"Okay. Let me take a look at the rope and I'll let you take me home."

"Rope?"

"The rope they were hung with."

"Oh."

Diane took Red's rope to the table and laid it out. The red string that tied the cut ends together looked as if it had been dipped in fresh blood. She examined each of the knots again. They were identical to Blue's and Green's, down to the stevedore's stopper knot. Definitely tied by the same hand.

She decided to leave the bones and the rope out on the table and get David to help her finish the photo graphs tomorrow. She looked at her watch. Today. d.a.m.n, she'd hardly get any sleep. As she started to leave, she saw the other box with the single piece of rope that they had found on the ground at the scene. She took out the rope and lay it on the table. It was full of kinks and covered with worn places. No knots for her to a.n.a.lyze. She laid it on one of the empty tables.

Diane fell asleep with her arm around Frank's waist, his body nestled against hers. Despite the hot night, his body felt good and safe, like home. The last thing she thought of before going to sleep was the lone rope she left lying out on the table in the lab.

Chapter 21.

When Diane arrived in the crime lab, Neva ap proached her anxiously and handed her drawings of Fred and Ethel. The drawings looked as if Fred and Ethel had sat for them. They were similar to the com puter graphics, but didn't have that computer graphic look. Both were Caucasian. Diane noticed the noses right away. They had the most distinctive detail. Neva had taken to heart the lesson Diane gave her.

Ethel was young, midtwenties, with dark hair falling below her chin, oval face, slight nose, eyes wide apart. Fred was older, midforties. Neva had drawn his hair neither short nor long, but a median length for males. His face was square and his nose almost pug, with a prominent dip between the nasal bone and the frontal bone between the eyes. Their lips were neither thin nor thick. Fred and Ethel, who never knew each other in life, were now "married" skeletons, given a new life in Neva's drawings.

"Very good," Diane told her. "This is exactly what I'm looking for. We'll have to frame and hang these." A museum exhibit had already begun playing out in the back of her mind.

Diane unlocked the lab and the vault for Neva. While she waited for David, she set up the camera equipment.

"If this rate of mayhem keeps up, you're going to have to hire a second crime scene unit," said David as he came through the door.

"Maybe we can put an ad in the paper notifying everyone that the county has reached its quota of mur ders for the year, so they can't commit any more."

David took over the task of setting up the cameras, and Diane laid out the bones for the photographs. As he helped her photograph Red Doe's bones, David briefed her on the crime scene and the latest gossip.

"You certainly gave Neva a boost-sending her to process the car by herself, then a.s.signing her to recon struct the faces." He spoke in a low voice, even though there was no way Neva could hear them from inside the vault room. "She was much more confident-and friendly-at the crime scene."

"She just needed experience-and someone to counteract Garnett. That Janice year apparently touched all the the department."

Warrick thing last women working in "Garnett asked us to take Raymond Waller's collec tion to keep safe in the museum until Raymond's fam ily could claim it. He didn't want to leave it in the house. I took everything to Korey. I thought some of the items might need special care."

"That's fine. Korey will know how to care for them.

Nice of Garnett to take care of things for the family." "He's not a bad guy," said David. "A little too political. Acts like he's always looking over his shoulder."

"Probably is. Have you met the mayor?" "No, but I understand that you've had a conversa tion with him."

Diane smiled as she placed Red Doe's fourth lum bar vertebra on the stand to be photographed. "Yes.

We had a conversation."

David laughed, snapped the pictures and removed the camera from the stand. "That's the last one, isn't it?" Diane nodded. "We're processing the Waller evi dence as quickly as we can. There wasn't much there.

We collected fiber samples from the furniture that had been ripped up. When we find the perp, he's bound to have gotten fibers all over him."

"Someone was obviously looking for something,"

mused Diane. "You don't think it was the collection?" David shrugged. "Maybe. That seems the most ob vious. It's just that..."

"There are those other murders," finished Diane. "Yeah, those other murders. And why would he rip up the upholstery in search of baseball bats? Doesn't add up."

David cast a glance at the lone rope lying on the table, the one found on the ground at the Cobber's Wood crime scene. "You going to be able to do any thing with that?"

"I don't know. It was tied in knots long enough to leave kinks in the rope. I thought I might be able to do something with those."

"What can you possibly do? The knots are gone." "But they were there."

"So was my hair, but we can't reconstruct where the cowlick was."

"It was on the front right side, opposite where your part was."

David opened his mouth, then shut it, and stroked his bald head as if feeling for something. "How could you know that?"

Diane took a rope she had purchased that morning and laid it beside the crime scene rope. "You forgot, I've seen pictures of you as a kid."

