Looking Glass

by Andrew Mayne

  “Us, Theo?” she repeats.

  I feel myself redden. “I was just trying to say …” I stall out, attempting to backtrack.

  “I like the way us sounds,” she says, sending my heart into a flurry as if I’m fifteen.

  “I do, too. It’s just … fuck it. If I go after this asshole, I’m going to have to bend some rules. More than I already have.”

  “Worse than sneaking into an elementary school and breaking into a school-district office?”

  “I neither snuck nor broke into anything. But, yes. I’m going to have to go outside the lines. Like …”

  “Last time.”

  “Yes. And if I get caught, that nice little version of us I’d like to see happen may get complicated.”

  I watch her bite her lip as she thinks this over. “Theo, us is me and you. And you … well, I’m still trying to figure you out. And I may never fully understand. Sometimes you’re the most thoughtful man. Sometimes it’s like talking to a calculator, and I tell myself I need someone warmer. But then I step back and look at the whole picture, a man who risked his life to find out what happened to people nobody cared about, and I realize that your distance isn’t because you’re far away, it’s because you’re a thousand feet overhead, trying to look at all the little parts, seeing which ones need to be fixed. And even though it kills me when you’re not looking at me, or it feels that way, I love the fact that you’re still trying to put things together—to make them better. And I’d never sacrifice that, even if it meant your eyes were always on me.”

  “So what are you telling me?”

  “Get the motherfucker. Stay the hell away from him, but go get him. It’s what you do now. And if you get in trouble, I’ll be there with either a shotgun or a lawyer.”

  I love this woman.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  PARTICLES

  I sit up in my chair in my hotel room and put on my most sincere face, pretending it will carry through the telephone line. Then I dial the number of the medical examiner’s office and ask to be connected to Sanjay Shivpuri, the technician in charge of forensic evidence at the Wimbledon house.

  “Shivpuri speaking,” says an affable voice.

  “Hello, Sanjay, this is Theo Cray. How are you doing?” I try to act as informal and friendly as possible.

  “Very good. This is a surprise. I was just looking at the notes you sent over. Very helpful. I have to confess, I’m already a bit of a fanboy. I read your paper on extraction of DNA from follicles using detergents. That was great work.”

  “Guan and his team deserve the credit for that. All I did was clarify the lab work,” I reply, trying to sound modest.

  “Well, I appreciate it. Is there any other research I can look forward to?”

  “Actually, I’ve been working on using iron nanoparticles to fix fragmentary DNA before doing a detergent bath. I’ve been able to extract much longer chains, and it may even have some applications in calcified specimens as well.” It never hurts to dangle something tantalizing in front of someone you need a favor from.

  “Very interesting … when will that paper come out?”

  “I don’t have a timetable yet. I’m still working on the process.”

  “At which facility?” he asks.

  “My kitchen table.” I haven’t had a lab of my own since I skipped classes to hunt a serial killer.

  “Your kitchen table? Well, if you want a collaborator, I have lab access at UCLA. Maybe I could help.”

  As a matter of fact, fanboy … “About that. Maybe we could field-test some new techniques on the forensics from the Wimbledon house?” Me and you, pal, high-fiving like best buds do.

  “No,” he replies flatly.

  “Er, no? It would just be a comparison analysis. Not even a lab on record.”

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Cray, but Detective Chen was in my lab less than an hour ago and said that if I even said the word DNA to you, she’d not only have my balls, I’d lose my job. I’m partial to all three. But as a show of respect to you, I did say the word DNA, so understand that my heart is with you, if not the rest of me.”

  Well, this did not go the way I was hoping. It sounds like Detective Chen is determined to prevent the infamous Dr. Cray from having anything more to do with the case.

  She’s probably afraid of what happened in Montana. Even though I didn’t run to the press and did as I was asked, my involvement was well known, which also complicated things for their forensics people, who had to clearly establish their own clear lines of research, separate from mine.

  “I totally understand. The last thing I want to do is to interfere. But hypothetically, let’s say if you had some gene sequences of the victims, and maybe, I don’t know, extracted DNA from a semen sample of the suspect, and that information ended up in a file that was sent to an e-mail address that didn’t belong to me …”

  “Was that a question, Dr. Cray? Because the answer to that very circumstantial hypothetical is that Detective Chen knows about this thing we call e-mail and was very, very specific to me about what I was not supposed to do, as well as the means by which she would sever the most precious parts of my anatomy if I did so.”

  “So that’s a no?”

  “Emphatically.”

  “All right, last hypothetical: let’s say you received some prepublication information from a cutting-edge research institute located in a certain Austin kitchen that described a few useful techniques that even the FBI labs were unaware existed?”

  “I’d consider it my responsibility to investigate them,” he replies. “And keep the results to myself.”

  Ugh. “Well, I guess that’s better than nothing.”

  “It’s all I can do. I wish it were otherwise, but you have to see it from Detective Chen’s point of view. Should we catch this man, we can’t have any confusion regarding forensic evidence—especially from someone as … controversial as you.”

