The e-mail was waiting in her inbox. Jamie followed the link, opened the case file, and scanned the thumbnail images until she reached the close-ups of the side of the car. She clicked the files one at a time, careful not to download anything, until she found the first one that showed the impression. The area of car photographed was probably about eight or ten inches, which meant the impression was made by something almost that large. She zoomed in on the image so that the area that looked like it had been made by the knot was approximately the same size as the webbing knot on the mitt. She held the mitt beside the computer so that the stained webbing was next to the imprint on the car and slowly rolled the mitt against the image. A match. A perfect match. Not even a little doubt.
“Oh, Zephenaya,” she whispered. “What have you done?”
Tony came in the front door.
Chapter 19
Roger was relieved that Sydney had gone out to the scene at City Academy today. After last night, his allergies were acting up, and he was happy to stay in the lab with his microscopes and fuming machine until he could get them settled down. Allergies were only one of the things complicated by having absolutely no hair anywhere on his body.
At the age of seven, he’d gotten a particularly bad flu. He remembered almost nothing about it himself. At least nothing outside the stories his parents told. At the time, they hadn’t thought much of it.
Children—even only children—got the flu. What made this flu different was that shortly afterward, Roger began to lose his reddish-brown hair in clumps. A dozen or so of them. The resulting bald spots were about a quarter in size.
Over the following fifteen months, Roger lost all his hair. Not only from his head but also from his arms, legs, and everywhere in between. His condition, the most serious form of alopecia, resulting in total hair loss, was called alopecia areata universalis. Categorized with autoimmune diseases, alopecia is caused when the immune system mistakenly attacks the hair follicles.
Between the start of his significant hair loss and sometime around Roger’s fifteenth birthday, his parents worked tirelessly for something that would grow his hair back. Roger’s father had taken him to Paris for treatment, and his mother had retained the services of a Native American healer. Nothing worked. Not even temporarily. Roger became, and remained, stubbornly hairless. The fact that the hair follicles themselves were in perfect working order was of no consolation to his parents.
It should have been a teenager’s hell. During the course of his early treatment, Roger had met others with alopecia and two with alopecia universalis. One girl, Heather, stood out in his memory. He was young then—maybe eight or nine—and his condition was relatively new. Heather was an early teen, perhaps fourteen, and had been affected with alopecia universalis since her tenth birthday. He and Heather had spent two weeks, side by side, in treatment. Heather talked a lot, and Roger listened.
For Heather, the hair loss came with extreme emotional turmoil. Her parents, particularly her mother, were very religious and early in Heather’s hair loss, her mother had blamed the devil for the condition. Heather had been castigated for practicing paganism, while her mother demanded Heather reveal what activities she had engaged in that would have so angered the Lord.
Eventually, Heather said her mother had come to terms with the condition, but the anger and hate remained with Heather. Severely depressed, Heather was anorexic and had taken to self-mutilation. Roger remembered Heather sliding her skirt up her thigh to display the thousands of tiny lines she’d carved into her skin.
For Roger, on the other hand, his lack of hair became less and less an issue as he grew into his teenage years. Michael Jordan had shaved his head bald when Roger was thirteen, which gave hairlessness an edge closer to cool. Not that Roger was ever—with or without hair—going to be considered cool.
The biggest bother was the allergies. Sneezing in general was much more common because he lacked the nose hair that prevented pollen from traveling straight into his sinuses. And without eyelashes, he tended to get things in his eyes, so he carried both tissue and drops, causing people to treat him as though he were perpetually ill.
It was almost 7:00 when the crime scene van arrived with the evidence from City Academy. Roger had considered going home, but a bomb had gone off at the school Jamie Vail’s son attended. Kathy and the girls were going to dinner and a movie with Kathy’s mom after soccer practice, so he had the evening to himself. A Friday night in the lab didn’t sound all that bad to him.
