by J. A. Kerley
Novarro stared in horror: Had she kept her gloves on when she was doing whatever … cataloguing, comparing, making sense to herself as she fell deeper into drunkenness? A single print could compromise everything.
Feeling her pounding heart keeping time with the dull thud of the headache in her temples, Novarro pulled on latex gloves and began trying to regain order in the evidence and in her life.
A half hour later she hoped she had everything back in original position, the correct piece in the correctly numbered bag, her head moving between pieces, bags and printed-out listing a dozen times. It was time to take the pieces to the forensics lab and hope her prints weren’t all over the things.
The City of Phoenix Forensics building – or simply “Crime Lab” to most – was a clean and functional-looking brick structure on West Washington Street, almost dead-center of the Highway 10 and 17 rectangular circumurban that delineated downtown. The building was under a mile from Novarro’s home and she was pulling into the parking lot before the conditioner cooled her vehicle. The sweltering heat combined with her fear and the previous night’s alcohol consumption and for a moment she felt she’d vomit into the parking lot, but fought it until the nausea subsided.
The lab was predominantly white inside, the tabletops black with tan wooden drawers, the lighting recessed into the ceiling. Agustín Sanches was the first person she saw, standing beneath a fume hood and holding a beaker of a ruddy fluid, the blue lab jacket tight on his mildly chubby form. When Sanches looked up and saw Novarro, his dark eyes narrowed in scrutiny.
“Jeez, Tasha, you look like twice-boiled hell.”
“Freakin’ flu, Augie,” she said, holding up a hand, “so stay back.” She lifted the box to the tabletop while explaining its odd provenance.
Sanches nodded. “Castle called to say it was on its way. That he’d passed it over to you at dinner last night.” Sanches raised an eyebrow at the final three words.
Sanches, a friend and confidant, knew that she and Castle had dated for a while before it exploded. Novarro shook her head. “Not like that, Augie. Drinks and eats and separate ways.”
“Salvadore just finished a job,” Sanches said, nodding toward the latents section. “I’ll beg him to jump on this right away and to put a tech on it as well. Bet we’ll have a read in a couple hours. Go home and grab some rest, girl.”
Novarro faked a cough. “Good idea, Augie. You’ll call when you have something, right?”
Sanches did the thumb-pinkie phone thingie. “The second we’re done. Go, girlfriend! You’re spreading germsies.”
* * *
Adam Kubiac sat in the shade of an awning on the patio of the streetside coffee shop and Internet café. It was in downtown Phoenix and near Arizona State University, explaining the preponderance of young men and women on the street, chattering into or tapping at mobiles, shoulders slung with bookbags and backpacks. Bicycles and skateboards competed with motor vehicles on the narrow avenue. It was past noon and heat rippled from the pavement.
Adam didn’t particularly care for the café, but it was close to where he and Zoe lived. Kubiac didn’t want to live in his father’s house – especially after Cottrell revealed what the bastard had done with the will – and had moved into Isbergen’s apartment nine days ago, carrying little more than a backpack filled with e-gadgets and a garbage bag full of clothes. It was a cool apartment, though about the size of two rooms in the old bastard’s place in Scottsdale, which had about fifteen. The fun was being with Zoe and having sex with her anytime and having dinners like they were married and everything.
Kubiac sipped a double mocha latte that had taken the moronic barista two tries to get right and played World of Warcraft with a gamer in Thailand, blowing the poor Thai to noodles while waiting for Zoe to get back from shopping for boots. Shopping was a chick thing and she’d probably look at every goddamn shoe store in twenty blocks before finally going back and getting the ones I dearly loved Adam, aren’t they too hot? at the first store.
Zoe was smart, not one of Us, but he let her think so because she came with benefits. And she was in love with him. He’d read that women sought strong males for seed, a need driven by evolution’s desire to constantly trade up, to build better humans. Zoe was no exception.
