"Which one do you suggest we start with?"

"Glory Hole Cavern's really beautiful but not a lot of fun for someone who hasn't had much experience. Didn't you say one of your crime crew wants to come along?"

"Neva Hurley. She's visited caves as a tourist, and a few as an explorer, but she doesn't have much experience."

"Climax is a good cave. Great geology. Lots of fos sils. The front rooms are pretty easy. It gets harder farther in."

"Where is it?"

"Near the Florida border."

"Anything closer?"

"There is a cave I've been interested in visiting." He stuffed the list back in his pocket. "It's not easy to get the owner to allow people in. It's a big cave and not too hard, I've heard. Some of the deeper rooms and tunnels are for experienced cavers. It also has some good geology. It's only twenty miles from here."

"Do you think you could get permission?"

"Yeah, I think so. A guy in my caving club is tight with the man who manages the property. We'll have to take him."

"That's fine. Do you know if it's been mapped?"

"Some of the tunnels, but I haven't seen the maps. You thinking about mapping it?"

"If it's an interesting cave and hasn't been mapped, yes. That'd be fun."

"I'll let you know something in a couple of days." Mike stood up and started for the door, hesitated, smiled, turned again and went out the door.

Diane looked through the papers Andie had left on her desk. Nothing that couldn't wait. She needed to get back to the autopsies.

Chapter 8.

The diener was placing another of Diane's bodies on the table when she reentered the autopsy containment room, suited, masked and gloved, her hair under a plastic cap. The rooms were cool now, the odors man ageable, the way they should be.

This victim was called Green, after the color of cord Diane had used to secure the ends of the cut hanging rope. Green had hung fifteen feet from Blue.

Lynn and Raymond were chatting away about the Braves as they cut away the clothing. The only part of the conversation Diane understood was Raymond saying, "Unh unh, ain't no way."

Lynn looked up and nodded as Diane approached. "This one is about the same age as Blue," she said. "I'd say in his early twenties, maybe late teens."

"Too young to die," said Raymond.

"We have some insect specimens for you from Blue." Lynn motioned toward the counter where several jars sat. "We collected live larvae as well as dead husks. Raymond enjoys that sort of thing, don't you, Raymond?"

"You going to hatch those bugs?" asked Raymond.

"That's the only way the entomologist can be cer tain about the species of the larva and how long the life cycle is. It'll help fix the time of death."

"They haven't been there long. I'd say just a couple of weeks, from the rate of decay," said Lynn.

"They were hanging off the ground," said Diane.

"Shouldn't make that much of a difference," said Lynn.

This was the first time Diane had cause to question Lynn's competence. But she didn't say anything, re membering had shown outshown.

that earlier on at the crime scene Lynn a sensitivity to being contradicted or However, to be fair, it takes experience with hang ing victims to realize that it can indeed make much of a difference. Rate of decay is highly dependent on the environment. Bodies decay differently in Alaska than in Hawaii, or the Sahara, or Portobelo. And they decay differently out in the open, or hanging, or sealed in an enclosed s.p.a.ce, or buried shallow, or buried deep, or buried in a limestone environment. It also makes a difference if they have open wounds, such as the cutoff fingertips.

It's a matter of the body tissues being accessible to the insects and microbes that cause decay. And the presence of chemicals or elements that interfere with microbial and insect action by causing the body to dehydrate or to become preserved.

There are so many permutations and combinations that unless you've had experience with them all, there is no way to just know. Had these bodies been discov ered at a later date and had Red, the corpse Diane witnessed fall, lain on the ground where the insects could get to him, he would appear to have died earlier than the others, even though their time of death might be the same.

Diane thought of explaining, but it would just sound like a lecture, it would offend Lynn's sensitivity and it would make Lynn look bad in front of Raymond. She'd simply use what information David collected from his reared insects and make her estimates of the time of death.

