"I think both of them's hungry for some kind of big news score," said Chuck. "I see she's giving the timber guys a hard time."

From the stiff posture Chris and Steven had taken, folded arms, head down, Diane guessed Chuck was right.

"Would you get that d.a.m.n thing out of my face? You trying to get a view of my tonsils?" Chris' voice carried clearly down the road to where Diane and the deputies were securing the crime scene tape.

"Looks like Chris Edwards needs a little backup," said Leon.

The three of them walked up to them at a fast pace. "Everything all right here?" asked Leon.

"I'm just conducting an interview," said Pris Halloran.

"We've got to get back to work." Steven opened the door and slid into the driver's seat.

"You know," said Diane, "if the sheriff gets up to the road and you aren't there, you're not likely to get another chance to talk with him today."

That got the reporter and the cameraman moving. They jumped in their SUV and backed up to the turn around and left before Chris and Steven could make their getaway.

"Fill me in," Diane said to Jin when she finally got back to the main crime scene.

Jin handed over the sketches he and Neva had made.

"We found something interesting." He led her to the bodies through the path they had searched and cleared. "Notice anything funny?"

Diane scrutinized the corpse in front of her, tuning out the aroma of decaying flesh. She looked at the hands tied at the wrist, well on their way to becom ing skeletonized.

"Well, d.a.m.n," she said.

The killer had cut off the fingertips, leaving an open wound for the flies to lay their eggs and the maggots to infest quickly. The flesh on the hands was eaten away before the rest of the body.

"d.a.m.n's right," said Jin. "No chance of getting prints."

"I suppose the others are the same."

"Yes. Lots of good opportunities for getting some thing from the ropes, though. I'd like to watch you examine them. Been wanting to learn to do that." "Finding anything on the ground?"

"Lots of bugs. David's got quite a collection. That's about all so far."

Neva stood up from the farthest grid square from Diane. "I have something here."

Diane searched covered.

crossed the grids that had already been and stooped to see what Neva had dis "It's just a rope," she said, "but . . . well, there's a lot of rope here, and..."

The rope had been covered in leaves and lay in a loose tangle on the ground. It was hemp, like the death ropes, had no knots and showed signs of chafing in several places.

"This is good," said Diane. "The killer might have dropped it. Take a picture of it, do a sketch, but let me take it up."

"Sure."

"When you sketch it, take note of how the rope crosses itself."

Neva nodded. "David and Jin said you do forensic knot a.n.a.lysis. I've never heard of that."

"It comes in handy. It's amazing how many you run across in criminal investigations."

"Can you really find out anything from knots?"

"You can make some good guesses about the per son who tied them. How good he is at tying knots, perhaps what kind of job or hobby he's had."

"I always thought a knot was a knot."

"Oh, no, there's a specific knot for every purpose. Some are commonly used, and some are rare."

"This rope doesn't have any knots in it. Will you be able to tell anything from it?"

"I doubt it, but you never know. There might be bloodstains or fibers on it that'll give us information. If we're lucky, we might be able to find out where it came from. It's a good find."

Neva nodded. "I was afraid it might be just trash."

"There's no such thing as 'just trash' at a crime scene."

After Neva photographed the rope, she lay a grid over it and began drawing a sketch of it onto the graph paper.

Diane stepped out of the crime scene and walked around the perimeter toward David. She noticed that Neva occasionally cast nervous glances in her direc tion. Neva was a friend of Janice Warrick. Warrick's mishandling of the Boone family crime scene had re sulted in her demotion in the Rosewood police depart ment, a demotion that was blamed on Diane by almost everyone in the department.

"How's it going?" she asked David.

"We're ready to take them down."

He stood in the cleared area under the corpses, looking like he was about to be hanged himself. Diane understood. She hated this part-placing once living people into body bags.

Chapter 5.

The only other time Diane had been in a hot autopsy room was in the South American jungle. Dr. Lynn Webber's lab in the regional medical center was sti fling. The smell of death weighed over the room like a heavy blanket of rotting flesh. The metal tables, white gla.s.s-door cabinets, appliances and tools that went so well with the usual chill of the autopsy room looked out of place and dreadful here. Diane wanted to back out of the overwhelming stench and heat and go someplace else.

Through a window on the opposite side of the main lab Diane could see the isolation room designed for the autopsy of badly decomposed and infectious bod ies. The diener, servant to the dead, stood by a table occupied by one of the hanging victims-extended on a shiny metal table, neck curved around the torso so that the head sat beside the shoulder.

Lynn was in her office on the phone, the door open. Her voice carried out to the autopsy room.

"I asked you two days ago to come fix the air condi tioner." Pause. "I don't care if it's the vents, not the unit. The temperature is too high in here. I have dead bodies rotting on my tables. No amount of lemon juice is ever going to get the smell out of my hair."

Lynn tapped a pencil on a pad of paper as she lis tened. "I don't care if both both your ankles are sprained. A man your age has got no business being on Roll erblades. Let me remind you that I'm a woman who knows how to kill and leave no evidence to show up in the autopsy. I want this problem fixed, and I don't mean tomorrow." your ankles are sprained. A man your age has got no business being on Roll erblades. Let me remind you that I'm a woman who knows how to kill and leave no evidence to show up in the autopsy. I want this problem fixed, and I don't mean tomorrow."

