Moving around, and I really might look like a Ghostbusting freak right about now, a ghoulish one. Prodding and probing in my dark-gray chemical suit and respirator helmet. Hovering near the body with my handheld sniffer, poking my antenna at energy fields, rousing them like flying nanodragons I call by name. Starting with the cellular bandwidth of 800 megahertz (MHz), indicating a wave configuration that repeats itself 800 million times per second, moving at the speed of light.
Also, the familiar noise of mobile phones and Wi-Fi routers, those of neighbors and inside this apartment, plus clocks, exhaust fans, refrigerators, washing machines, TVs. I can point out the ubiquitous microwave oven signal at 2.4 MHz, and it could be coming from just about anywhere, especially if a door seal leaks. I’m almost always going to pick up police, fire and rescue radio bandwidths, meaningless ones to the rank and file, 26.965 MHz, 156.05 MHz.
Or how about 462.5625 MHz for a frequency that might not slip off the tongue all that easily. Just ask any cop or EMT, it’s much more practical referring to channels 1, 2, 3. In my world, I think of signals as fingerprints unique to each device, and the trick is to hunt down and recognize what might be lurking between and beneath all those squiggly waves of electromagnetic spaghetti streaming in bright colors across my small screen.
The frequency of 75 MHz is probably the nearby lighthouse. While 1,025 MHz may be the runway marker beacons for the Instrument Landing Systems (ILS) at Langley Air Force Base. But what’s grabbed my attention like the big fish that mustn’t get away is the noise floor, the weak waves and peaks that intensify each time Fran keys her radio, talking to dispatch and members of the hazmat team.
The signals are coming from somewhere near the body, getting stronger as I get closer, holding up the antenna like the Statue of Liberty. Turning in slow circles, scanning.
00:00:00:00:0
I KEEP my eyes on the display, making my gentle pirouettes as the software I created constantly does the math.
Nothing all that complicated, a simple fusion algorithm that subtracts out expected signals from unknown ones saved in files the analyzer has been recording since I arrived at the scene. The way I typically explain it is to imagine hiding in plain view inside a crowded living room.
Then gradually remove everything around you one item at a time. The other people, pets, couch, lamp, potted plant, wallpaper, draperies and so on, all of it disappearing. And guess what? Eventually, you’re not hiding anymore. You’re sticking out like a sore thumb, which is what the software is doing inside this bedroom in real time, scaring out whatever might stealthily be tucked out of sight.
Sensors of some kind.
That’s what continues to strobe brightly in my mind, especially since the dead woman’s expertise was in sensors and robotics. Who’s to say what sort of research she might have been conducting on her own, including on her own self here inside her own apartment? There could be tiny transmitting devices inside her clothing, her belongings or perhaps implanted in her body. I know what I’m like, given my curiosity and relentlessness.
It’s not unheard of for researchers like me to take projects home reasonably and with permission. Not rockets and moon habitats, but small drones and their pieces and parts, or even a broken crash dummy or two needing special TLC and technical attention, if justified. Could be anything, but the frequent flyers that typically end up on loan at Chase Place are antennas and plug-in tools, sensors and software, 3-D printers and media, plus analyzers, tactical gear and ammunition I’m expected to try.
In other words, nothing terribly exotic, and all of it recorded in a handwritten log that I keep locked inside my gun safe in Building 1195C.
“I’m not exactly sure how to move her out of here without getting bleach all over everything,” Joan’s tense voice inside my respirator helmet, and trained by the best, even she’s stumped by this one. “But I think we’re going to double pouch her, put her straight in the van, and then straight into the decomp room. And you thought there was nothing new under the sun.”
“I learned a long time ago not to think that.” Surveying the double bed, neatly made with oversize black pillows and a black duvet.
On the other side of the room are the closet and the body. Flanking them are two small windows with the shades drawn, and as is true in the rest of the house, there’s no apparent sign of a struggle, nothing amiss except for the obvious. I note the cell phone, the stack of copying paper and computer printer on top of the dresser. In a chair is the black nylon Prada shoulder bag from yesterday, when I questioned Vera about a badge that she probably knew darn well hadn’t been stolen.
What was she up to? What was the plan, and was it hers alone? I don’t believe for a minute she actually thought her badge was missing or had been pinched. It would seem that she staged the entire drama, including her migraine. Why? And who was she helping, if anyone? What was her real motivation for calling the NASA Protective Services emergency number from the main gate yesterday when her badge wasn’t in the glove box?
The most logical explanation for the stunt she pulled was to create an alibi for letting someone else borrow her smartcard. Or making it appear someone else did, and in either case, that would be extremely serious. Not only would such a thing have gotten her kicked out of NASA, but depending on who used her ID and for what purpose, she could have been charged with violating U.S. Code §794.
She could have been busted for spying, punishable by a $500,000 fine and 15 years in prison. Treason lite as I call it, the very thing that will land you on posters displayed in every NASA center lobby.
“I can’t think of any other reason for it.” Fran leans against the doorframe, talking about the bleach and DNA. “You know, to mess up biological evidence, which really won’t matter if Vera Young killed herself . . .”
