LC 02 - Questionable Remains (30 page)

"I didn't-" He struggled to recover himself. "I think
you had better go. I'll not sit here while you impugn my
integrity."

Lindsay rose. "Dr. Ballinger, I just spent the last day
buried in a cave fighting for my life. I believe that wouldn't
have happened to me if you'd been more competent in dealing with these bones. I can show you on the skull where I
think the tire iron fracture is, and I can point out the inconsistencies in decomposition, but I am unable to persuade
you to look at the photographs. However, you can be
assured, with reasonable people I can be very persuasive."
She gathered up the photographs, turned, and walked out,
leaving Olin Ballinger staring angrily at her.

Derrick escorted her to the car. He said nothing until they
were outside.

"That's the last time I loan you my copy of How to Win
Friends and Influence People. You were a little hostile in there,
weren't you?"

Lindsay leaned against the car. "I am so angry."

"I see you are. That's why you need to let the authorities
take care of this."

"I will, but I have to show them the way first. When a
death has been officially closed, it's hard to get it reopened.
Look," she said when she saw the hard set of Derrick's face.
"I need your support."

"I've always given you my support. But I'm having a hard
time dealing with this desire for detective work you've suddenly acquired. It's like you've become addicted to danger."

Lindsay stared at him openmouthed. "You act like you
are blaming me for getting thrown in the cave. None of this
is my fault."

"I'm only blaming you for agreeing to look for a murderer. Murderers will tend to act like murderers if you get in
their way. Give me the keys and I'll drive." Lindsay threw
him her keys and got in the passenger side. When Derrick
got in, he looked over at her. "I didn't mean to come down
so hard, at least not right now."

Lindsay looked at him, into his eyes. He looked troubled
and she felt guilty, and felt angry for feeling guilty. "I know
I behaved very unprofessionally in Ballinger's office," she
said.

"He'll get over it. I'm concerned about you. You're a
walking time bomb."

"It's the anger. It's a thing, like the darkness was a thing
that swallowed me in the cave when the light was off. I
never knew dark could be so dark. There's no place in your
house you could go in the middle of the night, turn out the
light, and have it be as dark as it was in that cave, and it was
pervasive. My anger is that pervasive, aimed at no one and
everyone. I feel like the only way to get rid of it is to find the
people who did this to me. If it has to do with Ferguson,
then nothing I've done so far had anything to do with what
happened to me. As for Ken Darnell and his death, I've only
asked a few questions here and there. I've hardly done any
investigating at all."

"You think it is someone connected to the cave murderswere they murdered?"

"It's possible that the skull fracture was caused by something other than falling rocks, but I'd have to look at the
bones. And yes, I think what happened to me is connected
to what happened in the cave to Grace Lambert's brother. I
don't really think it is the Ferguson family who did this to
me. It just seems too relentless for them to follow me all the
way up here-and what about Gil Harris? His death is not related to the Fergusons, but he did know Grace's brother."

"Okay. Where do you want to go now?"

At that moment, Dr. Ballinger came hurrying out of his
office and started down the street. Lindsay and Derrick
watched him. He was heading toward the coroner's office.

I WONDER WHAT they are going to talk about?" mused
Lindsay.

"Did you get any sense that Ballinger or Prescott could
have been among the men who kidnapped you?" Derrick
asked.

"I couldn't tell. But why would they?" she asked.

"To save their reputations?" asked Derrick.

"No. They've got bureaucracies to do that for them. But
something's up. I don't suppose we could listen in?"

"No," said Derrick, starting the Rover. "We can't." He
drove back to the motel.

They pulled into the parking space near the stairs that led
to Lindsay's room. She turned to Derrick before they got
out. "Thanks for staying with me."

Derrick leaned over and kissed her gently. "We'll get
through this. If you want to talk about being in the cave, I'll
listen."

Lindsay said nothing until they were in the room with the
door closed and locked. "Maybe it would help to face it,"
she said. "I don't ever remember being so constantly terrified. It's like being lost in some other dimension where
there's no time and every step's a trap."

