“She's with me, Sandie.”
But the receptionist was reading again. She only nodded.
I waited until the stairwell's steel door had slammed behind us. It had a loud tumbler lock, the definitive noise of prison cells. “Sorry to keep you so late,” I said. “But it's urgent.”
“I accept your apology.” He took the stairs by twos. “But it's really no problem. My wife and I have season tickets for the Mariners. I can work late and leave the car here. No parking fees, no driving in traffic.”
“Your secret's safe with me.”
“Thanks.” He was tall with big feet and hands. Since I'd seen him last year, his black hair had turned white at the temples. “Last thing this place needs is more bad publicity.”
The local media was continually hammering the understaffed lab for its slow turnarounds on DNA evidence. They had also convinced the state legislature to freeze funding until the pace picked up, which was a complete catch-22 because a leaner budget meant the lab couldn't hire new technicians. But the battle was nothing new. During my five years in the FBI's mineralogy lab, I learned that two of the worst bedfellows were justice and politics. While justice focused on the truth, politics manipulated the truth for its own gain. Throw in the media, which only reported the truth that fit their preconceived ideas, and it was little wonder that the fallen world was speeding toward hell in a handbasket. The political games were part of what pushed me out of the lab. But the biggest reason was that after my dad was murdered, I couldn't sit at a microscope anymore. I needed to do more.
The main exam room was stretched out down the length of the building. The dozen workstations were divided by high counters that were further elevated by thick books that focused on everything from blood evidence to pharmacology to skin cells. The lower counters held centrifuges and high-resolution microscopes and plastic caddies full of glass pipettes, along with that steady workhorse, the Bunsen burner. At the far end of the lab, a young guy sat in front of a large computer monitor, and behind him, the tinted windows framed a section of Interstate 5. The northbound traffic into the city was at a standstill.
“Did you have a chance to look at the stuff from the track?” I asked.
“Just a little. After that agent called and said you were coming in.”
“What's your first impression?”
“Agricultural.” He offered me a small cardboard box, like a Kleenex box, only it contained latex gloves. “But I could be wrong,” he added.
It was probably my favorite remark from a scientist:
I could be wrong
.
He waited for me to snap on the gloves. “The black tube doesn't look like something that sells general retail,” he said, “so we'll try to track it through wholesalers. Farm mercantiles. Ag-supply companies, those places.”
“Be sure to check any place linked to horses.”
“I'll make a note.”
The black plastic tubing that Mr. Yuck had pulled up now lay on an exam table. It had been cut into sections and placed inside clear evidence bags the size of pillow cases. With my gloved hands, I picked up one bag, trying to get a close look at the tube. Dense but pliable plastic. And brown tape was wound around it, the earthy color ideal camouflage in the track's turf. But the tape didn't cover the funnel cones that rose from the round surface like miniature volcanoes.
I glanced at Tom. He was waiting for me to say something.
I chose my words carefully, thinking of attorneys. And OPR. “The first people who picked this up weren't wearing gloves. So fingerprints and DNA analysis might be a bit of a mess.”
“You saw them collecting it?”
“Most of it.” I didn't tell him about SunTzu's fall or his subsequent death, because that information could influence his investigation. He could always read something in the newspaper, but then he would be making his own connections. I described the evidence collection because Mr. Yuck's tearing it out of the soil would be pertinent to his forensics. While I spoke, I tapped my index finger on the bag, feeling the funnel cones. Each one was about 3 millimeters wide. When I picked up a second bag, the tape completely covered the tubing, including the funnel cones.
“Did they happen to mark where these sections were on the track?”
Tom picked up a clipboard and lifted the paperwork, scanning it. “Not that I can see. No sketches, no measurements.”
“I'd like you to check the open cones for any chemical residues. Or remnants of an object. Friction marks, striations.”
“Projectile?”
“Not sure. You'll want to see the video, showing the first race. Did they send that?”
“No.”
