Stella was sure she remembered seeing this same restaurant fifteen years earlier on the way to Ann’s house. New York was a small town if you lived here long enough.
Wearing white latex gloves, Mac carefully laid out the glass fragments taken from the Vorhees’ garbage shortly after their initial investigation. The fragments looked like pieces of a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, which was how Mac was treating them.
First he had used the spectrometer for signs of blood or fingerprints on any of the fragments. He found none and had given the fragments to Chad Willingham, who took the assignment as a welcome challenge.
Now after a little over two hours Chad had returned with the fragments and a disc that he inserted into the computer, which began to hum, and then an image began to form.
“Scanning electron microscope,” Chad said. “You can enlarge any microscopic surface or any part of a surface.”
Mac nodded, looking at the screen covered not in enlarged fragments but tiny images that filled the page.
“Can enlarge any piece,” Chad said with pride, moving the mouse to a random image and clicking.
The tiny fragment now filled the screen. Chad moved the three-dimensional image around so that Mac could see all sides.
“Neat, huh?” asked Chad.
Mac nodded.
“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” said Chad, who pressed a series of keys. The tiny fragments on the screen moved rapidly, came together. Chad enlarged the image.
Now Mac knew what had bruised the arm and dented the bone of Howard Vorhees.
“Print three of them,” said Mac.
“Print three of them,” Chad sang.
The printer next to the computer hummed to life and three full-color eight-by-ten pictures of the object emerged.
Mac gathered them, put them in an envelope. He had people to show the pictures to.
“OK if I put the real fragments together?” asked Chad.
“Maybe when the case is closed,” said Mac.
Chad nodded in understanding and said, “Can I ask you a question?”
“Yes,” said Mac.
“You ever dream about dying horses?”
Mac was used to Chad’s non sequiturs, but this one was different.
“Yes,” said Mac.
“So do I,” said Chad. “I wonder what it means.”
It wasn’t a question Mac had ever really asked himself and he didn’t intend to do so now, although the dream image of the collapsing horse pulling a fire truck flashed through his head.
7
MAC SAT AT THE KITCHEN TABLE, red and white checkered cloth on top of it, plus two cups of coffee, one for him and one for Maya Anderson. He had placed the envelope on the table in front of her.
“Tell me again what you saw this morning.”
“Nothing,” she said. “I was sitting by the window, looking out, listening to music on my stereo. Show tunes. You like show tunes?”
“Some,” said Mac patiently.
“My favorite is still Oklahoma,” she said. “Second musical my mother took me to. First was Brigadoon.”
“This morning?” Mac said gently.
“I’m just playing with you,” the woman said, leaning forward as if it were a secret. “You get away with a lot when you get old.”
Mac nodded.
“You knew I was playing, right?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Mac. “This morning,” he prodded.
“Nothing,” she said. “No unfamiliar cars on the street. Nobody but you and the police going in the house or coming out.”
“You didn’t see Kyle Shelton go into the Vorhees’ house?”
“Nor come out,” she added. “He could have come through the back, through the kitchen, or he could have gone in there late at night when I got a few hours of sleep. But I did see him the night he killed everybody. I’d swear it on a Bible.”
“You might have to do just that. Doors of the Vorhees house were locked,” said Mac. “So were the windows.”
“Like Yul Brynner said in The King and I,” said Maya, “it’s a puzzlement. Maybe he had a key. Maybe someone let him in. No, there’s no one in there.”
Mac unclasped the envelope on the table, opened it and removed the printout of a colorful Asian flowered vase.
“You recognize this?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “Should I?”
“We think it was in the Vorhees house.”
“Search me,” Maya said with a shrug. “I could count the number of times I’ve been in there on the fingers of my late brother Arthur’s right hand. He only had two fingers and a thumb.”
“You’ll keep watching?” asked Mac.
“Would even if you didn’t ask,” she said.
“Thank you,” he said, carefully putting the picture of the vase back in the envelope and getting up.
Outside Mac opened his notebook, found the number he needed and punched it in and waited.
Maybelle Rose said, “Yes?”
Mac described the vase in the photo he held up in front of him.
“One black little flower right near the top?”
“Yes,” said Mac.
“That was Becky’s. Mr. Vorhees gave it to her after a business trip to Tokyo last year.”
“Where was it kept in the house?” he asked.
“Becky’s bedroom on the dresser,” said Maybelle. “You find Jacob?”
“Not yet,” said Mac, but he thought it would be soon.
“I pray he’s alive,” said Maybelle.
Mac thought the boy was alive. He was close to knowing it with some certainty, but he needed the help of a friend.
Professor of botany Leo Dobrint looked up at Aiden and said, “Do you mind sitting down?”
They were in Dobrint’s small laboratory/office at Columbia University. The room was hot and had a bitter, acidic smell. Given a choice between that smell and the blood and body odors of some of the dead she routinely encountered, a decision would be hard.
Dobrint, in his sixties, thin, wearing jeans and a heavy wool shirt in apparent defiance of the weather, was sitting in front of a microscope looking at what Aiden had brought him. Dobrint’s hair was salt-and-pepper, mostly salt, and he could definitely have used a haircut.
He was also definitely irritable. She sat in the chair he pointed to a few feet away and went back to the microscope.
After five minutes or so of adjusting, mumbling to himself, he looked up at her and said, “That is the smallest specimen I’ve ever been asked or chosen to look at.”