Naomi and Chase were first through the door. Carrying a box, Chase pushed the door open and held it for Naomi. “Ladies, first,” he said, flirtatious as always. Chase had joined the crime lab almost two years ago; Naomi last fall. It was clear that Chase was smitten with Naomi, but Naomi was harder to read. While she seemed to enjoy Chase, she also deflected his attention enough to send off the message that she wasn’t interested in more than a fun friendship. Which was good. Roger had been through the on-the-job romances with a few of his lab techs. Not one had ended well. Chase propped the lab door open and began bringing boxes in off a wheel cart in the hallway.
“Heard you had a bomb,” Roger said.
“Wang’s team confirmed it. A pipe bomb,” Chase said, referring to Cindy Wang from the bomb squad. “We collected a lot of the shrapnel, but she’s coming down for the bomb fragments. She wants to try to process it tonight for prints.”
The women on the force felt a strong alliance to Jamie Vail. “That’s fine,” Roger said. “I’ll be here.”
“I can stay, too,” Naomi offered.
“I can’t authorize OT pay,” Roger warned.
“That’s okay,” Naomi said.
“Sure,” Chase added. “I was meeting some guys for drinks, but I can stick around.”
“Well, then, let’s see what we’ve got.”
Naomi unloaded the first box, talking as she worked. “Jamie saw a car leaving the scene just before the bomb went off. A navy or black sedan. Two-door, she thinks. We didn’t find any new tread marks in the lot, but there were tire marks in the grass at the corner of the lot. We think it might have been our guy, so we cast a mold in the mud there.”
“Once it’s dry, let’s scan it and see if we get any matches in the database.”
“Will do,” she said.
Chase spread a thin layer of paper on one of the tables they used for larger projects and pulled out pieces of bomb and shrapnel.
Roger’s cell phone rang. He recognized the coroner’s office number. “Sampers.”
“It’s Schwartzman.”
“Evening, Doctor. You working late, too?”
“I guess so. Didn’t know you all were there. I thought I’d be leaving a message.”
“We’re all putting in a little extra time on this one.”
“All right, then. I’ve got a clean slug I pulled out of the victim. I’ll bring it over myself if you can stick around.”
“I’ll be here.”
While Chase catalogued the elements of the bomb, Naomi scanned the tread into the system and compared it against the reference samples in the database.
At his computer, Roger went through the images from the scene to give himself a feel for the layout.
“Did you see the Lexus?” Chase asked.
Roger clicked through the images of the car lying upside down in the parking lot. “I’m seeing it now. Looks like it’s totaled.”
“It had to be,” Chase agreed.
“Whose car was it?”
“One of the school parents,” Chase said. “An MD, I think.”
“Yeah,” Naomi added. “UCSF. ER.”
Chase watched her for several seconds after she stopped talking. Wondering how interested she was in the doctor, maybe. Roger was sometimes amused by his own gender.
They could be such a predictable bunch.
He glanced back at the image of the car. The Lexus looked new. Maybe the doctor had been the target. “Did Wang mention if the bomb was attached to the car?�
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“It wasn’t. The origin of the explosion was at least a few inches away,” Chase said. “They can tell by the burn pattern on the undercarriage.”
“Well, I doubt he did that to his own car,” Naomi commented.
Schwartzman arrived. By then, the three had settled back into work. The room was silent when she came in the door. In black dress slacks and a turtleneck sweater, she might have been dressed for a funeral. She always dressed that way. Maybe that was normal for a medical examiner. Maybe it was Shelby Tate’s bright-colored scrubs that were odd attire for the job.
Schwartzman crossed the room, holding a plastic bag which she set on the edge of his desk. At the bottom was a small wad wrapped in paper.
Roger fingered the slug through the paper. “Great. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find prints.” Roger set the bullet up in the fuming chamber. Once the machine was powered on, he added four drops of super glue to the heating element and pressed “start.”
“You joining us?” he asked Schwartzman, who remained at the desk.
“If it’s all right, I’d like to see what you get from the bullet.”
“Of course.”
Roger was used to Hal and Hailey, or Jamie, the talkative ones. Even Vich had grown chatty in the months he’d been in the department. Schwartzman, though, remained quiet and still.