Diane removed the rope from Green the same way she had from the first victim. Raymond took the pho tographs. Green was tied in exactly the same way as Blue-hands behind the back in a handcuff knot with the standing end of the rope in a loop around the neck and the extra rope from the working end wrapped four times around the wrists with the end tucked between the loops.

The noose was tied the same way as on the first- a bowline to make a loop to pull the rope through to create a noose that tightens under tension. She hadn't expected the knots to be any different, and they weren't. She carefully packed and labeled the rope.

"I was wondering if you would take me caving sometime," said Lynn. "A simple cave for a rank beginner."

"Neva wants to go caving too. She's also a beginner. We should be able to find a good starter cave we can go to."

Lynn grinned. "I have always loved caves, under ground lakes, all those things. One of my favorite movies is Journey to the Center of the Earth Journey to the Center of the Earth. Loved that underground lake."

"Caving's not usually that eventful," said Diane.

Both Raymond and Lynn laughed.

"You wouldn't catch me going down a black hole,"

said Raymond. "Heard about too many people getting themselves stuck. You sprain your ankle and it's h.e.l.l trying to get you out."

"You learn to be careful," Diane said. "Knowing your ropes and knots helps too."

"I think he's had his appendix out," said Lynn. She rubbed the area with a damp piece of gauze. "Let's get a photograph of this, Raymond. Have you ever had to be rescued?" she asked Diane.

"No, but I have been on a rescue team. It can be a dicey situation, for certain." Diane collected several surface specimens of insects while Lynn and Raymond continued the external examination of the body. Green was male. Taller than the woman, though it would be hard to tell exactly until Diane could mea sure the bones. Now, from his head to his feet his stretch length was eight feet seven inches.

"Other than the appendix scar, there are no visible external markings. No needle marks or signs of defen sive wounds that are visible." Lynn talked into the recorder in a monotone voice, quite different from her conversational tone.

Lynn didn't run Diane out for the autopsy this time.

Diane stayed and continued to collect insect specimens. At the crime scene and on the bodies a full range of insects were present-insects that feed on flesh, and insects that fed on the flesh-eating insects. The only kind she didn't see were the ground beetles that feed on dried flesh. All the dried flesh was hanging well out of their reach.

Lynn made the Y incision and pulled back the flaps of tissue, increasing the putrid smell in the room. Lynn was pet.i.te, even looked delicate next to the autopsy table, but she had no problem cutting away the chest plate, gaining her access to the block of organs. "You know," said Lynn, "I really prefer fresh bodies."

Diane had to agree as she watched Lynn and Ray mond locate the subclavian and carotid arteries. "Go ahead and tie them off, Raymond-if you can. I'm getting a lot more decay in this one than the Blue girl. Let's get these organs out and, Diane, you're wel come to any insects you can find."

Raymond did most of the cutting to remove the organs and took them to the other autopsy table for Lynn to examine. There were very few insect larva in the chest cavity, but Diane found several good speci mens in the lower abdomen.

"Go ahead and get at the brain," Lynn told Ray mond. "I hope it's not mush."

As Lynn examined the organs, Diane told them about the unexpected mummy.

"So he just kind of showed up on your doorstep?"

said Raymond. "Now, that's cool. Dr. Lynn, I'm going to cut the neck, if you can . . . never mind, I think I can manage it. These long necks are a mess to deal with, I'm telling you."

"So you'll be opening an Egyptian exhibit?" asked Lynn.

"At some point perhaps. We've got a lot of research to do before then."

"Oh, this fellow had a heart condition," said Lynn. Diane looked over her shoulder at the darkened heart Lynn had opened up.

"See here?" Lynn pointed her scalpel at a valve.

"He had a mitral valve prolapse. You know," she turned her head toward Diane, "this might show up in his bones."

"You think it may be a.s.sociated with skeletal abnormalities?"

"It's observed in about two-thirds of patients with this condition."

"Would he have been under a physician's care?"

asked Diane.

"It's not severe, so he may have been basically asymptomatic. That's not uncommon. He may have had to take antibiotics when he had dental work."

