Red Herring Page 18

  He shook his head and started typing. “Nah. I’m just describing damn near everybody I know. Hell, I’m most of those myself, except for the medical stuff. I don’t like blood, so I volunteer as a firefighter. You know that.”

  “I do,” she allowed.

  He foraged around amid the displaced mail until he found a pair of reading glasses that he daintily perched on his nose. “There. That’s better.”

  He glanced up at her quickly. “What about a psychological profile? You have anything there?”

  She shook her head. “He’s killed three people, as you know from the paper. But, to be honest, people killing people isn’t that abnormal. I’m not sure a profile would tell us much.”

  He frowned, as much at the screen as at her comment. “I’ve heard that,” he said, “but I don’t really want to believe it.”

  He suddenly pushed himself away from the desk and shoved the glasses up into his hair to better study her. “You’re looking for someone who does all these things, or comes into contact with them, but you’re also looking for someone who’s not right in the head.” He held up his finger. “Maybe anybody can kill once, ’specially in the right circumstances, but three times?”

  She wasn’t sure what to say, and merely muttered, “I guess.”

  Sky lurched forward and started stabbing the keyboard again. “Tell you what: You don’t tell anyone what it means, and I’ll put some asterisks by the people I think might be crazy enough to be who you’re after.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off with a raised hand. “I know, I know. You’ve got other undercoaters you’re talking to and a dozen lists to read and then you’ll find out that your villain didn’t even own a car. None of that matters. I just want to do this, okay? I know it’s probably libelous or some damn thing, so all I’m saying here is that the names I’ll check are a little weird. It’s just my two cents worth, okay?”

  The printer began chattering, somewhere behind a stack of bills, and in five minutes Sam found herself back outside in the driveway, seated behind the wheel, and scrutinizing Sky’s customers.

  Nothing leaped out. She recognized a few names because of past DUIs or other old cases she’d handled while on the PD. Scanning the addresses didn’t do much for her, either.

  What stuck in her mind, though, wasn’t the actual list. It was the fact that Sky had thought of marking certain names in the first place.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  In general, interactions with forensic labs are done electronically or by mail. So many boxes of weapons, buccal swabs of DNA, cast impressions of tire treads, photographs, reports, and other paperwork are put in the mail that the U.S. Postal Service is considered a reliable and acceptable link in any chain of custody. Indeed, the efficiency of this mundane but reliable system was often preferred over hand deliveries.

  Joe, however, tended toward old school. He felt that handing over an item face-to-face, or at least following up in like fashion after the article had arrived, was not only good manners, but proof of the object’s importance in the overall scheme of the sender.

  Of course, he understood being hectored by matters of routine. But there were exceptions, and he believed this was one of them.

  The Brookhaven findings—along with the gains he was hoping might come from them—were of a unique nature to Joe. Born of a process he’d never guessed existed, they were aimed at catching a criminal he wanted to stop more than he had any other in a very long time.

  Whoever this man was, standing invisible behind the dead bodies of three innocent people, taunting the police with his ominous blood drops, he was certainly not the average crook, bent on conventional malice. This one ran deeper, more cruel and calculating, and in search of a goal they could only hope he’d reached, assuming that meant no further killings. Joe didn’t want to even consider the fallout of finding another victim. That was one more reason for driving to the crime lab in person—to escape his desk phone and the pile of news-hyped messages from people demanding to know what social plague had gripped bucolic Vermont.

  The state’s forensic lab was for the moment on the top floor of one of a cluster of ancient, inefficient, dour red brick buildings now blandly called the State Office Building Complex, but known in 1891—the time of its creation—as the Vermont State Hospital for the Insane. At its peak housing some fourteen hundred patients, the actual hospital portion of the campus now barely functioned, and was annually threatened with extinction. But it was far from isolated; all around its shrunken core, inhabiting the many nooks and crannies it had once called its own, was a gathering of state agencies cut loose from nearby Montpelier. As bureaucracy had grown, the world becoming more complicated, demanding, and politically compromised, the state’s leaders had latched on to the erstwhile insane asylum’s fall from popularity and gradually filled its emptying buildings with entities as diverse as Natural Resources, Corrections, Children and Families, Environmental Conservation, and—more relevant to Joe—the Department of Public Safety. It was this latter building that housed not just the state police headquarters and the crime lab, but also the central office of Joe’s own Vermont Bureau of Investigation—even if that did only amount to just enough room for Bill Allard and a secretary.

