Dead Hunt Part 14

"Fine," said Diane. It wasn't true at the moment, but Andie was asking about her health.

"There's a guy from the FBI who wants to talk to you about the artifacts," said Andie.

"The FBI. Great. Tell him he has to take a number," said Diane.

"What?" said Andie.

"Just hold the phone a minute, Andie," said Diane. She put her phone on mute and looked at the others. The marshals looked amused. The DA looked a little happier. Garnett was still frowning.

"Can we wait until I speak with the FBI before you take me downtown?" she said.

"Look," said Garnett. He turned to the DA. "I think it's premature to arrest Dr. Fallon at this point.

The barbiturates in her system do give her an alibi, and I would hate to make a mistake that we all would regret. Remember, no one in the apartment building heard anything either-not the neighbors across the hall, nor the ones above, below, or beside her. You will agree that is odd. In addition to the unpleasantness in her apartment early this morning, Dr. Fallon was attacked at the hospital by an unknown a.s.sailant wielding a knife. I think we can cut her some slack, especially since I'm sure she is sorry"-he looked at her when he said the word sorry sorry-"for not being as cooperative as she could, but that's understandable."

He looked at Diane and gestured with his head toward Riddmann.

Diane knew what he meant. He wanted her to apologize to the DA. d.a.m.n d.a.m.n. But the museum and the crime lab were worth more than her pride at the moment.

"Garnett is right," said Diane. "Mr. Riddmann, I'm sorry. You are certainly due more cooperation than I have given, especially in front of guests." She nodded at the marshals. "I'm also sorry for the misuse of statistics. I hate it when other people do it and I regret doing it myself."

Riddmann had been smiling-or smirking-at her, she couldn't really tell the difference, but now he looked confused. Diane turned to the marshals. "The police commissioner in Rosewood asked the DA's office to accept cases that have weaker evidence than they would normally prosecute. The aim is for Rosewood to get as many criminals off the streets as it can. Although we do get more people off the streets, a consequence is a statistically lower conviction rate for the DA's office." A policy which Diane, herself, disagreed with because another consequence was that too many innocents got convicted. "If Rosewood had the same policy as, say Atlanta, the conviction rate stats would be much higher."

Riddmann looked as though he hadn't realized that before. He probably tucked it away to use in his next campaign.

"I didn't know you were attacked at the hospital,"

said Riddmann. "With this new evidence, I think we can wait."

"Thank you," she said, and Garnett looked relieved. "This attack," asked Deputy Marshal Merrick, "do you think it was connected to the incident in your apartment?"

"I don't know," said Diane.

She didn't say that she thought it was connected to the museum, and she wasn't sure she was going to tell the FBI. She believed she had a better chance of solving it than they did. If someone thought she was dirty and was willing to kill her for it, the FBI would, of course, see her as a suspect for buying stolen antiquities. That would be a blind alley, and valuable time would be lost. But leaving out important information when talking to the FBI was very risky business. Diane was beginning to feel stuck-like she was fighting wars on too many fronts.

She got back on the phone with Andie. "Ask him to wait in my office. I'll be right there."

"Where are you coming from exactly?" asked Andie. Diane smiled into the phone. "I'm in the crime lab." "Oh, okay. I'll tell him you'll just be a few minutes, then," she said.

"Thank you, Andie." Diane hung up the phone. "We will be in the area a few more days," said Merrick. "If..."

"Why are you still on the case?" asked Riddmann.

"We have jurisdiction now."

"Because we don't have Clymene's body," said Merrick. "It makes the paperwork harder." Merrick turned to Diane. "If your apartment is a crime scene, where will you be staying?"

"I'm staying with Frank Duncan; he's a detective in-"

"We know Frank," said Drew. "We apprehended one of his white-collar fugitives. Good guy to work with."

"If we need you, then you will be either at his house or here, somewhere in this building," said Merrick. "Yes," said Diane.

She saw them out of the crime lab on its private elevator side, the side that didn't go through the museum. She supposed she should be grateful that Riddmann appeared to be satisfied with her apology, but the whole thing left a sour taste in her mouth. By the time he got to his office, she imagined Riddmann would have the story embellished to the point that Diane got on her knees and begged him to forgive her. Before leaving the lab and going to her museum office, she called down to the bas.e.m.e.nt. She was right.

That's where her crew was waiting.

"How'd it go, Boss?" said Jin.

"I'll tell you later. I have to go meet with the FBI now," said Diane.