She hung up the phone and walked out into the lab. "I hate to talk to maintenance men. It's like talking to a blackmailer. They know they've got you by the b.a.l.l.s."

She motioned toward suits of protective gear lying on the countertop. The two of them slipped on lab coats, face shields and gloves and entered the isola tion lab.

The room had two tables, shiny metal rectangles atop bright white cabinets. Between the two tables hung scales for weighing organs. Across the room stood a series of cabinets, metal countertops and sinks. Everything sparkled, from the glossy blue floor to the metal surfaces-everything except the blackened corpse with stiff blond hair and an exceptionally long neck.

"I was so happy to get this new containment room. But it's been one problem after another."

"Can't the hospital administration do anything?" asked Diane.

"You're talking about Jack the Bean Counter." She sighed. "I'm sorry it's so unbearable in here. Right now we have to keep working and put up with it."

"My grandma found somebody hanging like this when she was a girl," said the diener. "Neck all long like a snake. She took it as a sign."

"A sign of what?" asked Diane.

"That she and her family should move to Atlanta." "Did they?"

"Sure 'nuff, they did." He started toward the door, taking off his face shield. "I'll be right back."

Diane and Lynn watched the lean young black man walk out of the room.

"I never ask Raymond what he's doing when he gets that blank look on his face." Lynn shrugged, then shifted gears. "I'd like to start with the clothes. We'll have to cut the sleeves, but I'd like to inspect the body before the hands are untied."

The material was stiff and hard to dropped from the body to the metal cut. Maggots surface of the table as they worked. They were putting the clothes in a bag when the diener came back in. He put on his gloves and took the bag of evidence.

"I'll label. What we calling the body?"

"Blue," said Diane.

"Blue," said Raymond. "I guess that's as good a name as any."

"When we cut them down, we tied blue, red or green cord around both cut ends of the rope so we could match the ropes again after they were sepa rated." Diane pointed to the blue string wrapped around the end of the rope that marked it and kept it from unraveling.

The noose was still tight around the neck, sunk deep into the flesh under the chin. Diane would hate for any family member to ever see their loved one like this. They would never be able to think of their rela tive again without seeing this image. She stood back and watched as Lynn and her diener tended to the painstaking external examination of the body.

Lynn talked into a hanging microphone as she de scribed what they found. "The victim appears to be a female at this point..."

A pounding on the window startled Diane. The three of them looked up to see a man in his thirties standing in the outer autopsy room, looking through the window at them. He was dressed in gray trousers, white shirt and floral tie, holding a hand over his mouth and nose. Lynn flipped the intercom switch.

"What's going on in here?" he said. "Step out here for a minute."

"I'm in the middle of an important examination, Jackson. What do you want?"

Jackson bent over and gagged. "Why does it smell so bad in here?"

The three of them looked at Jackson with their eye brows raised enough to make deep furrows in their foreheads.

"We have a rotting corpse on the table," said Lynn. "It would be a little better if the air-conditioning sys tem were working, but it's not."

"The air conditioner is working in the rest of the building."

Lynn glared at him for a moment before she spoke. "Well, it's not working in here. What brings you here anyway? I don't think I've ever seen you visit the autopsy room."

"I was talking to a patron when this . . . this . . . horrific odor came into my office."

"The maintenance man said it's a problem with the vents. You'll have to talk to him."

"He's home sick." As Jackson spoke, he breathed through his mouth and tried holding his nose.

"Surely he's not the only person the hospital em ploys who can fix air conditioning."

"He's the only one who can look into this. We've had an injudicious use of vacation time, and the other man who does this kind of work is out of town."

"Then you'll have to call in someone from outside the hospital."

"We don't have the money."

"Then we'll have to put up with the smell until Mar lon gets back."

"This is impossible."

"No," said Lynn. "Just difficult."

"I'll see what I can do." He hurried out of the lab. The door slammed behind him.

"Bean counter?" asked Diane.

"That's him. I won't ask you what you did, Raymond."

"That'd be best, Ma'am."

"Yes, well, getting back to Blue. We gave the clothes an initial inspection before you got here," said Lynn, speaking to Diane. "It's hard to tell, but the coveralls look relatively new."

"From Sears," said Raymond.

"Maybe at your lab you'll be able to pick up some more information," said Lynn.

"How'd a crime lab in a museum come about any way?" Raymond asked Diane as he rolled the body over while Lynn held the head and neck.

"The Rosewood Police Department made me an offer I couldn't refuse."

"Uh huh," said Raymond.

"The city and county a.s.sessed the museum's prop erty value so high it couldn't pay the taxes. The mayor and chief of detectives suggested that if we would op erate a new crime scene evidence laboratory in the museum for the city, the city would arrange for the money from the real estate taxes paid to be returned to the museum for services rendered."

"Sounds to me a great deal like extortion," Lynn said. "A deal with the devil," Raymond said.

"Collaborative partnership is the operative term." is the operative term."