“She didn’t,” it’s what I believe, and I’m sticking to it.
“Except someone will make it a problem . . .”
“They will anyway,” because they always do, and civil lawsuits and life insurance battles aren’t ours to win or lose.
But if somebody else is to blame for her being strung up from her closet door, Fran goes on and on, then the bleach is a problem. It will be turned into one, that’s for sure, defense attorneys casting doubt and confusion in the minds of jurors, if nothing else.
“What other point would there be except to screw up the DNA?” she wants to know, and unlike her freaked-out demeanor in the tunnel, she’s acting in charge and in control, not particularly bothered by a dead body doused in a dangerous chemical beyond the challenges it presents.
But the case has her attention in a way it didn’t before, and I can feel her warming up to the seriousness. It’s like watching gauges in the cockpit creep from green to yellow to red as I explain that bleach contaminates evidence, and is problematic for DNA but doesn’t necessarily destroy it.
“Chlorine bleach won’t, at least not completely,” I reply. “Oxygen bleach will absolutely. But that’s not what we’re dealing with, by the way.”
“Definitely chlorine. That’s what I smell whenever I take this thing off.” Fran taps the carbon filter built into her helmeted respirator. “I’m voting for everyday household bleach.”
“And you would bother with that in a suicide?” I ask what by now should be a rhetorical question.
“Dammit. I know. Why would you? I mean, this is frickin’ screwed up. I mean, what the hell?” Fran’s voice blurting over the intercom.
“Yeah. That about sums it up.” Joan is crouched by the body, lifting trace evidence one fiber and fleck at a time in the glow of UV. “Why would you care about your DNA or any other evidence if you’re about to off yourself?”
“Not unless it’s some mental illness thing,” Fran suggests.
“Nope, that’s not what we’re dealing with,” I reply. “
As I’ve said, she certainly didn’t strike me as mentally ill when I talked to her yesterday.” Moving the antenna around her dead body, watching the signals on my display as I scan her extremities.
Her hands. Wrists. Ankles. Bare feet.
“She definitely struck me as deceptive,” I add. “And I’m pretty sure she’s lying to us even as we speak.”
“I know, it’s like what we’re seeing isn’t right,” Fran stares at the body. “Has she been dead 4 hours? Six hours? Eight? One thing tells us one thing. Something else tells us another.”
Someone was in here after the fact.
“What about livor, rigor?” I ask Joan about postmortem artifacts, changes to the body after death that might give us important information.
Such as, when did Vera die, and was her body moved at any point afterward? Once again, it’s plain and simple science. Not something as esoteric as a Mars rover, spacewalking or spectrum analysis, but the mundane question of what happens when you die and your circulation stops.
Just ask Robert Hooke’s competitive colleague Isaac Newton what occurs when an apple is released from its tree. Freed from the tether of its branch, not floating but falling.
23
GRAVITY.
And blood, like everything else, settles according to the laws of it, resulting in a deep reddish discoloration known as livor mortis that indicates the position the body was in the hours immediately following death. Rigor mortis, or the rock-hard rigidity of muscles after they’re no longer producing adenosine triphosphate (ATP), has similar intel to offer.
Not all of it polite. Most of what death tattles is primitive and quite rude as long as you know how to interpret the unseemly language. If you die on the toilet (for example and truth be told) and your loved ones lie to preserve your dignity? Well, sorry to tell you, but livor mortis will rat you out with redness and seat-shaped blanching on your dead derriere.
Same thing should you suffer a fatal event in bed and your lover decides to spare both of you embarrassment hours after the fact. Well, here’s another news flash. Once you’re as stiff as an ironing board, if some well-meaning person dresses your cold stubborn body in pajamas and leans it against a chair? It won’t convince the medical examiner that you took death sitting down with your clothes on.
“Rigor’s still forming and almost set,” Joan reports. “Same with livor, not completely fixed but getting there.”
“That’s interesting.” Fran watches from the doorway as I move the antenna close to the body, around the face and hair. “It’s sure sounding like she’s been dead longer than that file on her laptop would have you believe.”
“Typically, rigor and livor take about 8 hours to be fixed,” I add.
“We’ll know more when we examine her at the office.” Joan walks back to her scene cases. “But I concur.”
Not looking at us as she moves about suited up. Only the top part of our faces showing, and I continue to have the eerie sensation that we’re in a parallel universe communicating through thoughts.
“Although the bleach-like stuff is going to make it tricky, not to beat a dead horse. And that’s not a good cliché right about now.” Joan’s voice. “How do you conduct an external exam without rinsing her first? None of the medical examiners will want to work in a chemical suit, and I’m not sure what they’ll do in a situation like this. Like I said, the chief’s not around to ask, and she’s probably the only one who would know . . .”
“Because they can’t rinse off the body first without running the risk of losing evidence,” Fran interrupts. “Is that what you’re telling me? Because that can’t be good.”
“There’s only so much I can do in here and when I get her to the morgue.” Joan returns the UV crime light to its proper slot, closing the heavy-duty plastic cover in loud snaps if I could hear them.
