CHIMERAS (Track Presius)

by E. E. Giorgi

  “I did,” she confirmed. “But first, let me tell you what we got from the other labs.”

  Diane was wearing a lab coat today, which typically reeks of chemical reagents and chloride. Not on her, though. Anything smelled good on her, the air around her hoisting the tiny particles emanated by her skin, cradling them all the way to my nostrils. We sat around a large, oval table that still retained the traces of aftershave, coffee, and deodorant of its previous occupants. Diane arranged several photos on the center of the laminated surface, including three transparent evidence bags containing respectively the fingernail stub, the clump of blue fibers I’d found on front porch, and the bloody note with the first commandment.

  “We’ll have to wait for the fingerprint results. Latent Print is understaffed and backed-up.” She sat at the edge of the chair and bent closer to pick up a folder labeled “Trace Unit.” Her white neckline flashed before my eyes, and a whiff of her hair tickled my nostrils. Tinged with a hint of nervousness her scent was baffling and delicious at the same time.

  I reluctantly leaned back to let her retrieve the folder.

  “I had the guys at Trace look over the fibers you found on the porch outside, Track. You were right about the blood: it matched Tamara Tarantino’s type. I sent it to serology for DNA to make sure.”

  “Good call. What are the fibers made of?”

  She opened the folder and showed me a printed report on the physical, optical, and chemical analyses run on the piece.

  “High-density polyethylene film,” I read.

  “The fibers are about one tenth of a human hair in diameter,” Diane explained. “They’re not woven but flash-spun together.” She tapped her pen. “It’s Tyvek.”

  My hands flattened on the table. “Tyvek?”

  Satish snorted. “Well, that explains the blood.”

  Diane’s voice switched to defensive. “We’ve done everything by SOP, and our coveralls are tear-free.”

  “All our Tyvek coveralls are white,” I said. “Those fibers had to come from shoe covers.”

  “Shoe covers? Are you thinking our guys or the perp?” Satish frowned.

  “Why not the perp? It would explain why the dust lifter didn’t pick up anything.”

  “A perp so mindful as to slip on shoe covers before shooting? That would be a first.”

  “Coveralls and shoe covers are not the only things made out of Tyvek,” Diane objected. “It’s used to make house wrap, car covers, medical packaging, and protective clothing for surgeons, mechanics, and painters.”

  Satish folded his arms across his chest and tapped an index against his elbow. “Did the Tarantinos have any work done on their house lately?”

  “We’ll have to look into that,” I agreed. “Same question for their vehicles. I spotted a couple in the garage and one in the driveway.”

  “How many hours’ worth of recording do we have from the camera at the gate?”

  “It goes a few days back. I already requested Electronics to provide freeze-frames of all cars coming and going.”

  Diane waited quietly as Satish and I considered several hypotheses and jotted down notes—additional people to interview and possible strategies to use—before moving on to the blood spatter analyses. From the traces found on the scene, she nailed the shooter’s position at a thirty-degree angle from the bathroom door.

  “And yet the guy didn’t leave any prints on the door frame?” I asked.

  “This guy ain’t no stupid,” Satish muttered. “He gloved up and left no trace.”

  “Except for the note,” Diane reminded us.

  “Which was left by his lady accomplice,” I declared. Yes, I do enjoy a bit of theater whenever I get the chance. At my audience’s bewildered glare I added, “Together with the fingernail fragment down in the living room.”

  Diane tilted her head. “How can you be so sure it belonged to a woman, Track?”

  Smells and their elusiveness. Can you put a signature on a scent? Can you stamp it with a date and time? And yet I knew without doubt. It wasn’t just a fingernail stub—it was a fragrance left on the curtains and materialized into an image in my head: a woman, callously looking out the glass doors, waiting. Was she Atropos, ready to cut the thread of life? Or was she Clotho instead, holding the spindle and pulling the thread farther?

  I grinned, unfazed by Diane’s skepticism. “I be right about the lady, ain’t I?”

  Satish shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Help us God if he’s not.”

  I felt Diane’s tension ease. A smile escaped her lips. “He probably is, Satish,” she replied, reaching for a new photo to show us.