I didn't blame the Auburn cops. Few local police departments were trained to collect forensic evidence. Again, a funding issue. Again, justice and politics.
But Tom walked to the phone on the wall and tapped four numbers, asking for a sergeant by name and for a video copy of the first race. He also recommended the Auburn police return to the track with a metal detector. “Run it over the soil where you guys collected this tube.” He cupped his hand over the receiver. “Anything else?”
“Tell them to hurry,” I said. “The grooming equipment goes back out there tomorrow at 4:00 a.m. The horses start running at five.”
As he gave the instructions, I picked up the bag again. To my naked eye, the tape's cotton threading reminded me of what the grooms wound over the horses' forelegs. I'd seen Juan wrap it over his clay poultices too. And before the races, to protect the delicate leg bones from the metal horseshoes. The tape usually matched a barn's color. But I couldn't recall seeing any barn with brown silks.
Tom hung up.
I said, “Tell me what you think about the tape.”
He glanced at his watch. “I was hoping to get the threads-per-inch count done tonight. Tomorrow I'll start testing the adhesion. Unfortunately, this stuff doesn't look like a specialty tape.”
Meaning: the forensics trail had many paths. A tape's thread count and the composition of its threadsâcotton, polyester, nylon, and blends of everything, in varying degreesâhelped track down the manufacturer. Even more helpful was a microanalysis of the adhesion's chemical compounds, further narrowing down the manufacturer. But this tape looked almost generic, which meant a number of companies could have made it and distributed it to every hardware store in America. It would be hard to prove where it came from unless we hit the holy grail and found the exact roll used. Matching the end tears was almost as good as DNA. And any jury could grasp such an elementary concept.
But when I lifted another bag, squinting, I saw the tape's ends were cut clean. Sliced, not torn.
“Rats,” I said. “How about looking for fingerprints in the adhesion? Tests for saliva residue?”
“I wrote it down. But I don't see the tape as the big hurdle.” He pulled on fresh gloves and reached over the large bags for a smaller one. Three objects were inside, each shaped like a masonry brick. They were brown, covered with the same tape, and when Tom turned the bag over, to show me a section where the tape had been pulled away, I saw a band of copper. And the word
Duracell
.
“Whoever built this is no idiot,” he said. “It's nine-volt batteries, bundled together, and all different brands. The collection report says these were attached to the tubing. It's some kind of power source.” He handed me the bag. “I did a quick calculation by square inch and area. Thirty-four batteries in each brick. About a hundred total.”
I turned the bag. The dried soil rolled across the plastic, sounding like some kind of mocking hiss. “Nine-volt batteries won't narrow things down.”
“Right. Panasonic, Energizer, Duracell.”
Forensically speaking, lithium nine-volt batteries were almost untraceable. They were sold in almost every store, from gas stations to groceries to warehouses like Sam's Club. I felt my hope diminishing, staring at the careful architecture. The batteries were stacked as straight as Legos, each side aligned perfectly before being taped together. Somebody created one giant battery, and it was a patient experiment for evil purposes.
“They're almost compulsively constructed,” I said. “A perfectionist?”
Tom was writing something on the clipboard, checking his watch again. “What's your time frame for this?”
I tried not to sigh, setting down the bag. “Can you expedite this?”
“Reason?”
“The thoroughbred racing season ends in six days.”
“I can try.” He gave a conciliatory smile. “I already put in the DNA request. I'll start arguing with them first thing in the morning.”
I nodded, but felt the whole case galloping away. The forensics could stretch out for months. And OPR wouldn't wait. Not for something that could help me explain myself.
Tom was eyeing me. “You look like you could use some cheering up. Want to come to the game? With the way the Mariners are playing, there should be plenty of tickets available. A summer night at Safeco Field? There's nothing else like it.”
“Thanks.” I tried to smile. “I've already got plans.”
“Hot date, huh?”
Now the sigh came, and it was heavy.