  Joe prowled the forever-packed parking lot for a hole, lucking out at last at the far end, and walked toward the old, hulking edifice, noticing how much the snow had yielded to the warmer temperatures of a normal October. At least the lab would eventually be free of its confines, he reflected—almost ten million dollars had been secured at long last to build David Hawke and his team new quarters, allowing what was a highly regarded, nationally certified operation an environment more befitting its true quality.

  Once inside and past the buzzer-controlled entryway, Joe eschewed the small elevator, climbed the two flights to the top floor, forever impressed by the austere architecture, and then wandered down a short hallway to Bill’s miniature domain. He hadn’t called ahead—not to Bill—but he also wasn’t averse to Allard joining the conversation he was anticipating with Hawke.

  As so often happened when he dropped by, he found Bill scrutinizing his computer screen as if it were covered with hieroglyphics.

  “Hey,” he said from the door.

  Allard didn’t even glance in his direction. Only his eyebrows rose in greeting.

  “I’m reading about you right now.”

  Joe stepped into the small office. “The Reformer? Yeah—that was a shoe dropping I didn’t expect. That the bad guy would blow our cover.”

  Bill shook his head. “The Reformer was nothing. This is the Boston Globe. They’re loving that we’ve turned into Newark.”

  Joe sat down. “Newark? They say that?”

  “Not in so many words, but Newark is mentioned as the epitome of armpits, and Vermont’s in the same paragraph. Subtle, it is not.”

  The phone rang. Allard picked it up, listened briefly, and told his secretary, “Like all the others—I’m currently out of the office.”

  He hung up and looked at Joe for the first time. “Since eight A.M.,” he said. “Nonstop. The press, the politicians, the brass from downstairs. The governor called; I could hear him sweating on the phone. ‘Remember,’ he says, ‘I created you with my pen.’ Can you believe that?”

  Joe smiled. “Sure I can. Why’s he give a damn?”

  Allard broke away from the screen and sat back, locking his hands behind his head. “You really don’t know?”

  “What? It’s not like he’s whacking these people.”

  “In an election year,” Bill explained, “they give a damn about everything, and you know what? They’re right. Your old girlfriend chooses to make hay out of this, Reynolds will end up with egg on his face, guaranteed.”

  Joe scowled, trying to follow the logic.

  “It’s the same as when New York gets hit with a snowstorm,” Bill went on. “The people yell at the snowplow people; they yell at their bosses; the bosses yell back and get the union
riled up. The union screams about how the mayor shortchanged their hours, benefits, and operating budget. The mayor says his hands are tied because of shenanigans in Albany; and the next thing he knows, the New York State governor loses the election because of something he couldn’t have controlled in the first place.”

  He pointed at Joe. “Our governor is wondering if you’re not a snowstorm.”

  “Me?” Joe asked.

  “You’re the one being quoted.” He pointed at the screen. “And that’s all it takes.”

  Joe absorbed that for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “Did he actually say anything I care about?”

  “No, but his attitude was more panicky than I thought it would be. He’s starting to really sweat this one.”

  “And an incumbent, no less,” Joe mused.

  “Well,” Bill admitted, “I won’t be voting for her, but your old . . .”

  “Gail,” Joe interrupted. “I’m getting tired of the girlfriend handle.”

  Allard chuckled. “Right. Fair enough. Gail. Anyhow, she’s gaining yards. The rape victim angle is probably key, not to sound heartless, but even without it, I think she stood a good chance. Reynolds’s been there a long time, and people have gotten to attach him to most of their problems—like the guys downstairs and the creation of VBI.”

