LITMIR.BIZ

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form a timeline of events, based on what little she knew. According to Emma Pulsifer, Constance was in the museum a little before eight. She might have left at some point during the night, but was back there after midnight. Maybe she had arranged to meet the person who struck her over the head. Or maybe the person’s presence came as a complete surprise. Either way, Constance was left for dead on the floor as her attacker started the fire on the other side of the gallery.

      Once the fire was burning and the assailant was gone, Constance headed to the crawl space. When Kat had entered the museum, the trapdoor in the floor had been closed. If Constance did climb into the crawl space herself, then she also closed the door after her. A tough task for an elderly woman with a devastating head wound. But it was possible. Anything was possible when you were fighting for your life. Still, that theory created one big question.

      “Why would she go down there?”

      “Maybe she thought it could be a refuge from the fire,” Wallace said.

      Again, it was possible but unlikely. “Why not just keep going down the hall? There’s a back door there. That would have taken just as long as entering a hole in the floor.”

      “She probably wasn’t thinking straight,” Wallace said. “Remember, she was struck in the head very hard. It likely would have killed her if the smoke hadn’t gotten to her first.”

      Kat thought back to the way she had found Constance slumped over the trunk with the bones in it. She had managed to get most of her body over it, almost as if she was trying to protect it.

      “Maybe she knew exactly what she was doing,” Kat said, thinking aloud. “She was hurt real bad. Probably in a lot of pain, not to mention surrounded by fire. Maybe she knew she was going to die and went into that crawl space for a reason.”

      “Which would be?”

      “Trying to save the trunk that was down there. Or if she died, then making sure whoever found her body knew it existed.”

      “But why would she spend the final moments of her life doing that?” Wallace asked.

      “Because Constance knew what was inside it,” Kat said. “Other than the scrapes and the splinter, did you find anything else on her hands or arms? Any residue or dirt?”

      Wallace dipped his fingers into the pocket of his pants and pulled out a cigarette. “I think I’m going to need a smoke for this.”

      “Why?”

      “Because,” he said, lighting up, “I found dirt under Constance’s fingernails. Not the everyday grime we all have, but actual dirt. I’m talking fresh soil. She had definitely been doing some digging recently.”

      Kat turned to Wallace, stunned. “Constance is the one who dug up those bones?”

      “It certainly seems like it.”

      “But I don’t understand. This is getting weirder by the minute.”

      “And I haven’t even gotten to the writing on her hand.”

      “It was a message from her killer,” Kat said. “It has to be.”

      Wallace exhaled a long stream of smoke. “I have a theory about that. Let’s say you were a right-handed killer and your victim was on the floor, lying on her back. Now, say you wrote a message on the victim’s left hand. If you were standing at the victim’s head—”

      “The words would be upside-down,” Kat said.

      “Exactly. And that wasn’t the case here. Which means that you, the killer, were standing in the other direction, by the victim’s legs. Depending on your position, the words would likely appear either horizontally across the palm, beneath the fingers, or perpendicular to that, running beneath the thumb.”

      But that wasn’t where the words on Constance’s hand had been located. The message was written somewhere in between those two positions, appearing diagonally across her palm.

      “What are you getting at?” Kat said.

      “Here.” Wallace pulled a pen from the pocket of his lab coat. “Write something on your left hand.”

      Grabbing the pen, Kat held up her left hand. She couldn’t bring herself to write the same words that were on Constance’s hand, so she simply scrawled a short and sweet my name is kat.

      “Now, look at the position on your palm,” Wallace said.

      Kat lifted her hand in front of her face. The words were in the exact same position they had been on Constance Bishop’s palm.

      “Are you sure?” Kat asked, not quite believing what she was seeing or hearing.

      “Positive,” Wallace replied. “The killer didn’t write on Constance’s hand. She—”

      Kat broke in, finishing the sentence for him—“wrote that message herself.”

       7 A.M.

      Kat sat in her Crown Vic, listening to the idle of the engine while trying to make sense of the situation. It was so strange that it bordered on the surreal. Yet the proof was there, and it pointed to one thing: the ominous message on Constance’s hand hadn’t been from the killer.

      While Kat was relieved not to be facing another Grim Reaper scenario, it still left too many questions for comfort. Why had Constance written on her hand? And what was she referring to? Was she predicting more murders? More fires? More bones? Running through all the possibilities gave Kat a headache.

      When she called Lieutenant Tony Vasquez with the news, he seemed equally flummoxed but none too surprised.

      “One of the CSI techs found a black Sharpie in the crawl space,” he explained. “It was on the floor, right next to the trunk.”

      “Even more proof that the message was the work of Constance herself,” Kat said. “You guys find anything else?”

      “Nope,” Tony replied, disappointment evident in his voice. “What about you?”

      Kat briefed him on the state of the bones. Old. Female. Burned. Then she dropped the other bombshell that Wallace Noble had provided—not only had Constance known about the bones in the trunk, but she had been the one to dig them up.

      “Why would she do something like that?” Tony asked.

      “Beats me,” Kat said, “but I imagine it had something to do with the historical society meeting she had planned for tonight.”

      And that was only a guess. Kat had no clue why the bones would be important; nor did she have an inkling about where the digging took place. The first location that sprang to mind was Oak Knoll Cemetery. She assumed someone would have reported a gaping hole in the ground, but just to be on the safe side, she radioed Carl Bauersox as soon as she was done talking to Tony.

      “I need you to check out Oak Knoll Cemetery,” she told him.

      “What am I looking for?” the deputy said.

      “Disturbed graves. Signs of recent digging. Anything suspicious. I’ll meet you back at the station in twenty minutes.”

      Once Carl signed off, Kat started the car and flicked on the stereo. The coffee from the diner had worn off, and a postcaffeine crash was coming on. She needed a great song to get her energy up. What she got was “Disco Inferno” by the Trammps. Not great, even for disco, but appropriate. So Kat cranked up the volume and sang along. By the time the song ended, she was in her driveway.

      She checked her watch as she got out of the car and crossed the front yard. She couldn’t stay long. Fifteen minutes tops. She just wanted to check on James and arrange for a different babysitter, if necessary. Finding child care on short notice was one of the toughest aspects of being a single mom.

      Inside,

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