Lindsay sat down at the small table in the corner of the room, and Derrick sat opposite her. As she told him the story
he reached for her hands and held them, listening quietly.

"We'll find out who did this," he whispered when she
had finished.

Lindsay shook her head. "I don't know how. I still can't
think clearly. I'm not sure what to do next."

"Since the bones of that Hillard fellow are comingled,
and his wife seems to be so cooperative, you could get an
exhumation order. Like the guy said, at least the body doesn't have to be dug up. If you see the bones themselves-"

"That's a good idea. If I can just examine those bones, I
can get a lot of answers, I-"

Derrick's gaze fell upon the backpack Lindsay had in the
cave. It was leaning against the nightstand, the yellow flashlight still dangling from it by her belt. "Why don't you send
that to the FBI crime lab? There may be fingerprints on
something in there."

"Of course. I should've thought of that. I'll call Agent
McKinley, the FBI agent in charge of the Gil Harris case.
Maybe when I tell him what's been happening, he'll share
some information with me."

Derrick went to his truck to get one of the boxes used for
packing artifacts, while Lindsay called Agent McKinley.

"Dr. Chamberlain. How are you?"

"Recovering," Lindsay replied.

"I've done a little caving before. I can't imagine anything
more frightening."

"Neither can I," she said.

"You think all these events are connected?" He spoke her
thoughts.

"They might be. From the photographic evidence I've
seen, I think there's a definite possibility that Ken Darnell
and the other cavers were murdered. I'm going to try to get
a look at the bones. Is there anything you can tell me about
the crime scene at the Rock Shelter Site?"

There was a moment of silence on the phone, and Lindsay thought he was hesitating, then she heard paper
shuffling in the background.

"Not much. We interviewed some hikers passing through
the area just before dark, hurrying to find a camping spot.
They remembered the cars in the parking area used by the
site crew. We did discover there was an extra white van
parked there at that time. We almost missed that. According
to the description, it wasn't unlike the university vans. The
hikers were sure there were two of them. There should've
been only one. But so far we haven't been able to trace it.
None of them got a look at the license plate."

Lindsay was quiet a moment. "My kidnappers used a van."

"Hmmm. Can you send me a description of everything
you remember?"

"Yes. I'll do that immediately. Give me your fax number."
Lindsay found some stationery supplied by the motel on
her nightstand and wrote down the number. "Anything
else?" she asked.

"The top of the cliff was rocky. The only things we found
were some beer bottle caps and a piece of chewed gum that
the lab says was fresh. The chewer was a nonsecretor, so not
much there. There was one thing interesting, though I'm not
sure it'll help. The lab guys said there was a good impression of a molar that had an extra cusp."

Lindsay was silent for a long moment.

"Lindsay, does that mean something?"

"I don't know ... something in the back of my mind.
Anyway, there's some things I noticed in the photographs."
She told McKinley about the possible fracture with a tire
iron and the different rates of decay she believed she saw in
the photographs.

"I can call the authorities in Ellis County and encourage
that the case be reopened," he said. "That's all I can do,
encourage them. Do you think you might find anything else
on the bones if you had them to examine directly?"

"I can't promise. But we'll never know unless we try."

Lindsay asked him where she could send her backpack,
and he dictated the information to put on the label and
where to send it.

"The lab'll be able to come up with something in a backpack full of stuff. Don't worry. I think we'll find who
dumped you in that cave."

Derrick had packed and taped the box when Lindsay got
off the phone. "From this end it sounded like a productive
conversation," he told her.

"McKinley's going to try to reopen the Darnell case."

"That'll be good. With the authorities working on it, no
one will have a reason to want you out of the way." He
grabbed her around the waist and kissed her neck, nuzzling
her ear. "In the meantime," he whispered, gently easing her
toward the bed, "we can take our vacation together here." A
loud knocking interrupted their intentions, and they both
glared at the door.

"What now?" Lindsay said as Derrick released her and
answered the knock.