“No,” I said, “it's more like a long, cold shower.”
T
he sinking sun pushed copper swords through gunmetal clouds, and the Ghost glowed down the highway. To my right, across Puget Sound, a mountain range that earned its name, Olympic, stood like a geologic chorus, the bright glaciers singing with the light's close of day. I was born a Virginian and I loved that state, but the Old Dominion's natural charms were the kind that worked into the heart over time, over many seasons. Washington's landscape, like Alaska's, was blunt-force gorgeousness. The views stole human breath. And made me wonder if I'd ever look at the Blue Ridge Mountains the same way again.
But when I pulled into Fort Steilacoom State Park, I felt almost forlorn. It was just past 7:00 p.m., and the softball fields were empty and puddled. The park's rust-painted exhibition barns waited for something to happen. At a split-rail fence, I turned down a gravel service road. It was lined with green hedges, and a graveyard was laid out to my right. Up ahead a muscular man was leaning on the fence rail, stretching his quad muscles. He wore black nylon running shorts and a black singlet. The Jeep parked behind him was also black, but I decided the picture still wasn't complete. Climbing out of the car, I placed an imaginary black hat on my nemesis, Special Agent Jack Stephanson.
“You had me worried for a minute,” he said. “Thought you wouldn't show up.”
“I can always change my mind.”
“And the shrink can always notify OPR. And OPR can always recommend immediate dismissal.”
I stepped over the fence's low rails, moving into the cemetery. The ground was spongy, more moss than grass.
“Harmon,” he said, following me. “Just take it one appointment at a time.”
I kneeled down and picked a pinecone off a flat headstone. Eroded and gray, the eight-inch rectangle of cheap granite was sinking into the moss. The FBI approved this cemetery for our face-to-face debriefs because it appeared safe. We were twenty-five miles from the track, and a high hedge shielded us from the road. At six-three, Jack could stretch, peering over the hedge, but the sad fact was nobody ever came to visit these graves. Directly across the road was the largest psychiatric hospital west of the Mississippi. Western State opened in 1871 and started burying dead patients in this plot of land soon after. The graves were marked with numbers. No names. There were hundreds of them. My mother was now a patient in that hospital. And the FBI, in its brutal benevolence, had decided the most “convenient” way for me to get my shrink appointments while undercover was for me to see the same psychiatrist who was treating my mother.
“He gives me the creeps,” I said.
“He's a head shrinker,” Jack said. “I'd worry if you liked him.”
“I know he's sending his notes to OPR.”
“Probably.” Jack was silent for a long moment. “Don't worry about the undercover repercussions. If she changes her mind, I'll figure out a way to deal with it.”
It would have been easy to act like I didn't know what he meant. But pretense only delayed the inevitable. “Thanks. But she's still refusing.”
My mother, according to the shrink's clinical diagnosis, was a paranoid schizophrenic. Growing up, I just thought she was eccentric. Strange and wonderful, and the South was full of people like that. But the shrink was telling me my family was “in denial” and had too many “defense mechanisms.” In our minds, all we knew was love and God. Yes, she sometimes got ideas about people following her, or somebody trying to poison our water or steal our mail. Bad days, certainly. But they were always bookended by great days. And David Harmon. My dad devoted himself to making his wife feel loved and secure. When they married, I was five years old; he adopted me and my sister, Helen. He was the only dad I ever knew, and he was the greatest father on earth. But the plaster started to crack when he was murdered. My mother and I limped along under the falling debris until this summer, until the cruise from hell. Somebody told her my secret; somebody thought she should know that her daughter worked for the FBI. I had kept that from her, trying to protect her fragile mind. But when she learned that I worked for the people who wire-tapped and monitored people and kept files on suspicious citizensâand that I'd lied to her about itâher mind couldn't handle it. In the ship's chapel, praying to a God who seemed very far away, my mother suffered a full psychotic break. She refused to see me now.