  “I appreciate that,” I reply half-heartedly.

  “Also know that, between you and me, other than Detective Chen’s threatening workplace attitude, she is very good. One of our best. They put her on this for a good reason. She’s one of the few detectives we can tell actually understands the things we put in our reports. She’s never lost a case because she gave the prosecutors bad forensic data.”

  Which is why she doesn’t want crazy Doc Cray monkeying around with her evidence. I get it, but it frustrates me.

  I bid Sanjay goodbye and hang up to go fill William in on what I can.

  “But you’re the best in the world at this kind of thing,” he says as we stand in his kitchen, commiserating over the state of things.

  “Actually, no. I’m not a forensic investigator. I don’t know most of the techniques they use. My specialty has been looking at what others weren’t doing and finding something interesting there.”

  “And last time you were able to collect all the evidence you wanted because you were on the scene way before them,” William replies.

  “Yes. If I took anything from Mrs. Green’s backyard, that would have been tampering. One of the first questions Detective Chen asked me was if I took any samples. She even threatened to search my hotel room and offered me amnesty if I admitted it up front.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “No. Maybe it would’ve been worth the risk. I don’t know.”

  William picks up our empty bottles and throws them into the garbage, then takes the bag out of the wastebasket. “Let me take care of this.”

  I follow him through his house as he collects his trash. “I’m not sure if there’s anything there to be found, but starting with DNA can be helpful for me. And if there’s the odd chance the Toy Man left some of his own—maybe cut himself and got his blood on their clothing—that could give me enough information to make a 3-D model of what he looked like.”

  “Can they do that?” he asks, emptying his bathroom wastebasket.

  “Sort of. The problem with police forensics is that most of what they
do is geared toward what’s admissible in a court of law. They don’t want to walk in front of a judge with a procedure that has a fifty percent false-positive rate.” I hold the front door open for him.

  “Why would anyone?”

  “Not in court. But if you pull one hundred random people off the street and fifty-one turn up positive, you can rule out forty-nine and focus on the others, using a more precise but complicated tool.”

  “You’re a very clever man. Too bad we don’t have any DNA or whatever for you to look at. Is there any chance of going back to her yard after they clear out?”

  I shake my head, following William outside. “They’ll be there for weeks. Even then, it’ll be under a court seal. I’d be committing a felony.”

  “Get that for me?” He points to the trash can by the side of his house.

  I lift the lid so he can drop the bag inside. “Too bad I didn’t take a few souvenirs. Of course, the last time I took something out of coroner’s truck—actually swabs from a dead girl—I ended up in the hospital with a fractured jaw.”

  “You’re certainly a driven man.”

  “Sometimes.” I drop the lid back down.

  “Push that down tighter. I don’t want anything getting in there and making a mess.”

  I pick the lid back up and stare at it for a while, my mind racing with what he just said.

  “Theo?”

  “Yeah?” I respond automatically. “Say, do you know where I could get some night-vision goggles?”

  “Why? You plan on going night hunting?”

  “Actually, close, very close. And we’ll need a McDonald’s for bait.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  RAIDERS

  Although the news trucks and police vans left, there’s still a patrol car in front of the house at Wimbledon with an officer inside to make sure that the crime scene doesn’t get contaminated while the technicians are off duty.

  Barricades and tape make a perimeter all the way to the edge of the yard. In the field across the street, there are more barricades, cordoning off an area for the press to set up during the day.

  I glance down at my map in the passenger seat of William’s Chevy Malibu as he passes the patrol car, checking off a couple of circles I’d made.

  “Want me to do another pass?” he asks.

  “No. He’s probably used to rubberneckers trying to get a look at the house, but we don’t want to attract more attention than we need to. Slow down here.”

  As William turns the corner, I roll down my window and toss my french fries into the yard next to the Wimbledon house.

  “You’re killing me. Those smelled amazing.”

  “That’s the point,” I reply. “The cooking oil they use sets off our olfactory senses designed to seek out foods with high fat. We’re programmed to be addicted. Add in salt and the fructose in ketchup, and it’s the perfect food—if you’re a Neolithic caveman getting all his other nutrients by eating gallbladders and animal intestines.”

  “Your girlfriend must love your pillow talk,” William says, shaking his head.

  “I’m not allowed to use any words with more than two syllables after midnight,” I joke. “Park here.”

  William stops the car at the corner at the end of the street before the back alley that goes behind the house. Yellow tape and barricades have blocked off the back area as well, probably to prevent news crews from sticking their cameras over the fence.

  “Now what?” asks William.

  “You stay put. One of us will have to be able to pay the bail for the other.” I climb over into the back seat and slide the night-vision goggles over my eyes.

  “Somebody’s gonna get shot tonight,” he grumbles.

  “You offered.”

  He turns the engine off to watch me.

  “Actually, turn it back on and put your phone in the holder by the windshield. You’ll look like an Uber driver waiting for someone.”

  It’s barely audible, but I think I hear him mumble something under his breath about white people and their Uber obsession. I have noticed that a surprising number of complications people face in social situations end up with an Uber-related solution.

