“Wait a minute,” Jake said, now studying a badly pitted section of the wall.
“There’s something shiny in here.”
Using a pocketknife, he carefully pried the piece of glistening metal out of the plaster. It appeared to be gold and appeared to be twisted
back on itself. Then Jake saw the letters LOS A and the and he immediately knew what it was.
“It’s Murphy’s shield,” he reported grimly.
“Jesus.” Farelli winced, thinking they weren’t going to find enough of Murphy to bury.
They entered the space where the cold storage room used to be. Nothing was recognizable. A portion of the rear wall remained, but where the freezer once stood was a gaping hole. The force of the blast had ripped open the ceiling, leaving only the edges intact.
Joanna waded through the debris, ankle deep in splintered wood and broken glass.
Everything had been smashed into small pieces. Her gaze went back to the freezer area and the blown-out wall around it. Two nights ago she and Lori had worked late in that area, no more than five feet from the freezer. Had the bomb gone off then, they would both have been blown to kingdom come.
“Were all the specimens stored in here?” Jake broke into her thoughts.
“Every one of them.”
“Is anything retrievable?”
Joanna moved some rubble and debris around with her foot and saw a broken test tube.
“I doubt it.”
“But you’ve already done most of the important studies,” Hurley said hopefully.
“Right?”
Joanna shrugged.
“Maybe, maybe not.”
Jake took out his notepad and flipped through pages.
“You’ve done the microscopic studies and the blood typing, and the DNA profiles are now in the works. What else is there to do?”
“At this point, nothing.” Joanna unintentionally stepped on broken glass and heard it crunch.
“But as new clues and findings are uncovered, we’ll think of plenty of other things to do. Only now we won’t have the tissues to do them with.”
“I’ll have my men sift through everything,” Hurley said.
“Maybe they’ll be able to recover some of the specimens.”
“Good luck,” Joanna said. She walked slowly around the perimeter of the room, looking for anything salvageable, anything that might have been left intact.
There was nothing but bits and pieces. She came to a glossy photograph. It too was shredded apart. At the freezer area Joanna stopped and peered through the large hole in the wall. All she saw were dangling wires and pipes. She again thought about the force of the explosion and what would have happened to her had the terrorists
come two evenings earlier. Joanna glanced over at Jake.
“How in the world did those terrorists get in here with two policemen guarding the doors?”
“We don’t know,” Jake said.
“One of the officers took a bathroom break. He was gone ten minutes at the most. When the bomb exploded he was on his way back, just past the elevators.”
“Is he all right?”
“He’s got a bad concussion and a ruptured eardrum,” Jake told her, unhappy that the cop hadn’t used a private John in one of the labs rather than walk to the end of the corridor. He would have been back at his post at least five minutes earlier.
“He’ll be okay.”
Joanna walked on, coming to the side wall that had held shelves and cabinets.
The wall was ballooned out, the rear section missing altogether. Using her foot, Joanna pushed aside chunks of plaster and broken glass and a metal plate that was bent out of shape. Then she saw what appeared to be a dust-covered test tube. With the toe of her shoe she turned the object over. It was a finger with a piece of hand attached to it. Joanna quickly leaned over and removed the dust from the finger with a Kleenex. Now she could see the letter tattooed on it.
It was Jose Hernandez’s hand. Joanna stepped back and surveyed the immediate area. To her left she recognized a workman’s shoe and next to it a piece of scapula, both from the West Hollywood bomb site.
She looked over at the blown-out freezer and restudied its structure. The side wall of the freezer nearest her was gone. The side wall farthest away was badly buckled but intact. She nodded, understanding why the specimens had ended up where they did. They had followed the path of least resistance, exiting the freezer where there was no wall to stop them.
Joanna picked up a small stick and wrapped the Kleenex around its tip. Then she stuck the stick in the shoe to mark its location.
“What did you find?” Jake called over.
“Jose Hernandez’s hand.”
“What kind of condition is it in?”
“Good enough for your dogs to sniff again, if need be.”
Jake checked his watch. It was 2:00 a.m. There would be no sleep tonight. At first light he’d take the hand, let the dogs sniff it again and see if the scent would lead them to the remains of Jose Hernandez. They had turned up nothing in their initial run.
Joanna walked back to the detectives.
“I also found a workman’s shoe and a piece of scapula. Both I think
come from the West Hollywood bomb site.” “So that’s three out of thirty something specimens found on the first go-round,” Hurley said.
“That’s not half bad.”
“It’ll do for starters.” Joanna pointed to the area she had just searched.
“Have your men concentrate their search efforts near the wall. And in the blown-out wall at the rear of the freezer. That’s where they’re most likely to find specimens.”
Hurley asked, “What should we do with the specimens we find?”
“Refrigerate them,” Joanna answered, “but don’t freeze them.”
A uniformed policeman appeared at the entrance to the cold storage room and signaled to Farelli.