Roger was thankful when Cindy Wang showed up to break the silence. As always, she shoved the door open so hard it slammed against the far wall. “Sorry,” she said, raising both hands. “The one in our unit always sticks.”
Cindy joined Chase at the light table, and the two of them began to move around bomb fragments like some thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. Naomi checked for matching tread in the database and joined them, too. Soon, the lure of the puzzle lured Schwartzman to the table.
When the cycle on the fuming chamber was done, a bell went off. Schwartzman at his side, Roger pulled the bullet from the chamber. She said nothing but Roger could sense her anticipation as he spun the bullet, studying for evidence of prints.
“Nothing,” he said.
“Worth a try,” she answered. She looked back to the group working on the bomb. She hesitated then said, “I’d better go.”
“I’ll run it through the ballistics database if you want to watch.”
“I do,” Schwartzman said.
Roger centered the slug under the scope and twisted it slowly with a long set of long needle-nose pliers until he located the striation marks. Then, he adjusted the marks until they lined up with the striations on the ruler and photographed the slug.
Normally, Kevin or Tess ran the ballistics comps. They were both gun fanatics—Tess’s father had been a clay pigeon shooting champion in his twenties, and Roger was fairly certain that Kevin was, at least partially, a doomsday prepper. He lived clear out in Antioch, almost a two-hour commute. Every once in a while, Roger saw the magazines Kevin read on the commute. Titles like Be Ready Magazine, OffGrid Prepping, Survivalist, not to mention a particularly frightening-looking one called The Preparedness Review. Kevin was incredibly proficient with ballistics. Roger liked them both. They were only too happy to go fire test rounds on the weapons, which was fine with Roger. He could handle guns with confidence as long as they weren’t loaded, but he was never at ease with them nor was he the least bit curious about them.
He’d have to do this one himself.
Tess was on vacation this week, and Kevin was out at a scene in the Tenderloin—a gang-related shooting. Roger tried to remember what they’d told him about how to best capture the striations. There was no harm in trying, anyway. They could always take new images on Monday.
Roger uploaded the image file into the database on his computer. Double-checking the parameters he’d set, he started the search.
“This might take a few minutes,” he told Schwartzman. She shifted away a little when he spoke. He wasn’t particularly great with new people, but Schwartzman was awkward. She seemed to be in a constant struggle between being close enough to watch and remaining as far from him as was possible.
Roger sat down at the computer and added his notes to the case file that Naomi had created. He included the steps he’d taken to document the striations. In case he’d done something wrong, the notes would make it easier for Tess and Kevin to figure out what. Schwartzman had migrated back to the bomb puzzle.
No more than three minutes passed before the program’s icon flashed onto the screen. He clicked on it. A match. He had to have done something wrong. He’d never seen one happen that fast.
“Hey, boss,” Naomi called over.
The program relaunched onto the desktop, and he stared at two bullets, side by side. On the left was his. He recognized the ruler beneath the image. The slug on the right was also set against a ruler, but the numbers were blue. His were red. Other than that, the pictures were identical. He double-clicked on the case file attached to the image on the right and scanned the name.
“Roger,” Naomi said again.
“Yeah?”
“I got a reference on this tread,” she told him. “Looks like it matches a case in San Jose last November.”
Roger glanced up from his own screen. “Let me guess. Carmen Gutierrez?”
“Yeah,” Naomi confirmed. “How did you know?”
“Because the bullet matches the same case.”
Schwartzman returned to Roger’s desk. “You found something?”
He nodded as Naomi joined them. “We have tire tread and a slug that match an old case.”
“What case?” she asked.
Roger skimmed the case notes. “Gutierrez was the CFO of a company that designed geo-tracking units. Serious ones. Looks like most of their contracts were for the Department of Defense.” Roger skimmed on. “Says Gutierrez was killed in an assassination-style attack in the parking garage of his San Francisco office building. Dark sedan caught on the security camera. Single bullet wound to the head. 9MM. Striations are identical to the bullet that killed Michael Delman.”
“What in the world does Michael Delman have in common with a company that makes geo-tracking units for the government?” Schwartzman asked.
“I have absolutely no idea.”