  I keep my head low to the back of the seat so I can see over, but to any passing car it’s not obvious that there’s some night-vision-goggle-wearing weirdo watching a patch of grass.

  “How long do you think it will take?” he asks, sounding curious, not impatient.

  “I think I see a pair of glowing eyes scoping out the fries right now.”

  I spot them peering out from under some brush on the opposite side of the street from where I dropped the food. I knew one had to be around, most likely choosing the safest spot where he could watch the neighborhood but get away quickly.

  “Here he goes …”

  The raccoon does a low-to-the-ground crawl across the street, like a soldier trying to avoid a sniper.

  He reaches the fries, sniffs, and looks around to make sure he’s not being watched, then wolfs down a bunch.

  After a few bites, he grabs onto more than he can eat and starts to walk through the grass opposite from where he came, making me realize it’s a she.

  “We have a mama raccoon. Looks like she’s bringing some food to the babies.”

  Eyes peer in my direction as she hears me talking.

  “She sees me,” I whisper.

  I don’t move, waiting for her to decide there’s no immediate threat. After a minute, she continues her path, straight toward us.

  “She’s coming this way,” I say quietly.

  “Are you afraid? Should I start the car?” William quips.

  I have to bite the side of my cheek to keep from laughing. It’s bizarre how humor works. Here we are, a hundred feet from a house of death, where William’s son most probably met a horrific end, and we’re joking about a raccoon.

  I squint my eyes as a car passes us, blinding me for a moment.

  “Damn it. She’s gone.” The raccoon vanished as the car approached.

  “Try again? More fries? Or maybe we get her a Happy Meal for the kids?”

  His voice goes soft at the last part of the sentence, probably at the resurfacing of a painful memory.

  “No. She won’t do that twice in one night. The difference between an animal like a raccoon and a fish is that a fish will come back to the same hook after a few minutes. Again and again, until it’s caught. A raccoon is more cautious.”

  “You’re like a walking Discovery Channel.”

  “They actually asked me if I wanted to host a show on biology and serial killers,” I reply.

  “What did you say?”

  “I politely told them to go fuck themselves.”

  “Did they offer more money?”

  “No …” I notice something at the edge of the sidewalk. “Wait here,” I say as I hop out of the car.

  I’d noticed a small gap in the curb where it appeared there was some kind of storm drain—something of a rarity in Los Angeles.

  I squat and shine my light into the gap, and I’m greeted by three pairs of glowing eyes and a hissing mama raccoon.

  The family is sitting on a pile of dead grass, twigs, and what looks like a femur.

  I feel bad for evicting a single working mother, but circumstances demand it. I take the squirt gun from my pocket, give her room to escape, and spray her right in the face.

  She darts out of her hovel with babies following behind and scurries across the street to another safe spot.

  When I look back into the drain, there’s another pair of little eyes staring back at me. I turn and see Mama peering from her new spot, having done a head count and realized she came up short.

  Lucky for her, I bought a pair of welding gloves. I reach down, pick up the little cub, and carry her over to her mother. The baby darts into the bushes and they all scurry away, one happy family again.

  Which is more than what I can say for the relatives of what’s left in the dry storm drain.

  I hav
e William back the car up so that I’m not directly in the line of sight of the cop as I scoop the contents of the nest into the big white paint buckets I brought along for this purpose.

  I have to stretch my arm all the way down in there to get as much as I can. Even a tiny fourth distal phalanx, aka a pinkie bone, could yield DNA of the victim, and if there’s a fingernail still attached, it could reveal something about the killer if he managed to get scratched.

  I don’t examine everything as I scoop it up—I’m too focused on not having the police officer walk over and ask questions.

  While I’m technically not violating the law, at least as far as I can tell, they might interpret that differently if they realized they missed some important forensic evidence.

  It’s their own damned fault and the reason why I don’t have the highest confidence in their approach. While fences may mean something to people, to my raccoon pals and Mrs. Green’s dog, they’re illusory constructs.

  Just because Toy Man killed his victims within his property line, that doesn’t mean they all stayed there.

  To an opportunistic scavenger that has to rely on a variety of food to feed her young, the bones and decaying flesh of a human child make no difference.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  SAMPLE BIAS

  Although William offered me the use of his house to do my lab work, the threat of DEA or IRS agents storming through his door loomed at the back of my mind. I didn’t want to be sitting there with a magnifying glass in one hand and a child’s decomposing skull in the other as they raided.

  Instead, I opted to rent a suite at the LAX Marriott. While performing a forensic examination in a hotel room is less than ideal, I’d had some prior experience at making my own mini clean room in the field and felt I could extract what I needed with minimal contamination.

  Just in case a hotel maid decided to ignore the DO NOT DISTURB sign I’d taped to the door, I put a sign on the inside of my room next to my samples that read, MOVIE PROPS: DO NOT TOUCH.

  In the town that invented CSI and NCIS and has turned the decomposing flesh of murder victims sitting on lab counters into a dinnertime affair, I figured this would be a passable explanation.