As Farelli turned, a dangling wire above him suddenly made a crackling noise and gave off a shower of sparks. Then it went dead again. Farelli looked up at the blackness where the ceiling had been.
“Is anything flammable in here? Natural gas? Oil?”
“Nothing,” Joanna assured him.
“Everything in here runs on electricity.”
“Ah-huh,” Farelli said, wondering about the solvents and cleaning fluids that were present in most laboratories. He walked over to the policeman, giving the dangling wire a wide berth. They spoke briefly, and Farelli returned.
“One of the technicians just got back from the ER,” Farelli reported.
“They put her in the doc’s office.”
“Where’s the other technician?” Joanna asked at once.
“Still in the ER,” Farelli said.
“She’s got a fractured arm. They’re calling in a specialist to set it.”
Joanna sighed, feeling partially responsible for what had happened to her staff.
She should never have allowed them to work late when the danger was the greatest. From now on everybody, herself included, would be out of the laboratory by 6:00 p.m.
They followed the policeman down the corridor and into the forensics lab.
Someone had swept a path through the broken glass that littered the floor. The ceiling and walls had large cracks but otherwise were intact. Joanna glanced over at the heavy equipment off to the side. The centrifuges and the gas chromatograph setup were still standing, with no outward evidence of damage.
Lucky, she thought, very lucky. She could have the lab up and running in a matter of days if the structural engineers gave their approval.
They entered the rear laboratory, which appeared untouched by the explosion. The only thing out of place was the hanging skeleton that
had come off its hook and fallen to the floor. Mary Chen, the senior forensic technician, was seated at a small desk staring straight ahead. There was a large bruise on her forehead and deep abrasions on her hands and arms. The front of her scrub suit was spotted wit
h blood.
Joanna sat next to her and gently squeezed her shoulder.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m okay,” Mary said in a monotone. She was a petite, middle-aged woman with prematurely gray hair and delicate Asian features.
“Poor Cathy broke her arm.”
“I heard,” Joanna said softly.
“Once we’re finished here, I’ll go down to the ER and make sure everything goes smoothly for her.”
A faint smile came to Mary’s face.
“Good.”
“Do you feel up to talking with the detectives?” Joanna asked.
Mary nodded, the smile now gone.
“I don’t think I’ll be of much help to them.”
“Just tell them what you know.”
Jake pulled up a chair and briefly studied the woman. Her face was calm and expressionless, but her hands were balled up into tight fists.
“I only have a few questions,” he began in a quiet voice.
“Where were you when the explosion went off?”
“In the front lab,” Mary said.
“We were pi petting saline into test tubes to use as experimental controls. Then suddenly there was a loud boom and the whole lab seemed to shake. The next thing I knew I was on the floor, covered with glass.
Everything went dark, and I could hear Cathy screaming. Then the lights came back on and I saw Cathy holding her wrist.” Mary swallowed audibly.
“You could see it was broken.”
Jake nodded, pleased with the technician’s eye for detail.
“Did either of you leave the lab for any reason between six p.m. and the time the bomb went off?”
Mary thought for a moment.
“We went to the cafeteria and had dinner around seven.”
“What time did you return?”
“About eight.”
“Did you see both policemen in the corridor when you left and came back?”
“Both were there,” Mary recalled.
“The larger one was by our door, the smaller officer near the cold storage room.”
“And you didn’t leave the laboratory after that?”
“Neither of us did.” Jake leaned back in his chair, sensing he was coming to a dead end. There was a bathroom in the laboratory, so they wouldn’t have left for that. And during their stay in the lab the door should have remained closed and locked.
“You kept the door closed at all times?”
Mary shrugged.
“There was no reason to open it.”
“Did you—” Mary held up an index finger.
“Now that I think about it, I did open the door once.”
“For what?”
“We couldn’t unscrew the top off a bottle, so I asked the officer if he’d help.”
“Did he?”
Mary nodded.
“He stepped inside the doorway to the lab and opened the bottle on the second try.”
“When did this happen?”
“A couple of minutes before the explosion.”
That’s when the bomb was placed, Jake told himself. Big Murph was a block away taking a pee, and Little Murph was inside the lab unscrewing a bottle top. The corridor was unguarded for at least a minute. That was plenty of time for a pro to set the bomb and get the hell out.
“Other than the policeman, did you see anyone else in the corridor?”
“Just the woman.”
Jake jerked his head forward.
“What woman?”
“I think she was a visitor,” Mary said, remembering.
“I think she was lost, because the policeman said something to her like, “When I return I’ll show you the way.”
” Farelli reached for his notepad as Jake was saying, “Describe the woman for us.”
“She was young, in her mid-to late twenties, and very smartly dressed,” Mary told them.
“She had on a blue blazer.”
“Did you get a good look at her face?”
“Not so good.”
“Tell us what she looked like.”