As he sipped and tapped he became aware of eyes on the back of his neck. He turned to see a girl – late teens, early twenties – sitting at the table behind him. About the regular height for a girl. A bit chunky, but not much. She seemed Hispanic in the dark and liquid eyes, black hair, and olive complexion, but something also looked Asian. Kubiac registered a long gray dress and round dark-framed glasses. Large sad eyes.
She was probably looking because she thought he was cute. Zoe had dressed him in a pale pink shirt with a vest that looked like it was made of sweepings from a fabric store, but colorful. His jeans were coal black and so tight they made his balls hurt when he crossed his legs. The shoes were red Vans. Sometimes Zoe pissed him off by dressing him like he was a fucking Ken doll. Adam Kubiac saw no reason to dress in anything beyond shorts and tee shirt. It was comfortable.
And no matter how he dressed, Zoe said he made her wet.
Kubiac gamed for another two minutes, feeling the eyes again. He snapped his head around and saw her leaning to see more of his face.
“Are you looking for something?” he said.
“No. I’m s-sorry. I …” The girl colored with embarrassment, swallowed hard and turned away. Kubiac went back to his competition but still felt the weight of eyes on him. When he spun to the girl her eyes were on her computer screen, but he was sure she’d been studying him. As if feeling his pressing eyes, the girl’s eyes rose.
“What?” he demanded.
“N-nothing. I just …”
Kubiac stared at the screen and cursed. “You just made me lose my game,” he said. “To a moron.”
“I-I’m suh-suh-sorry.”
“Why are you staring at me?”
The girl waited until a departing patron passed between them. “I … it was a m-m-mistake. I thought—”
“What did you think? Stop babbling.”
The girl looked frightened but spoke after a deep breath. “You l-look like, um, someone I saw once in a place that was … I was just, s-skip it, it’s just fuh-freaking r-ridiculous anyway…”
A stutterer, rare in females, Kubiac knew, having learned that from the treacherous bitch Meridien. He affected a glower, but inside he was making himself think calm thoughts so he wouldn’t stutter as well. Meridien had told him stress was a trigger. Probably the only thing the traitor ever said that made sense.
“What are you talking about?” Kubiac demanded. “Where is it you think you saw me?”
“I, um, a-a-at Doctor Muh-Meridien’s house. Her office.”
Kubiac’s eyes widened. “How? What did you see?”
“I made a m-mistake with time and got there early. She put me in the s-side room … the solarium. I saw a car drive up and duh-drop you off. Someone who looked like you, I m-m-mean.”
“You’re a patient of this Doctor Meridien?”
She shook her head. “Not, uh, any more.”
“Why? Tell me.”
“I turned eighteen and …” she swallowed hard and took a deep breath, “I got free and never wanted to see that buh-buh-buh-buh-buh …”
“Relax,” Kubiac advised from experience. “Think of what you want to say, then talk.”
The girl took a deep breath. “I never wanted to see that b-bitch again. I was sick of her t-telling me I was nuh-normal like everyone else. I’m n-not.”
Kubiac sat motionless. No one else existed but him and the person at the nearby table. The barista in the window, the chattering patrons at other tables, the skateboarder grinding down the pavement, they were all little more than robots made of pimply flesh and useless ancient drives. Instinct-driven automata. Neanderthals.
“Why did you hate Doctor Meridien?” he said quietly, scooting his chair closer to the
girl.
Her almond eyes looked down in shame. “It’s kind of a secret thing. M-mine.”
Kubiac put his elbows on the girl’s table, leaning her way. “You were right. I was her patient. Meridien’s. Was. I hated the bitch, too. She told me that exact same thing in those exact words: that I was a normal human being. You can tell me why you hate her.”
The girl looked into Kubiac’s eyes as if wondering whether to trust him with her secret. She made her decision: “I’m not normal,” she said, the words coming out with soft force, clean and clear. “I’m not anything near normal. I hate the idea of being normal.”
Kubiac stared. As if unburdening herself had drained her energy, the girl stood, began loading her laptop into the backpack.
“What are you doing?” he said.
“Going back to my apartment. I’ve b-bothered you enough. I’m suh-sorry.”