Chapter 20
As Tony entered the house, Jamie stuffed Z’s baseball mitt into a reusable Trader Joe’s grocery bag and tucked it under the sink, hiding it behind the grout cleaners and scrub brushes that were used maybe once a year. Saliva filled her mouth, a sick churning in her stomach. Merely the act of putting the mitt in the bag, of hiding it. Hiding evidence. Evidence of her son’s guilt.
She shut the cupboard door and swallowed down the feeling that she might vomit. Breathed slowly, deeply. Swallowed again. In under three minutes, she had jeopardized her entire career. Thrown away everything she’d worked for in the past fifteen years. The oath to protect and serve. Justice. She hadn’t bent any rules for Tony and yet she was willing to throw it all away for Z. He was her child. She hadn’t carried him inside her; she didn’t give birth to him. She hadn’t known him the first decade of his life. And yet, she would do anything to protect him.
She took a last look under the sink, praying that Tony didn’t get into some cleaning fit. He wasn’t a tidy person, but when something was really bothering him, he cleaned with the best of them. Not tonight. She would not let that happen tonight. When he was in bed, she would move it, find somewhere else to hide the evidence. Oh, God. She was hiding evidence. Her son knew Charlotte Borden. The same school. She’d assumed that because they were in different grades, they hadn’t known each other. But Z had talked to Amanda Steckler. They knew each other. And that print on the Mercedes. It had to have come from Z’s mitt. The knot was distinct; the stain matched the image of the car. There was blood on the mitt. Jamie saw her laptop screen open and moved quickly to exit out of the browser.
Her knees were ready to buckle as she balled up the towel in the sink and turned the water on high. She rinsed the paper towel until it was a shredded mess the
n tossed it into the trashcan as Tony entered the kitchen. Surely, if he saw her face, he would know that something was wrong. Instead, she pumped her hand full of soap and scrubbed and scrubbed.
“Hey,” he said, sitting at the counter opposite the sink.
“Hey,” she returned, shutting off the water. She pulled the dish towel off the oven handle and dried her hands. They were red. She’d been scrubbing harder than she realized.
“How was the afternoon?”
“Long.”
“What happened?”
“A bomb.”
“Jesus. Is that what happened to your head?”
She fingered the Band-Aid. “It’s just a little cut.”
“Where was the bomb?”
She hesitated. There was no way around this. A bomb went off at Z’s school, but everything is fine now. A bomb went off at Z’s school and his father was shot. I found evidence that Z was at the scene where Charlotte Borden was attacked. Who is Charlotte Borden? Oh, she’s the rich girl from his school. One of the rich girls. The richest girl. The one who’s in a coma. And he knows her. His biological father brought her bleeding to the hospital and he’s dead. I’m concealing evidence so next week I might not have any choice but to go with you to Ohio and work as a waitress.
“Jamie? What did you say?”
She jumped. Had she spoken aloud?
Z started down the stairs. For as long as she could remember, Z treated the stairs like they were bugs to be squashed. He always hit every stair with full power and speed. The house literally shook. Tony joked that they should be setting aside a special fund for stair repair. It drove her crazy.
Right now, the thundering was a gift.
Z’s glance touched on Jamie and slid off like oil. “Hey, Tony.”
“Hi, Z. Jamie was telling me about a bomb.”
“Yeah.” Z didn’t miss a beat. “I was actually hoping you could help me with algebra. We started a unit on graphing parabolas and I’m lost.”
“Sure. Sit on down.”
Z sat in the chair next to Tony. Jamie wished she’d put his mitt in another room. She couldn’t leave the room, knowing how close it was, but she didn’t want to stay either. Instead, she puttered around the kitchen, pretending to be busy until it was clear that Tony and Z were focused on graphing whatever the hell they were called. She made a bottle of soda water and chugged it until her stomach felt like it might explode. Then, taking a quick look to be certain the Trader Joe’s bag hadn’t somehow fallen into full view under the sink, Jamie left the kitchen. On the way upstairs, she grabbed her computer bag and set it in the hallway before entering Z’s room.
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