"Gee, Boss, you don't get a break, do you?" he said.

"Apparently not. I want you to know I appreciate you guys," she said.

"Sure-" he began.

"Jin, did you find anything about the artifacts- anything on NSAF?"

"The artifacts. Right. The girdle, the one that looks like it was made of cowrie sh.e.l.ls, was stolen from the Cairo Museum in 1957," he said. "It was the only one of the artifacts in the database. The stone artifacts had soil residue on them, but I haven't had a chance to process the sample yet. We've been kind of busy." "I know. Thanks, Jin. It's about time for you guys to go home," she said.

"We'll wait. We want to know what happened with the marshals," said Jin.

Oh, I'm not sure you do, thought Diane. "I don't thought Diane. "I don't know how long I'll be," she said.

"That's okay. Neva and David want to know if it's all right if they go back up to the lab," said Jin. "Yes. Everyone's gone," said Diane.

"Well, tell me this, did they try to hang it on you?"

Jin was in his usual joking manner and she could tell he really didn't believe they would seriously consider Diane to be a suspect.

"Yes," she said, "they did."

"Really, Boss?" said Jin. "I'm sorry...did they really?"

"It's all right. Thanks to Garnett, I didn't get hauled off to the station." She looked at her watch. "I need to get going. The FBI is waiting. I'll tell you about it later."

Diane left the crime lab and walked across the dinosaur overlook through to the bank of elevators in the middle of the building. She pa.s.sed several museum staff. A few looked as if they wanted to engage her in conversation but she waved them off, smiling, hoping she didn't look as overwhelmed as she felt. She would really like to sit down and take a break, drink some hot tea, skip town. But there wasn't time. She took the elevator down to the first floor and walked to her office. Andie was there engaging the FBI agent in an animated conversation about dinosaurs. He rose, smiled, and held out a hand when Diane came into the room. "I'm Agent Shane Jacobs. I understand you have some antiquities that may not be yours."

Chapter 24.

You have antiquities that may not be yours-it sounded like a princ.i.p.al gently scolding a naughty student.

"I'm afraid we might," said Diane, "I'm sorry to say." She took his hand.

Shane Jacobs had a firm handshake, salt-and-pepper wavy hair, and a slim tanned face with sharp features. He looked younger than Diane by a few years. His dark suit, smooth-shaven face, and short hair made him look like the stereotypical FBI agent. He pulled out his FBI identification to let her inspect it.

"I would like to see the artifacts," he said.

He wasn't somber like the law enforcement officers she had just dealt with, but smiled broadly at her as if he could just as well have been coming to buy the artifacts. He looked at his watch.

"I know it's getting late, but I'd also like to speak with Dr. Kendel Williams and the curator of your Egyptian exhibits," he said.

He seemed friendly enough, but Diane was sure that was just his method of gaining the confidence of the person he was interviewing. She was getting weary of being on the suspect end of investigations.

Diane turned to Andie. "Has Kendel left for the day?" she asked.

"I'll call," said Andie as she picked up the phone.

"If she's in, tell her to wait," said Diane. "If not, call her home and ask her to come to the museum."

Andie nodded. "Got it."

"Is Jonas back?" she asked Andie. Ironically, Jonas Briggs had been at an Egyptology conference.

"I saw him earlier. He was looking for you," said Andie.

"He and everyone else on the planet," said Diane. "We'll be going by his office. I'll stop in."

Diane led Agent Jacobs out of Andie's office and down the hall toward the main bank of elevators.

"The artifacts are in the conservation lab on the second floor," she said.

"I appreciate your cooperation in this," said Jacobs. "As you can guess, I get a lot of 'where's your warrant.' "

"This has been dreadful for us," said Diane. "We would like it cleared up as soon as possible." As she walked, she explained everything that she had discovered so far. "We didn't know anything was wrong until the newspaper articles began coming out. The artifacts had just arrived and hadn't even been opened yet."

"That's odd." It was the only comment Jacobs made. He had not yet even asked any questions.

Diane took him up to the second floor and into the room housing the Egyptian exhibit. She wanted him to see what they had now, so he would understand why they only wanted certain artifacts and not the ones that were sitting in the conservation lab.

Diane loved walking into the room housing the exhibit. It was like entering ancient Egypt. The walls were painted like the walls of an Egyptian tomb. But upon entering, the visitor's gaze first fell on Neva's reconstruction of their mummy, a scribe, they had concluded, sitting cross-legged on a pedestal in the middle of the room as if he were about to take up his sharpened reed and write on the papyrus lying in his lap.