“You’re not bothering me. You were but you’re not now.”
“I-I have to gather some stuff together, papers. Stuff to send to a college recruiter.”
“What college?”
“Stanford. I’m not sure if I really w-want …”
“What do you plan to study?”
The girl shrugged. “C-chemistry. Muh-maybe some math.”
“What’s your name?” Kubiac asked.
The girl swallowed hard. “Catherine Maruyama.” She said it syllable by syllable to avoid stumbling on her own name.
Kubiac thought a moment and nodded. “I’ve heard your name before. I was in a group with people who knew you. They said you were fun, not all messed up. One was a guy named Mashburn.”
“Cat Maruyama …” Darnell Mashburn sighed in Kubiac’s memory. “She’s so cool.”
“You want to do her?”
Protective anger from the twitching fool. “No man. If I could I’d marry her. Everyone likes Cat because she’s nice to everyone. She’s smart and pretty and not so screwed up. She’s perfect.”
“Yeah? Then why is she a patient here?”
“Cat’s real shy. She sometimes has panic attacks. It was more like an anxiety thing with her.”
“I was in a couple of Meridien’s groups,” Maruyama said, jolting Kubiac from his memories. “Did you like Darnell?”
“He was too jumpy for me, like he was gonna pop out of his skin.”
Maruyama flinched like it hurt to hear harsh words about Mashburn, and Kubiac felt a twinge of regret. “Uh, but outside of that, Darnell was OK. I remember he said that you were smart and cool. He wanted to marry you.”
Maruyama looked down in embarrassment. “He was j-just kidding. I liked Darnell. He was fun.”
Kubiac crossed his arms and stared at Darnell Mashburn’s ideal woman. “You don’t look that Oriental.”
“I, uh … my papa is half Japanese, my mom is Australian.”
Kubiac took a deep breath. “Look, uh, Cat … can we, um, see each other again? Soon?”
Looking a mix of surprised, confused, and delighted, Catherine Maruyama pulled on the backpack, straddled a single-gear cruiser bike, and nodded demurely before pedaling away.
Fifteen minutes later, Kubiac was still recalling the chance encounter with another of Meridien’s lab rats. He looked up to see Zoe Isbergen approaching, shopping bags in hand.
“Check these out,” she said, spinning on her heels to display new boots.
“Cool,” Kubiac said without inflection. They were brown boots, so the fuck what?
“I also got a blouse and two skirts,” Zoe said. She winked. “And some lingerie I think you’ll like”
Kubiac said, “I met another of Meridien’s patients.”
Zoe froze, eyes wide. “When? How?”
He relayed the circumstances: The surreptitious looks followed by the conversation. How they both hated Meridien.
“She just appeared?” Zoe frowned. “This Harakawa woman?”
“Maruyama. She lives in an apartment somewhere around here. I figure she comes here a lot.”
“You never saw her at Meridien’s?” Zoe said quietly, studying him.
“I’d heard of her from people in my groups. She was one person everyone liked. Meridien kept people moving around, like we’d cure each other or whatever. I hated the groups. You were like, supposed to talk and shit. It was moronic.”
Zoe kept pressing like it was a big deal. “Wait a minute, Adam. If you weren’t in any of her groups, how did this Maruyama know you?”
“She got there early for one of Meridien’s sessions, saw me leaving. I registered in her mind, Zoe. I’m not hard to remember.”
“She’s still—”
“She stopped going when she turned eighteen.” Kubiac paused and smiled. “For the right reasons … Hashtag: hatemeridien.”
“What else?” Zoe prodded, her eyes searching Kubiac.
“She’s shy. Nervous. But she’s obviously …” Kubiac pointed his finger at his temple. “—not a Neanderthal.”
14
Novarro’s phone rang: Augie Sanches. “Uh, Salvador’s done, Tash. Latents raised.”
Novarro swallowed hard. “Anything there?” she asked, trying to recall how she normally said the words.
“Bowers’s prints, of course. On everything. It’s just …”
“What?”