  “Probably?” I protested.

  Perhaps amused by the playful tone our conversation had taken, Diane’s shoulders relaxed, and the tension I’d sensed earlier evaporated like a sprinkle in high deserts.

  “I found traces of cyanoacrilate and acrylic resins on the fragment,” she said, flipping a couple of photos in front of us. “I placed it between two glass slides and stuck it under a microscope. And this is what I saw.”

  She tapped the picture, a black and white enlargement of what looked like a stack of misshapen phyllo dough layers.

  “When do we get to the part where you say I was right?”

  Diane flashed me a broad, conspiratorial smile. “After you hear how clever I was.”

  I hate to get sentimental, but that sly smile of hers left a dent in my cool.

  “Ah, you’ve got competition, Track. Please enlighten us,” Satish said.

  “Cyanoacrilate is a fast-acting glue,” Diane explained. “At first I thought of an electrician, as it can be used to assemble small electronics. It can also be employed in hospitals to substitute sutures. The presence of acrylic baffled me, though. Until I thought of the perfect combination of both: nail glue and artificial nails, which are made of acrylic.”

  “Ha. A woman, then. However, Tamara Tarantino or the cleaning lady could’ve left the fragment,” Satish interjected, playing devil’s advocate.

  “No,” Diane replied. “Neither woman suffered from biotin deficiency.”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “A vitamin. Biotin deficiency causes nails to grow in a pointy fashion and to be brittle and thin. As a consequence, they break off very easily. It’s exactly what I saw when I put this nail fragment under the microscope.”

  I drummed my fingers on the table. “Malnutrition?”

  Diane shook her head, the swaying tips of her hair sending delicious wafts to my nostrils. “I doubt it. Biotin is commonly found in most foods. You would have to be on a pathological diet not to be getting enough from food, in which case it would be a whole range of vitamins and nutrients one would be missing.”

  “Any other hypothesis, then?”

  It was Diane’s turn to throw in her very own coup de théâtre. “Only one,” she said, her eyes sparkling with intrigue. “Anticonvulsants. Our lady is epileptic.”

  CHAPTER 14

  ____________

  Tuesday, October 14

  “Ding, ding, ding! Signed warrants for Detective Presius!” Luke scuttled across the squad room waving the papers above his head. He flopped them on my desk and stood right there, a sheepish grin plastered on his face.

  “What?” I growled.

  He frowned. “Gee, Track. What an asshole. I don’t mean a thank you, but at least a sign of appreciation for my new aftershave!”

  “Oh,” I said, snapping closed the murder book I’d just updated with the new photos and reports from Diane. “This one’s okay. It’s the bad ones I notice. Are the lines still hot?”

  “Course they’re hot,” he griped. “Now that White’s name’s out, calls come in two groups. Those who claim the director’s a saint, and those who grieve the loss of the professor. In the meantime, journalists are harassing the press relation department.” He trotted out of the squad room shaking his head and muttering between his teeth, “I hate celebrities.”

  I gesture
d to Satish to come over. “Call Electronics,” I told him as I reviewed the warrants Luke had just dropped off. “We need their gurus to come seize Tarantino’s computer.”

  He nodded, reaching for his mobile. “The neighbors don’t recall any work done on the house in the past three months,” he informed me. “Did you get phone subpoenas as well?”

  I got up, adjusted my belt and holster, and slid on my jacket. “Yup. I’ll leave them with Nelson. She can take care of that part.”

  “I’ll meet you at Chromo, then,” Satish said, sauntering away while thumbing the Electronics extension.

  I had Nelson sit at my desk and lectured her on how to get the Tarantinos’ phone logs and what to look for: any business number she found, she was to call them back and learn what kind of services they provided. We were after house updates—walls, exterior stucco, insulation—and car jobs. She listened carefully, then looked up at me with large fawn eyes and said, “I have a question, Track.”

  “Shoot.”

  “When I’m done with my gum, can I stick it under your desk?”

  I threw a paperclip at her. On the way down to the first floor my cell phone rang and Diane’s number flashed on the display. “You’re going to Chromo without me?”