The sound of the Stryker saw was of short duration.

Raymond was skilled. The sound of the calvarium being removed didn't have the characteristic pop of a fresh body.

"Pretty soft," said Raymond. "We may be able to fix it."

Out of the corner of her eye Diane saw him care fully remove the jellylike brain and put it in a jar of formalin.

Little by little they were collecting bits of informa tion about the victims-tattoos, scars, bad heart valve.

There was a good chance that all these things would add up to a critical ma.s.s of information leading them to the ident.i.ty of the victims.

Surely, someone was missing these people-unless they were the lost people, the invisible cla.s.s that slips through the cracks and becomes easy prey for killers.

It was almost 9:30 P.M. by the time they finished the third autopsy and Diane arrived at the museum with the evidence for her crime lab. David was there, tak ing notes and checking on his insects.

"I called the weather bureau. It's been pretty redun dant for the past couple months-dry and hot. I've duplicated the environment for my babies here." He pointed to his rearing chambers.

"Here's some more insects. Larva and bug parts."

She handed them over and began logging in the cloth ing and rope she had collected from the autopsies. "Discover anything new?" David asked.

Diane sat down in a chair and stretched out her legs in front of her. "Some. Right now the vics all look to be in their twenties. Blue is a female and has a tattoo of a b.u.t.terfly on her ankle. Green's a male. He's had his appendix out and has a heart condition. Not seri ous. Red's another female. She has a tattoo of a hum mingbird on the right side of her lower back and another one of a rose on the upper part of her left breast."

"Good tattoos?"

Diane thought a moment. "Yeah, they are. Very intricate."

"Expensive, then."

"Could be."

David ran his hands through what was left of his hair-a thick curly fringe around his head. "That'll help."

"Did you happen to find any fingertips?" Diane asked him. "None of the bodies had theirs." "Nope. We did find where a truck was parked.

From the cable marks on the tree branches, I'd say he hoisted them up with a winch."

"How's Neva doing? Jin said you took her out for a walk-through."

He wavered his hand from side to side. "She's about fifty-fifty. Hasn't decided if she likes this work yet.

They just a.s.signed her here, you know, didn't ask her if she wanted it. But she's no different than any other newbie I've trained."

"How are you doing?" asked Diane.

"You don't have to watch me. I'm not going to self-destruct."

"I'm not worried about your sanity, just your happiness."

David Goldstein had shown up literally on Diane's doorstep, asking for a job. The ma.s.sacre of their friends at the mission in South America had left him, like her, on the edge of sanity-burnt out and with no place to go. Diane's loss of her daughter had so overwhelmed her she didn't really see the grief the others were feeling from losing their friends. David was adrift when he arrived in Rosewood. Diane was glad to be able to give him a job. It surprised her that he requested to work in her new crime lab. "Are you sure you want to do that?" she had asked him. "Don't you want to get away from everything we've seen?"

"Don't you?" It was a reasonable question.

"Diane-you know how it was. You stand in those concrete rooms splattered with dark stains you know are going to be blood, and you look at the shackles and dirty rusted tables and you know that no matter how many people you interview, how many deposi tions you get, those responsible will never be put on trial. Most of the time, the best we could hope for was to have some poor schmuck arrested who was just guarding the place.

"But this here...abig percentage of the time, we'll bring the killers to justice. I need to do that.

Bring killers to justice. I need to know that what I'm doing will make a difference."

"Our record out there was a little better than that,"

Diane had whispered almost to herself, but she knew what he meant. Rarely did they get to the top of the food chain.

"I'm doing okay," he said finally. "What's nice about the museum here is when things get tough with the crime evidence, I can go look at rocks, or sh.e.l.ls or the big dinosaurs. I particularly like the sh.e.l.ls. The colors and the curved shapes are very soothing. Re member how Gregory paintings, particularly liked to go look at beautiful the Vermeers, whenever we were near a museum? It's like that."