David threw back his head and laughed one loud Ha! "You had me going. Good thing you told me. I'd "You had me going. Good thing you told me. I'd have been thinking about that all day."

"You'd have figured it out. The point is, there's always evidence."

David went back to the crime lab, shaking his bald head, leaving Diane to study the rope. Near one end was a cl.u.s.ter of six kinks about an inch to an inch and a half apart-some kinks were more crimped than others. Fifteen inches down, there was a larger kink with significant wear on the inside of the curve. Two and a quarter inches from there, another series of worn places. The wear was not continuous, but in patches down the rope.

She photographed the rope and measured all the places where it was kinked and worn. Altogether, there were eleven kinks of varying sizes and seven places where the rope had been worn, some quite ex tensively, some barely noticeable. Sometimes the wear was inside the kink, other times it was alone. Diane lay her new rope beside the crime scene rope-called the "lone rope" in her notes. She took red and green Sharpies and began marking the new rope to match the lone rope-green signifying a kink, red signifying wear.

"Okay, smarty," she muttered to herself, "what kind of knot was tied in this rope?"

The obvious first choice-obvious to her, at least- was a sheepshank. Perhaps the person wanted to use the rope, but was worried the worn places had weak ened it. A sheepshank is a method of strengthening a rope by tying it in such a way as to take the strain off the weak areas. It shortens a rope, but is a good way to use a damaged rope in a pinch.

She tied a sheepshank several times, each time try ing to match the green kinks to the turn of the knots and placing the red worn areas where they would be strengthened by having good rope on either side. Even after numerous attempts, she never got close to match ing her red and green points to the turns of the sheepshank.

The initial failure made her Okay, the kinks are the turns of more determined. the knots-or . . . where the rope looped around an object. And so where does the wear come from-from rubbing the knots-or . . . where the rope looped around an object. And so where does the wear come from-from rubbing object, or itself ? Diane fished a handful Diane fished a handful against an of colored rubber bands out of a drawer and dropped them on the table next to the experimental rope. of colored rubber bands out of a drawer and dropped them on the table next to the experimental rope.

First she located each green kink with no red wear on the inside, made a bight-a loop-and placed a yellow rubber band around it to hold it in place. She took the kinks with inside wear and did the same thing. Where the rope showed several kinks close to gether, she didn't bother with how the knot was actu ally tied, but simply looped them together and held them with a blue rubber band. Okay, now it looks like a mess, but that's all right. Okay, now it looks like a mess, but that's all right.

Diane examined the crime scene rope again and studied the red wear marks on her experimental rope. She tried several ways of folding the rope so that the wear marks-the red marks on her experimental rope-touched each other. Each way was a tangle of rope with no significant pattern.

There was about a foot and a half where several spots of wear spiraled around the rope. She folded her arms and frowned at the two pieces of hemp lying on the table. The lone rope had been twisted in some way. She made a loop at the widest s.p.a.ce between wear marks and then twisted the rope so that all the wear marks touched, securing it with a red rubber band. It now almost looked like something. But what?

Neva came out of the vault, stretching her arms. "I thought I'd break for lunch," she said.

Diane looked at her watch. She'd been at this d.a.m.n rope far too long, and what was it going to tell her anyway?

"I didn't realize it's getting so late. How's the recon struction going?"

"Good, I think. I'll have something by the end of the day. If people will refrain from killing each other for a while, I'll get all three done pretty quickly."

"What's your take on the most recent murder?" asked Diane.

"We don't have that many murders here, and now we have a cl.u.s.ter of five, maybe six. It doesn't look like a serial killer to me. Not that I've had any experi ence with serial killers, but the last two killers seemed to be looking for something. I'm kind of thinking it may be Steven Mayberry. And he, Chris Edwards and Raymond Waller were involved in something." She shook her head. "But none of them have any criminal record that we know about, and as far as I know, they were all decent, hard-working guys."

Diane nodded. Not a bad a.n.a.lysis, she thought. "Fortunately, the who and why are Chief Garnett and Sheriff Braden's problem. We just uncover the evidence."

Neva looked at the tangle of rope. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm trying to figure out what kind of knot was tied in the rope."

"You can do that?"

"So far, no. But that hasn't stopped me. I'll leave it alone for a while. Maybe something will come to me if I get my mind off of it."

Diane faxed her initial report on the a.n.a.lysis of the skeletons to Sheriff Braden, letting him know that photographs and copies of the report would arrive by messenger in the afternoon. By the time all that was taken care of, she was starved. She brought tomato soup in a Styrofoam cup and a chef salad back to her museum office. As she sipped the soup and ate her salad, her gaze rested on envelopes containing the mummy's X-rays sitting in her in-box. It made her smile. Diane was getting into the mummy thing like the rest of her staff. She quickly finished her lunch, disposed of the remains and sat down at the light table.

