“So what do you make of it?” asked Neva.
“McNair’s murder was personal. The shooter hits him in the knee first. That hurts. Then they shoot him in the chest, and for good measure they come right up to him and shoot him in the head point-blank.”
“It sounds personal to me,” said Jin.
“It was also someone who knew his schedule,” said David. “You would have to know McNair or shadow him for a while to know his habits.”
Diane agreed. “With Blake Stanton,” she said, “it wasn’t as personal-or maybe the shooter couldn’t get any closer.” Diane shrugged. “Or maybe it was a different killer altogether.”
She looked at the report again. “It says here that McNair was probably killed with a Beretta-same type of gun as Stanton. I think both murders were executions and probably done by the same person.”
“What about Joana?” asked Neva. “She wasn’t even killed with a gun. Besides, it looks like her death may have been an accident.”
“At least an accident that it happened before the killer got the information he wanted,” said Diane. “But you’re right, it doesn’t have the same feel to it as the others-despite the fact that similarly dressed individuals were spotted at both scenes.” Diane thought a moment. “Find out for me if the guy who found the body, the second jogger, also has regular running habits.”
“You suspect him?” asked Jin.
“The killer would know when someone was likely to come along if he’d been casing the trail where McNair was ambushed. That’s the thing about dedicated joggers-you can set your clock by them.”
“I don’t see the connection,” said Jin.
“Maybe the killer wanted to be seen. Assume for a moment that both Stanton and McNair were killed by the same person. He seems to be professional; he left very few clues. Why then would he show himself at a time and place where he knew he was likely to be seen?”
“Good thought,” said David. “You thinking he disguised himself as another suspect? Could happen; the description was in the news as well as all over the neighborhood. In that case, there might be no link between Joana Cipriano and Marcus McNair. The detectives are just running in circles trying to make a connection.”
“All of this is conjecture,” said Diane. “But it is something to think about.”
“We need to look at each crime scene with a fresh eye,” said Jin. “Just look at the evidence and build from there… ”
As Diane listened to Jin, she picked up Neva’s report on the processing of her car that had been lying on her desk for days. She absently thumbed through it and stopped abruptly, stood, and stared at the page.
“Where is the evidence you gathered from my car?” said Diane.
Jin stopped in the middle of what he was saying. “What?” he asked.
“Which one?” asked David.
“The first one, the carjacking,” said Neva, looking at the report Diane was holding. “It’s all in the evidence locker.” She pointed in the direction of the crime lab.
Diane rushed out of her office, through the osteology lab, and into the crime lab. She made a beeline for the evidence locker, keyed in the digitized combination, opened it, and walked in. The box she was looking for was right up front. It was labeled with her name, the make and model of her car, Blake Stanton’s name, and the date and time, written in neat black lettering on the end. She pulled it out and set it on the table.
Jin, Neva, and David had followed her. They stood looking at each other quizzically and shrugged.
“Is something wrong?” asked Neva
Diane ignored her as she searched through the box for the evidence bags. She found the bag she was looking for, initialed it, opened the seal, and poured out the contents into her hand where she examined them closely before placing them on the table.
“These are Cypraea aurantium, ” she said, eying Neva.
“Sorry, I thought they were seashells.” Neva creased her forehead in a worried frown.
Chapter 29
“They look like those shells that you see in African motifs,” said Neva. “That’s what I thought they were.
“Cowrie shells,” said Diane. “Golden cowries-they are worth about three hundred dollars apiece.”
“Three hundred dollars for one of those?” said Neva, pointing to the eight shells, each the color of a deep yellow sunset.
Jin whistled. “Wow, Boss, you sure know your seashells.”
“I know these because they belong to the museum,” said Diane. “You found these in my car, Neva?”
“In the backseat. They were in that Ziploc bag with the blood on it. The blood is his. We sent it off to be tested. The shells have his fingerprints-from the hand that was cut off. He had a scar on his thumb that shows up in his prints. So he had them before he got in your car.”
“I’m not following this,” said David, standing with his hands in his pockets, staring at the cowrie shells. “These are your shells?”
“Not mine personally. The museum’s. We’ve had a series of thefts. Among them, six thousand dollars worth of rare seashells. So far we’ve discovered the loss of rare items valued at a total of over thirty thousand dollars missing from various departments in the museum-including Vanessa Van Ross’s ten-thousand-dollar diamond that she gave to the museum’s gem reference collection.”
David, Neva, and Jin glanced at each other, eyebrows raised. David shrugged.
“Why weren’t we called?” asked Jin.
“Museum Security is tallying the loss. We just discovered the items were missing. The thief substituted imitations or cheaper items in place of the missing ones, so it’s taken a while for all the thefts to be discovered.”
David pulled up a chair from one of the tables in the room and sat down. He stroked the fringe of hair that still grew around the back and sides of his head.
“What does this mean for all the theories of the crime that we’ve been positing?” he said.
“I don’t know,” said Diane. “This adds a new wrinkle, doesn’t it?” She sat down, too, and the others followed.
“Does this mean Blake Stanton’s extra money was coming from thievery and not drugs?” asked David.
“Or both,” said Jin. He leaned forward with his forearms propped on his thighs and hands clasped between his knees. “I don’t think we have to throw away all the theories of the crime just yet.”
“Campus police will probably cooperate with museum security better than they will with us. I’ll have Chanell call them and find out if the university’s been having similar thefts.”
“You think maybe that’s what he’s been getting out of his perpetual student status-plenty of places to pilfer?” said David.
“Maybe,” said Diane. “Just look at the hunting grounds-all the departments, the library, the campus art museum.”
“Not to mention money,” said Jin. “If you’re any kind of good thief, there’s lots of opportunities around university departments to swipe money.”
“It might be a good racket,” said David. “If you don’t steal too much from any one source, it may take a while before they even notice anything’s missing, or that there’s a larger pattern.”
“But you have to have a place to sell it,” said Diane.
“He has to be selling to collectors for most of it,” said David. “That’s where you’ll get a premium price for those kinds of items. And collectors often don’t ask probing questions.”
“How did he get access to so many departments in the museum?” said Neva. “I mean, the Van Ross diamond isn’t even on display. It’s in the reference collection.”