  I stiffened, taken aback by her bluntness. “We figured we’d need Electronics—”

  “What about Prints? Did you forget I’m the scientific lead on this investigation? Come pick me up at Cal State. I’ll gather my stuff and meet you at the parking lot.”

  I hung up wondering whether to let a deliciously smelling lady boss me around like that. Hell, yes. I flipped the phone closed and grinned. Like an idiot, I grinned.

  * * *

  The campus of Chromo Inc. was located in Century City, a half-hour drive that was going to take us twice as long, courtesy of afternoon traffic. Sluggish, the radio defined the current status of the Ten. They say Eskimos have about fifty words to characterize snow and ice. Californians have just as many to describe congested traffic conditions.

  Bathed in Diane’s ambrosial scent, I couldn’t care less. We spent the time going over Chromo’s specs and Tarantino’s job overview. Diane listed the company’s services like my grandmother would’ve gone through the beads of a rosary: gene expression profiling, gene therapy, genetic engineering, DNA and RNA sequencing. From Nelson’s searches I’d learned Robert Tarantino got his B.S. from Penn State in 1975, and his Ph.D. in chemistry from Tate University in 1980, the same institution that six years earlier had hired the rising genius of Michael Conrad. The connection didn’t end there: when Exgene Solutions hired Conrad in 1996, Tarantino was already a promising engineer with the company.

  “You think the Tarantino murders and Conrad’s are linked?” Diane asked.

  “Worth looking into.”

  Past the sign announcing the Four-Oh-Five junction in three quarters of a mile, I hit the brakes and entered the bumper-to-bumper zone the radio had warned us about.

  “Damn it. We should’ve gotten off on Overland.”

  “I’ll never get used to this,” Diane said. “Where I grew up it’s either the train or cattle crossing the street ruining the commute.”

  “What do they call bumper-to-bumper traffic there, round-to-chuck?”

  “Aw, Track!”

  We both laughed and put an end to the strictly work conversation. We spent the rest of the drive challenging one another on who remembered the most idioms Southern Californian radio stations use to describe traffic conditions. And when we exhausted all the ones we could recall, we invented new ones.

  * * *

  Shaped like a sail, the façade of the Chromo building was made of sleek blue metal and tinted glass panels. Its contour embraced an open court paved in red bricks. Brass plates engraved with milestone in the history of genetics drew a path to the main entrance. Water jets splashed along the edges of a circular water fountain, while at its center, in a copper-colored mesh, stood the artistic rendition of two gigantic X chromosomes, one the mirroring image of the other. Stripped of all its sensuality, it was the bare essential of femininity.

  As we climbed out of the car, a funky song from the ’80s chimed, muffled at first, until Diane, frantically fumbling in her bag, produced her loud mobile. In the frenzy to get the call, she lost the grip on the phone and sent it flying between my feet. I crouched, picked it up, and mentally noted the number on the display before handing it to her.

  It’s called occupational hazard.

  “It’s Jim,” she mumbled, pressing the phone to her ear. I heard her mellow “Hey, hon,” as I trudged toward the main entrance without bothering to check whether she followed inside or lagged behind to take the call privately. Pretending not to be bothered by the existence of Diane’s boyfriend, I entered the Chromo building.

  The high vaulted lobby smelled of new construction, synthetic fibers from the overly vacuumed carpet, paint, wood cleaner, and a cornucopia of perfumes and aftershaves. The glass effigy of a DNA double helix loomed in the middle of the hall, a twisted ladder that crossed the space from floor to ceiling. Sunrays from tall windowpanes shimmered along the beads bridging the two coils, their shadows drawing rainbows on the opposite walls.

  Chromo knew how to make an impression on its visitors.

  “Second floor, room two-forty-nine,” the receptionist told me. “Your colleagues are there already.” Watery eyes enlarged by thick, convex lenses gazed at me with maternal love. “This is such a tragedy,” she added softly, shaking her head. Her white, static locks smelled of hairspray, the folds of her neck of talcum powder. Juliet Hennessy, I read on the nameplate on the reception desk.