“The inconvenience and increased difficulty caused probably tell us something about motive,” I point out. “Which may not be to eradicate evidence, which bleach isn’t going to do anyway. But it certainly interferes, causing major obstacles in working the scene, transporting the body, doing the autopsy.”
“Okay. So, maybe that was someone’s intention,” Fran considers.
“Someone’s. I agree, because I sincerely doubt it was hers,” I decide. “Otherwise, where’s the darn bleach bottle or container?”
“Obviously, somebody took it,” Fran says.
“Why? If the point is to disguise a crime scene?” Joan asks.
“Unless the point was to undisguise it,” I offer what I’ve about decided, knowing it sounds a little crazy. “Removing the bleach container instantly signals that this sure as shooting isn’t a suicide.”
“Why would anybody do something like that?” Joan puzzles. “Why not leave the bottle right here on the floor where one would expect to find it?”
Sabotage.
“Maybe what we’re dealing with here is more than one person,” I ease them closer to what I’m calculating and intuiting. “Maybe we’re talking about two individuals who weren’t necessarily in the same place at the same time. Not physically. The first person came here, murdered Vera Young and covered it up. Then after the killer was gone, a second person appeared and sort of undid it all. And the result is, we’re asking questions. We’re not buying suicide. Couldn’t be further from it.”
“Huh?” Fran booms in my helmet, hurting my ears.
“And we need to ask who might have made the sandwich and gotten into the beer,” I go on. “The killer or someone else. Another person who showed up later. It will take a while for the DNA to tell us anything, including who bled in the steam tunnel. Joan,” I direct my next comment to her, “you’re gonna need to light quite the fire under the labs. We don’t have months to waste, not if you ask me. Because this is bad.”
“I’m good at lighting fires.”
“I think the fumes must be getting to you . . .” Fran crabbing at me, and I can’t stop thinking about the note Vera Young supposedly wrote:
. . . Please tell my sister that I won’t miss her, and she’s been right about me all along. Sisters always know best, and mine would be the first to say that I’ve earned what I’m about to get . . .
She’s telling us or someone that she deserved to die like this? Nope, and no way. Not the woman I met. Not in a million years, and I wonder what her sister might have been right about. Neva—that rhymes with Eva, I recall Vera telling me—and I move my sniffer’s antenna with my double-gloved hands. Aware of the sounds of my own breathing, sweat drenching the clothing beneath my chemical suit.
“Hmmm . . .” That’s interesting.
Eyeing the display and what’s happening to certain peaks and waves whenever Fran radios anyone. And I ask her to radio me.
“What for?” her voice a tad annoyed.
“Just do it,” I reply.
Gloves off, she keys her handheld, “Alpha 3 to Alpha 5. Test, test.”
Loud and clear, the low-level signals ringing like a bell, as we say. Although not literally making a sound I can hear but getting stronger each time the radio transmits at harmonic frequencies. Reminding me of tin can telephone, the silly game Carme and I played when we were little kids. Pretending we were spies with secret comms, connecting two Big Gulp cups by a string.
And it’s as if the dead woman and Fran’s radio are playing the same game. Tethered by an electromagnetic wave. What lights up one, lighting up the other.
“Resonant sensors, not digital ones,” I confirm. “Possibly invasive multi-array biochips for directly measuring biomedical parameters.”
“And that means what?” Joan rolls the stretcher toward the closet.
“It means I wish this lady had decided to die somewhere else!” Fran retorts with a frustrated blast of air
and expletives that almost takes out my ears over the intercom.
“I’m thinking she has sensors on her skin or implanted in her body and likely both, considering who and what she was,” I reply. “That would explain what I’m seeing.”
“What kind of sensors and what for?” Joan begins collecting red biohazard bags next, picking up after ourselves.
“I think it’s a safe bet they’re related to robotics. And one of the greatest challenges when we create anything in our own image is how to perfect fine muscle movement. What we natural-born humans take for granted in our feet, wrists, hands, fingers,” I explain, setting my analyzer on top of a scene case.
I change out my gloves, looking at Joan, and we nod at each other. It’s time.
“Shall we open the door to see how this death trap was set up?” I ask, and the answer is Joan moves next to me, our chemical suits touching.
“Let me be a spotter in case she decides to fall on top of you,” she says.
“Thanks. That would not be my idea of a good time,” gripping the antique fluted glass knob, I ease open the closet door, and Vera Young’s body moves heavily against wood bleached of its cherry color in spots and drips.
Held fast by her tether, the computer cord wrapped and knotted over the knob, not much else inside. Coats, a pair of galoshes, an umbrella, and the same alarm is spiking in my mind:
Homicide. Homicide. Homicide.
In the first place, how did she manage to shut the door when the cord was tight around her neck, her feet barely touching the floor? And then there’s that blasted missing receptacle for the caustic chemical. It’s obvious someone else helped, and neither Joan nor I say a word, both of us thinking our murderous thoughts. Already we know this isn’t your garden-variety case, and it will be a circus when it goes to court.
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