  Joe laughed at the irony of that. “You telling me cops’ll be voting for Gail because Reynolds created us?”

  Bill shook his head like a sage confronting a dense student. “Come, Grasshopper, did I not tell you about snowstorms?”

  Joe checked his watch and rose to his feet. “Jesus. I’ll leave it to you to ponder that crap. I’m actually here to see David. You want to join us? I want to kick around what he’s learned from the Brookhaven stuff.”

  The phone rang again as Bill stood also. “And leave all this?”

  He preceded Joe out the door, ignoring the phone.

  The crime lab was down the hall, behind locked doors, but David Hawke’s even smaller office was just a few yards away from Bill’s, toward the stairwell, and with a single window overlooking an airshaft. Joe could only imagine how much Hawke was fantasizing about his proposed new digs, purportedly less than a full construction year away.

  If you believed what you heard.

  Hawke gave them his standard affable smile as they crossed his threshold, and rose to shake hands. “Two of you? Should I be nervous?”

  “Hardly,” Allard reassured him. “I’m just running away from my phone.”

  Hawke gestured toward the door and ushered them both back out. “Then let me aid and abet. I think it’ll be better if we talk in the lab. I can do a little show-and-tell, and we can all escape the phones.”

  He led the way to the lab’s reinforced door and entered both his password on the lock and their names on the visitors’ sheet, speaking as he did so. “I was really pleased with what they did down there, Joe. I’m guessing you’re pretty happy, too, given all the new avenues this opened up, but on a scientific level—and even just an interagency one—this whole deal seemed to me like a home run.”

  “No, no,” Joe joined in. “Me, too. They were great, and I thank you so much for suggesting them in the first place.”

  Past the security door, they walked down a hallway much like what they’d just left—dark, old, built for abuse, and additionally cluttered with odd pieces of equipment that looked destined for the dump. As they went, they caught glimpses to both sides of lab technicians hard at work, dressed in white coats and—because of the setting—looking more like World War II researchers than the inhabitants of an up-to-date forensic lab.

  Hawke finally led them into a room near the end, with a table in its middle and an assortment of counters, bookshelves, charts, and at least one projection screen lining the walls. From past exposure, Joe knew this to be their one conference room.

  “Take a load off,” Hawke invited them, waving at the chairs circling the table, whose surface was littered with paperwork, some of which Joe recognized from Brookhaven.

  “You want anything to drink?” he asked as they settled down. Both men shook their heads.

  David nodded and addressed Joe. “I’m glad you called, to be honest. This whole thing has been so unusual, and is beginning to attract so much attention, that even I was wondering if we shouldn’t compare notes.”

  “You having problems with what was done?” Joe asked, suspicious of Hawke’s tone.

  But he set them both at ease. “No, no. God, no. The science was top-notch—the kind of stuff I never thought I’d get my hands on, not before I retired, anyhow. I mean, synchrotrons? Copy Number Variations? Sweatprints and touch-DNA? For a guy like me, financed by the state, to get a whiff of some of this is right up there with getting a ride in the space shuttle. Maybe it’s only a trip up and back, but, oh, boy,” he said, laughing. “What a ride, huh?”

  Bill and Joe remained silent, their expressions polite.

  Still smiling, David confessed, “Okay, I know. Enough nerdiness. Why don’t you start, Joe? You called me, after all. Then I’ll tell you what’s on my mind.”

  “You just touched on the biggest thing, David,” Joe said. “The press is going crazy and the politicians are ganging up. I just wanted your feedback about what you had me carry down to Long Island. I got the nerdy part,” he added quickly, raising his eyebrows. “But I meant the forensics. The publicity’ll only get worse, but if we get lucky and pull this crook in, my gut tells me it’ll be like a woodchuck version of O. J. Simpson. I’m curious how you feel about that kind of scrutiny, given the route we took with the evidence.”