A slim man dressed in khaki brown entered, held out his
hand, and introduced himself as Sheriff Struen Prescott of
Ellis County.

"Are you related to ... ?" began Lindsay.

"Yes, the son of a bitch is my cousin and a pain in my ass.
If you can show me where he has been derelict in his duty
as coroner, I'll see he gets his butt kicked in the next election." Both Lindsay and Derrick were speechless. The sheriff smiled. "I like to be direct. Now, I got an interesting call
from an FBI agent. He suggested that if I reopened the case,
there might be a big arrest and publicity in it for me, not to
mention getting some criminals off the street. I told him I
kind of like that idea. Tell me about this caving accident you
think might be murder."

Lindsay invited him into her motel room and showed
him the pictures. "It's suggestive, but I can't know for sure
unless I see the bones."

"I'm working on it right now. Already called the Hillards.
Talked to a fella named Clay Boshay. You'd of thought
Christmas and Halloween fell on the same day. Getting a
court order for the other two shouldn't be any problem."

"Sheriff, I have to say, you are about the quickest official
I have ever seen."

"Yes, I am. Do what needs to be done and don't fiddlefart around, that's my motto. I got a clean county to prove
my methods. Would be cleaner if Tucker weren't screwing
up so much. Don't know exactly how many homicides he's
messed up. He's both stupid and slippery at the same
time-bad combination. Knows how to shift blame. Always
did, even as a kid. I got more whippings for things that bastard did. But it sounds like you can give me what I want."

"Where can I look at the bones?"

"My office be all right?" he asked.

"Sure."

Lindsay could not see the bones until the next day. The
sheriff, true to his nature, got the exhumation orders in a
hurry and had them executed before anyone was the wiser.
The bones of Ken Darnell were at his office before Jennifer
Darnell's lawyer arrived to protest.

Clay Boshay and Lorinda Hillard came to the sheriff's
office to await the findings. They were dressed as if coming
to a funeral: Clay in a suit, Loriiida in her Sunday best, a
dark lavender cotton dress with lace trim. They rose to greet
Lindsay when she came in.

"Look, we really appreciate what you did," said Clay.
"This means a lot to Lorinda here. I'm sorry about all that's
happened to you." He grimaced as his eyes darted over
Lindsay's bruised and bandaged face.

"I don't know what I'll find," Lindsay told them.

"At least we can rest easy knowing that somebody who
knew what they were doing looked at the bones." Lorinda
looked past Lindsay. Lindsay turned and saw Olin Ballinger
and Tucker Prescott come into the office.

"Boy," said Clay, "if looks could kill, you'd be a dead
woman."

Not for the first time, she wondered if they might have
been the ones who kidnapped her. Lindsay left them and
went into the next room, where Derrick was laying out the
bones. She had asked for his help because she wanted it
done quickly. The bones were lying on sheets on three
tables-three skeletons. She went to Blaine Hillard first
and to the misplaced rib. Derrick had already found it and
set it aside.

Olin Ballinger and Tucker Prescott, the coroner, followed
her in and didn't look happy about it. There was another
man there also. He had a pad of paper and a pencil. "Dr.
Ballinger wanted to observe," said the sheriff. "And, of
course, we always have the coroner in when we deal with
dead bodies." If he had any sarcasm in his voice, Lindsay
didn't notice. "This here is Darrell Mannville. He owns the
newspaper here in town. We believe in freedom of the press
here, don't we, Darrell?"

"Yes, sir, sheriff."

Lindsay decided she didn't want to ever be on the wrong
side of Sheriff Struen Prescott.

She put on latex gloves and picked up the switched rib
and examined it closely. She walked to the other skeletons
and picked up a rib from the remains identified as Roy Pitt.
"This is the rib that goes to Blaine Hillard." She gave
Ballinger a brief glance. He stood with his mouth turned
down in a sour expression.

She asked Derrick to start looking at the bones of Roy Pitt
for any cuts or anomalies. She picked up Blaine Hillard's
cracked skull and examined the injuries. Looking at the
skull close up, it was obvious that he was murdered.