“Well, she was Caucasian and very fair, with blond hair that was pulled back.”
Mary tried to remember more, then shook her head.
“That’s about it. I only saw her in profile and only for a second.”
Joanna quickly held up a hand.
“I think I saw her too.”
“When?” Jake asked. “Yesterday afternoon,” Joanna said at once.
“She was getting off the elevator down here.”
So she could scout things out, Jake was thinking.
“Can you add anything to Mary’s description?”
“Not really,” Joanna said, concentrating and trying to recall details.
“I only got a glimpse of her. But I’d recognize her if I saw her again.”
Jake turned back to Mary.
“What about the woman’s features?”
Mary shrugged.
“Big nose or little nose?” Jake coaxed her.
“Overbite or under-bite? Can you recall any distinguishing features?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“From your description, she sounds Anglo-Saxon,” Jake said, thinking aloud.
“Beyond any doubt.”
“And nothing else about her comes to mind?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Farelli closed his notepad.
“If you feel up to it tomorrow, would you talk with our sketch artist and help him come up with a picture of this woman?”
“I’ll try,” Mary said. Then her eyes narrowed suddenly.
“Do you think this woman did it?”
“Maybe,” Jake said tonelessly.
Mary sighed softly.
“What is happening to America? Have we lost all civility?”
Just about, Jake wanted to say. It’s now a country filled with nuts and crazies and murderers and rapists who don’t give a damn about anything or anybody. At this very moment a smartly dressed terrorist was probably having a beer and relaxing, pleased with what she’d done and eager to do it again.
“May I go?” Mary asked, pushing herself up.
“My family will be worried about me.”
Jake nodded.
“Do you have a way home?”
“My car is in the lot.”
Jake signaled to the uniformed policeman.
“Officer, make sure the lady gets to her car all right.”
Mary asked, “Would you like me to meet your sketch artist here?”
“I think the station would be better,” Jake said.
“You’ll contact me then?” “Yes.”
Jake watched the technician and policeman walk out and waited for the door to close.
“Son of a bitch! A woman! A woman!”
“And a man,” Farelli added.
“Don’t forget Mr. Skinhead with his goatee.”
“So we’ve got us a couple,” Jake said.
“Maybe they’re married.”
Hurley shook his head.
“Probably not. Terrorists don’t like to use people close to them. It tends to complicate things.”
Right, Jake thought sourly. The bastards didn’t want to worry about someone close to them getting killed. They didn’t want any distractions while they were blowing things up and murdering innocent people. Like Little Murph. A good cop, just standing watch and dead because of it. Of course, the department would give him a big funeral and half the force would turn out for it. And every one of them would strain to hold it together as the flag was taken off Murph’s coffin and folded and handed to his grieving widow and his little daughter, who was too young to understand what was happening.
Jake took a deep breath and brought his mind back to the present.
“At least now we might end up with a halfway decent picture of the female terrorist.”
Hurley said, “Assuming what the technician saw and what she said she saw are the same.”
J
ake squinted an eye.
“Why wouldn’t they be?”
“Bomb victims are usually badly shaken and don’t have good recall,” Hurley explained.
“They tend to fill in the blank spaces with what they think should have been there.”
“She looked pretty calm to me,” Farelli commented.
“Outwardly, yeah,” Hurley agreed.
“But inside her head things had to be scrambled.”
“You don’t know Mary Chen,” Joanna said.
“But I know blast victims.”
“Let me tell you about Mary’s background,” Joanna went on, “then you can tell me how tough she is, or isn’t. Mary was born in a small village south of Shanghai when China was ruled by Mao and the Red Guards. When she was a child, her family commandeered an old steam-driven ferryboat. The entire village, all two hundred of them, piled on that boat and sailed for Hong Kong. They had virtually no chance to succeed. They had to navigate along a rugged coastline for
several hundred miles while being hounded by Red Chinese patrol boats. Do you want to guess what Mary’s job was?”
The men slowly shook their heads, engrossed in the story.
“She was the lookout,” Joanna continued.
“Because of her exceptional vision, they asked her to be the lookout. She agreed. So they strapped her in a chair at the bow of the boat to be their warning system. She was their radar.”
Farelli thought about his grandfather who had come to America on a ship in steerage. That was a joyride compared with the story he was hearing now.
“The patrol boats caught them once and nearly blew them out of the water, killing half the passengers in the process. Mary stayed at the bow and directed them into a fog bank where they lost their pursuers. A week later they limped into Hong Kong harbor. When all this happened Mary Chen was ten years old.”
Joanna looked over at Hurley and smiled thinly.
“Now, do you really think a bomb blast down the hall is going to scramble her brains?”
“You’ve got a point,” Hurley conceded, then shook his head in admiration.
“She went through all that, huh?”
“And more.”
“I’ll bet we end up with a pretty accurate picture,” Jake predicted.
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