  All the glee had faded from Hawke’s expression. He looked at Joe carefully. “I did tell you that you can’t bring much of this into court. You remember that?”

  “Of course,” Joe soothed him. “It was along investigative lines I was talking. I’ve got several dozen people out there right now chasing down gunpowder suppliers, oil undercoaters, acetylene distributors, lumber mills, funeral homes, and Christ knows what else, all based on atom-sized evidence collected by a bunch of wannabe Nobel laureates. You’re the one who deals with us day in and day out; you know the scientific standards around which we base our cases. This is the first time I’ve seen you since Marine and Shepard pulled their rabbits out of the hat.”

  David was nodding. “Okay. I got it. In short form, I like it. More importantly, I’ll defend it if it comes under attack. Fingerprints took forever to meet the legal standard; DNA was a lot faster. It’s reasonable to expect that forensic science will be making inroads on a regular basis and that its validity will be increasingly recognized in court. So, the cows are out of the barn; I have no problem lecturing whatever reporter or politician wants to ask me about any of this.” He waved his hand over the strewn paperwork before him.

  “That’s good to hear,” Bill murmured.

  “True,” Joe agreed, “although I didn’t have much doubt. You prepared us for that going in. What about the three blood drops, though? At Brookhaven, they wobbled between saying some of the blood came from dead people, or maybe was just left around in the sun too long. I did mention that I had people checking funeral homes and morgues. You think I’m wasting my time?”

  Now David began looking vaguely uncomfortable. “Oh, yeah, the degradation and contamination. I looked into those.”

  Both cops were struck by his tone of voice.

  “And?” Joe prompted.

  Hawke shrugged awkwardly. “Well, in retrospect, it’s a little embarrassing, but after all the data came in, I, too, was struck by those findings, so I did some checking. They seemed so obviously fundamental. Turns out we noticed both artifacts, too, back when we constructed the initial profiles.”

  “What’s that mean?” Bill asked.

  “The reason Marine and Shepard were equivocal,” David explained, still sounding unhappy, “was because they ended up with the samples. They didn’t collect them.”

  “Why does that matter?” Joe asked.

  David
tilted his head slightly. “It goes to the degradation. You now know that blood degrades in the body or outside of it and that it’s pretty hard to tell which happens where, but there are indicators that help you figure it out—or at least take an educated guess.”

  “Okay,” Joe urged, wondering where this was going.

  “Take a drop of blood deposited on a pillow versus one found on a tabletop,” Hawke suggested.

  Joe began to have an inkling. “Or a forehead,” he said.

  Hawke nodded. “Or a forehead. The pillow sample soaks in, is sheltered from air and sun to a limited degree, and takes time to dry.”

  “And degrades in the meantime,” Bill contributed, also on board.

  “Right,” Hawke agreed. “The sample on the flatter, nonabsorbent surface, though, dries pretty quickly and stops degrading almost immediately.”

  “Especially if that surface is a dashboard, in the cold, in the middle of the night,” Joe finished. He looked at Hawke inquiringly. “So, what you’re saying,” he added, “is that we’re on the right track. All three drops were deposited where they would dry quickly, and therefore two of them must’ve been degraded beforehand, like inside dead people. And to wrap it up even tighter, we have one sample slightly contaminated by one of the others, painting a picture of two bodies lying side by side. What’m I missing?”

  “Nothing,” Hawke conceded. “It’s just that we already knew all that as soon as we received the samples from you, way back when.”

  There was a stunned silence in the room.

  Hawke continued. “Our protocol is to produce a DNA profile and the gender of the donor. That’s what you ask for and that’s what we give you, along with running the profile through the computers for any hits. The lab technician here who processed all three blood drops noticed at the time not only that one was slightly degraded, but that the other one was even more so. Not only that, he picked up on some DNA white noise in the background of the more degraded sample, although he didn’t bother pursuing it. He was following procedure, which is to run the samples a few times more if the results are unsatisfactory to begin with.”