The mummy whose likeness greeted visitors was in a closed anthropomorphic Egyptian coffin housed inside a gla.s.s case away from the hands of curious visitors. Above him on the wall were photographs of him before and after he was rewrapped and placed back in his coffin.

Along another wall sat a gla.s.s display case for the amulets that had been wrapped with the mummy. Each now had its own pedestal. Acquiring them had been a coup for Kendel. The museum had inherited the mummy-a survivor from a Victorian unwrapping party and handed down through a family until the last surviving member gave it to the museum. Another branch of the family had owned the good-luck amulets from inside the wrappings. Kendel had negotiated their purchase: an alabaster scarab that probably once resided over the mummy's heart, several small alabaster and lapis lazuli fish figurines, an inscribed sandstone cylinder with the name Senwosret III, two faience figures, several limestone figurines, and black steat.i.te shabtis shabtis.

The exhibit contained a diorama based on life in twelfth-dynasty Egypt, including an entire miniature Egyptian Egyptian town, highlighting a scribe's house. The room was one of the most popular in the museum.

"Our mummy is from the twelfth dynasty," said Diane. "This is a learning museum and we didn't want an unrelated a.s.sortment of Egyptian artifacts from all over the historical timeline. We decided to specialize in twelfth-dynasty items. That is what we ordered and that is what the doc.u.ments said we had. That is not what arrived."

"It's an excellent exhibit," he said, peering at the amulets. He looked up sharply. "So, Golden Antiquities sent the wrong items?" He pulled out a chair from one of the computer terminals and sat down.

Diane took another chair and sat across from him. "Yes, but the items they sent were similar to what we ordered. That's what's so odd," said Diane.

"So someone sent authentic doc.u.ments to provide provenance for artifacts that were switched."

"But that wouldn't have worked," said Diane.

She went over the same arguments with him as she had with Frank-how more than one person verified the provenances, how she herself signed off on everything that arrived at the museum, how the museum pretty much displayed everything it owned.

"No one could get away with using this museum to launder antiquities," said Diane.

She studied him as she spoke, wondering whether she could trust him. In the end she decided to wait to tell him about her attacker and what he had said. She stood up.

"Jonas' office is across the way here."

Jonas Briggs was in his office and Diane introduced him to Agent Jacobs. He seemed to be waiting for them, the way he answered his door so quickly. Andie must have called. Jonas was a retired professor from Bartram University. He had white hair, a toothbrush mustache to match, and white bushy eyebrows over crystal blue eyes. He was dressed in jeans and one of the ubiquitous Richard III T-shirts.

"This is just terrible," said Jonas. "Just terrible. Kendel and I were looking forward to the new artifacts." He shook his head and offered them a seat.

"Actually, I would like to see the artifacts and the doc.u.ments first. Will you be here for a while?" asked Agent Jacobs.

"I can be," said Jonas.

"Good. So you are an Egyptologist?" said Jacobs.

"No. My field is southeastern U.S. archaeology. However, I have taken to learning Egyptology. I've always liked it."

"Did you negotiate the purchase of the objects?" asked Jacobs.

"No. I can't negotiate the purchase of a used car," said Jonas. "But I examined the catalog and the copies of the provenances. Everything was just fine."

Jacobs nodded. "I'll come by again after I've finished looking at the artifacts," he said. "Thank you for waiting."

Diane looked back at Jonas as she left with Agent Jacobs. He looked miserable. She smiled at him as if to say, It will be all right. It will be all right. She took Jacobs through earth science across the overlook to the Pleistocene room. Jacobs stopped to look over the railing at the mammoth and other giant Pleistocene creatures. She took Jacobs through earth science across the overlook to the Pleistocene room. Jacobs stopped to look over the railing at the mammoth and other giant Pleistocene creatures.

"Are the bones real, or are they casts?" he asked.

"The Pleistocene bones are real. The bones in the dinosaur room are casts purchased from the Bickford," said Diane.

"Good museum. You know they're looking for a new director. Harold Marquering's retiring, I hear," said Jacobs.

"I had heard also," said Diane. "He had only been there, what, six years?"

"About that," said Jacobs. "You have lots of room here."

"We do. We offer lab s.p.a.ce to university faculty in exchange for their curative services."

"How's that working out?" he asked, grinning.

From his expression, Diane guessed he had worked with professors before.