  Two pens lined next to a sign-in clipboard, a bowl full of sugar-free candy, hand-sanitizer, a floor map: Juliet Hennessy thrived on details, the kind of person who plucks a hair off your shirt when she spots one and tells you when you are due for a new haircut; who notices every new hairdo and pair of shoes stepping through the main entrance to her reign, and doesn’t mind letting you know what she thinks of them.

  I reached to my pocket and held out an enlargement of Jennifer Huxley’s driver’s license photo. “Do you remember ever seeing this woman here, Ms. Hennessy?” I asked. “Maybe looking for Dr. Tarantino?”

  She adjusted the glasses on her nose and brought the picture so close to her face a film of condensation appeared on the glossy surface. “This woman? No.” She shook her head and handed back the photo.

  “Are you absolutely sure?”

  Her eyes sparkled. “With all the people coming and going, Detective? Of course I could be wrong. But if the lady ever was here, I can tell you the one person who will know for sure.”

  Ms. Hennessy directed me to Human Resources, a maze of cubicles with nametags on the second floor.

  “Nah, never seen her,” I was told at the public relation desk. A tattooed hand with black nails returned Huxley’s photo.

  “Does the name Jennifer Huxley ring a bell? Did she ever call?”

  “Huxley, you said?” a shrill voice asked.

  “Yes. Do you recognize the name?” I prodded. A tiny woman with hair too black for her age approached the counter. Her purple frill top was as tacky as a joke on a candy wrap. She took the picture and studied it religiously, while her ringed fingers fiddled with a gaudy collection of beads around her sagging neckline. She nodded and tapped on Huxley’s forehead. “Yes, I’m sure it was her. She came a few weeks ago and asked to meet with Dr. Tarantino.”

  Bingo! “Did she say why she wanted to see him?”

  “Uh-uh. Without a reason I couldn’t arrange a meeting. I tried to convince her to talk to one of our managers first. Our executives are very busy people, you know?” The woman looked sadly at the picture. “She insisted she had to talk to Dr. Tarantino. That’s why I remember her.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I made her fill a written request and told her I’d get back in touch once I had the chance to speak with Dr. Tarantino.”

  I beamed. “T
ell me you still have the form.”

  An offended frown curled her forehead. “Of course I do, Detective. I never throw away anything!”

  I stared at her desk and saw what she meant. The anti-Huxley workplace, a monumental collection of recyclable garbage: knickknacks of all shapes and colors, from the happy man in a hula skirt, to the dancing snowman; dust-covered picture frames, fake flowers, piles of paper in all colors; unused folders, empty plastic bottles, even a row of diet coke cans neatly lined on top of the cabinets as if they were shiny golf trophies. The wall behind the desk sported a pin board with overlapping layers of memos and photos. A child had gone from newborn to riding his bike; bright yellow sticky notes had gradually faded in color, and the words printed on them had been smeared by the occasional spatter of coffee. Maria Ramirez was so attached to everything she refused to depart even from Huxley’s request form, although she was nice enough to make me a copy.

  “Did you ever get back to her with an appointment?”

  “Dr. Tarantino agreed to meet with her in four months, but Ms. Huxley told me it was too far away. I never heard back from her.”

  CHAPTER 15

  ____________

  Tuesday, October 14

  Ms. Claire Lester crossed the room with an impatient gait, her red pumps tapping arrogantly on the floor. A thick trail of expensive perfume lingered behind her like the wake of an airplane. In her early fifties, Lester sugarcoated her vitriol with hypocorisms and hid her impending menopause behind a thick layer of makeup, fake eyelashes, and three concentric rows of pearls. A woman of little time, I gathered, a few exes, and a disowned child if she happened to have given birth at some point in her ovulating years. The kind of lady who could use more sex in her life but is too sour to find anybody to fill the position. Literally.

  She dropped a leather briefcase on her client’s mahogany desk, plucked out a few papers, then transferred her conspicuous ass in one of the upholstered armchairs. Coloring her words with a Texan inflection, she gave us her introductory speech on why she’d recommended Chromo CEO Richard Medford not to talk to us until she could preside over the meeting. As she spoke, her client smiled placidly, a cherubic face framed by silver waves of hair.