“Uh, whoops, my centrifuge just stopped,” Sanches said, not very convincingly. “Gotta deal with it. See you soon.”
Sweat prickled from Novarro’s brow as she tucked the phone back into her pocket. Something was wrong with the evidence. She’d screwed up, probably had her prints over everything. When it was discovered she’d compromised evidence, the gold shield would vanish. Most likely, the house would follow.
The ten-minute trip to the lab was an hour long. Though she’d showered, Novarro could smell fear blooming from her body. Despite a dozen antacids her stomach churned and boiled. She forced a nonchalant, businesslike look to her face as she entered the lab, walking past several techs working at their tables before coming to Sanches.
“Yo, Augs, got in a little nap,” she lied. “Starting to feel better. Maybe it’s just a 24-hour bug.”
Sanches didn’t seem to hear, concern written across his square brown face. He cleared his throat. “Listen, Tasha … you know Salvadore Aldondo in latents, right?”
“Not too well. I’ve mostly worked with Bristol or Hughes.”
“Salvadore and I are, uh, friends. He called me while raising latents on the jewelry and pieces.” His eyes searched hers. “Was there some kind of problem with the evidence, Tasha?”
She forced an uncomprehending frown to her face, not betraying the sound of her blood in her ears. The last sound you hear before you lose your job will be your exploding heart.
“How’s that again, Augie?” she said.
“The only clear prints on the pieces were Meridien’s, Tasha. Almost, that is.”
“Almost?”
“There were, uh, someone else’s partials on two pieces, the owl and a charm on a bracelet.”
Only two pieces held her prints. Novarro considered her expressions carefully, then played them one by one: confusion, recollection, dismay, exasperation. “Aw fuck,” she said after exasperation. “It’s my goddamn prints on the baubles, right, Augie?”
He sighed. “All cops are in the database. The scanner matched on seven points on a thumb, ten on an index.”
Before Sanches could say What happened? Novarro turned away and made her eyes blaze. “Goddamn Maricopa.”
“Maricopa?”
She stared at her shoes and shook her head. “I went directly home and started checking the COC sheets to make sure all the listed items were in my possession and I picked up a couple bags …” she let it hang, knowing it would be better if Sanches made the connection.
“Oh no,” he said. “They hadn’t been closed tight.”
“When the jewelry headed floor-ward my hand shot out in reflex.” Novarro stuck her hand out at waist level to demonstrate. “At the last second I
thought to keep my hand flat, just a surface. Then I slipped them back in the bag and zipped it tight.”
“You probably did this …” Sanches said, replicating her motion but snapping his fingers closed for a microsecond, “and never realized it. Just a touch and you’ve transferred prints.”
“Shit,” Novarro said, shaking her head. “I didn’t know it was that easy.”
Sanches gave her an indulgent look. “You didn’t want to note lousy handling in the chain-of-custody paperwork, right? Lay the shit on Maricopa for not sealing the bags?”
Novarro did her best near-beatification face. “It was a simple mistake, Augs. We all make them.”
Sanches tapped his foot for a moment, then put his hand on her shoulder and leaned close. “I’ll explain to Salvadore what happened,” he whispered. “Nothing was compromised. It’ll take ten seconds and a piece of cotton and everything will be cool. Oh, any by the way, the only other prints on the jewelry were the victim’s. Sorry.”
Novarro managed to walk away without betraying the weakness in her knees, only feeling them soften when she exited the building and leaned against a wall for support, the world spinning with hangover, fear, sudden emotional release and now, guilt. In the past eight hours she’d gotten drunk, almost ruined the evidence, faked an illness, then laid the blame for the evidence mishap on someone else.
Nice job, Tasha, she thought as she walked slowly to her car. You’re falling apart faster than Ben.
Novarro went to HQ, thankful the detective’s room was almost empty, the only one there being Mike Fishbach, fifty-six with a recent hip replacement, and waiting out a couple months until retirement by doing paperwork and research for Captain Solero. He was leaning forward in his chair and tapping his computer keypad. Fishbach looked up and grinned like a crazed jack-o’-lantern.