She selected the X-rays showing the thorax-the midsection-of the mummy. As was her custom, she started by examining the pelvis. It was a male pelvis. That was no surprise. The innominates, the large flat hip bones, showed signs of thinning. It looked as though he had suffered inflammation of his ischial tuberosities-the site of several muscle attachments as well as the place where he sat.

However, it was the mummy's lumbar vertebrae that were the most interesting. She pulled out two other X-rays, a side and back view, from the envelope. He also suffered from vertebral scoliosis, and on the margins of the body of his lumbar vertebrae there was a significant degree of lipping.

Interesting. While the condition of Red Doe's lum bar vertebrae was caused by excessive arching of her back, the mummy's condition was caused by a pro longed position in the opposite direction. The mummy, whoever he was, had spent long periods bending over in a seated position.

Diane stared at the X-rays, but saw the mummy and tried to visualize the person. What came to mind was a small Egyptian statue she had seen-a scribe in a cross-legged seated position. The kind of inflammation in the ischium was also called weaver's bottom, be cause of the prolonged sitting in front of a loom that weavers had to endure. Could the mummy have been a scribe? Or maybe he was some artisan, like a jewelry maker, who was seated over his work for hours a day. She liked both of those possibilities.

Diane examined the remainder of the X-rays and found more evidence of arthritis, but no other condi tions. Perhaps when they discovered when he had lived, her observations would have more meaning.

Andie brought in more mail for Diane to go through.

"Probably more requests for mummy tissue," said Andie. "Want me to go ahead and deal with it?"

"Please." Diane handed them off to Andie.

"You've been looking at the X-rays. What did you find?" Andie pulled up a chair and sat with her elbows on the desk and her chin in her hands.

Diane went into detail about all of the conditions and her speculation about what they meant. "We should get even more information from the CT scan."

"This is so cool. Do you think he could be a pha raoh? Maybe one with a hobby?"

"I hope not. We'll have to give him back to the Egyptian government if that turns out to be the case. They like to keep their heads of state."

"Oh, I never thought of that. Well, scribe is good. Maybe he was an architect. Did they spend more time drawing up plans or building stuff?"

"I have no idea. You'll have to look to Jonas and Kendel for details of Egyptian life. I'm going to have Neva draw his face from the data we get from the CT scan."

"Okay, now, that is really neat. This is as much fun as when they were a.s.sembling the Albertosaurus Albertosaurus."

Diane nodded. "It is, isn't it?"

Andie went back to her office, and Diane returned to her paperwork. She checked her E-mail and was relieved to find no more messages from whoever sent her the flowers. Probably just a crackpot.

She reviewed several proposals, signed several order forms for everything from pens to chemicals and an swered queries from her board members. As she worked, an idea came to her about the lone rope from the crime scene. She jumped up from her chair, looked on her shelf for her book on knots and headed for the lab, telling Andie where she would be as she flew out the door.

Chapter 22.

Diane's museum office was in the opposite wing from the crime lab. She enjoyed the walk across the mu seum, even when she was in a hurry. She liked seeing the visitors going from room to room, looking at the exhibits, and hearing children's delighted voices squeal upon seeing a display upon which the museum staff had worked hard. But today Diane's mind was focused on a nagging problem, and she bypa.s.sed the crowd and took the east wing elevator to the third floor and hurried across to her osteology lab. David met her in the hallway coming from the crime lab.

"Andie said you were on your way up."

"Yes. I have an idea."

"Chief Garnett called. He traced the E-mail and talked to Officer Lenderman and his daughter." Diane's cell rang and she held up a finger motioning David to wait while she answered it. The ID showed Frank's work number.

"Hey," he said. "Loved seeing you last night." "Me, too. Frank, I'm..."

"I traced the origin of the E-mail. It was from inside the museum."

Diane stood there, dumfounded. "Inside the museum?"

David began nodding in agreement.

"You need to tell Garnett," said Frank.

"I will, Frank. Thanks. David's here, and I think he has some more information on it."

"Good. Call if you need me."

"Inside the museum?" Diane asked David. "Yes. Garnett talked to the daughter. She's a stu dent at Bartram and comes to the museum to work on a paleontology project. She said she sometimes uses the computers in the restaurant-that's where the E-mail originated from."

"She sent it?"

"She says not. She remembers sending some mes sages and leaving the computer for a minute or two when she saw some friends come into the restaurant.

That's when someone must have hijacked her E-mail account. She was still logged on."

"d.a.m.n. Does she remembering seeing anyone?" "No. I think she was very focused on herself and her friends."