they were on the way?’’ Diane asked him.
‘‘Huh?’’ Bryce looked at her, silent for a moment. ‘‘We didn’t. The security guard and I just happened to be out there when the deputy drove up.’’
‘‘The bones,’’ repeated the sheriff. ‘‘Get the damn bones and give them to Diane. And if you