Aiden waited.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s bloodwood. It’s been treated and preserved. It comes, most likely, from a piece of furniture or from a bloodwood floor.”
“Could you match it to a specific piece of furniture?” Aiden asked.
“Bloodwood is bloodwood,” he said with slight irritation.
“If you had the piece of furniture,” she said, “could you match it to this specimen?”
“Like a jigsaw puzzle,” he said. “Highly unlikely. It’s too small.”
“Unlikely but not impossible,” said Aiden.
“That’s right,” he said.
“Are you willing to give it a try?” she asked.
“I’m very—” he began, but Aiden interrupted.
“Two men were shot and crucified in the last three days. If you can match these pieces…”
“I can try,” he said with a sigh.
“You’ll be paid as an expert consultant.”
“Of course,” he said. “My fee will depend on how long it takes and how much trouble I run into.”
“Bill us,” she said flatly.
Danny wanted to stay away from the lab but he kept getting ideas, “what if?” ideas. There was a twelve-year-old boy missing. His family had been murdered. An image of the slaughter scene flashed in his mind. He willed it to go away. Mercifully, it did.
“You all right?” Chad Willingham asked, turning from the pile of clothe
s spread out on the table in front of him.
He had run the boy’s clothing that had been found in the woods through more tests. They had just come out of the gas chromatograph.
“Fine,” said Danny.
“Suit yourself,” said the lab tech in the white coat. “I believe in minding my own business.” He paused and added, “And everyone else’s.”
“Lights,” he said, putting on a pair of wraparound amber plastic glasses. He handed another pair to Danny.
Danny moved to the wall and turned off the lights. Chad moved back to the table with Danny behind him and switched on a ceiling-mounted red light.
“I’ve come to two conclusions,” said Chad seriously. “And I’m about to make a third.”
“What are they?” asked Danny.
Chad grinned and carefully moved around the clothing, examining the items, smelling them. At one point he put a finger in his mouth to moisten it, touched the pullover shirt and the underwear and smelled his finger.
“Three conclusions,” Danny reminded him.
“Yes,” said Chad, raising his eyebrows and continuing a careful examination of the underwear, T-shirt, jeans, socks and shoes.
“First,” said Chad. “The Who were definitely the best. Beatles, Grateful Dead, Stones, great, but The Who, immortal. I have an uncle who almost went deaf at one of their concerts.”
“Second conclusion?” asked Danny, trying not to show signs of impatience.
“You’ve got a tremor in your right hand,” Chad said, leaning over the spread-out clothing. “Come take a look.”
Danny moved to the table.
“What was I…,” said Chad. “Tremor.”
“You noticed,” said Danny with a touch of irritation.
“Cop’s syndrome number four,” said Chad.
“It has a name and number?” said Danny.
“I gave it one,” said Chad. “Job stress. I’ve noticed it more lately, started with 9/11. It goes away or it doesn’t. You see Sheila Hellyer?”
“I saw her,” Danny said. “What did you want me to look at here?”
Danny was standing at Chad’s side in front of the table.
“Pants, underwear, socks, shirt,” Chad said, pointing at each item. “Latent signs of grass, insect fecal matter, dirt, residue from a joint smoked at least four or five days before you found the evidence. But that’s not what’s interesting.”
He pointed to the shirt on the table and said, “What do you see?”
“Bloodstains,” said Danny.
“Anything else?”
“No,” said Danny.
“You got it,” said Chad. “I owe you a Thai dinner when I get my next upgrade. Make it the one after that. These clothes only show signs of dirt where they were dropped.”
“So?” asked Danny, wanting to take off the glasses, get out of the room.
“So,” said Chad. “There should have been something, not much, but something—dirt, leaves, grass, weeds—on the clothes other than where they lay on the ground.”
“I still don’t—” Danny began.
“The shirt shows traces from those woods on the front,” said Chad. “The pants show traces only on the back. The underwear shows traces only on the front, and the shoes are the oddest of all. One has scene traces on the bottom. The other shoe shows it on the side.”
Danny cursed himself silently and went to the computer, where he pulled up photos of where they had found Jacob Vorhees’ bicycle and clothing. He should have thought of this before.
“What?” asked Chad over his shoulder.
Danny went slowly through all twenty-three photographs and then sat back. If Kyle Shelton had undressed the boy or forced him to take his clothes off, why were they all over the scene?
“They were thrown around to make it look random,” said Danny. “Maybe Jacob Vorhees was never in the woods.”
“Way I see it too,” said Chad, “but wait, there’s more. You know what that is?”
Chad was pointing at a small, black-plastic-covered box at the edge of the table.
“STU-100, scent transfer unit,” said Danny.
“Right, almost forgot,” said Chad, hitting his forehead with an open palm. “You’re a crime scene investigator.”
Inside the portable forensic vacuum was a slot for five-by-nine-inch sterile gauze pads. The airflow system provided a safe method for collecting human scents from small objects, clothing, bodies, windowsills. Human scent particles, gaseous or airborne, could be moved to the pad using the vacuum in much the same way as smell. Breathing creates a vacuum that draws odors into nasal passages, where the smell kicks in.
“Human scent,” said Chad, “has historically been defined as a biological component of decomposing dead skin cells, the skin raft theory.”
“I know,” said Danny with exaggerated patience.
“Current research suggests human body odor is much more complex,” said Chad. “Like Latin.”
“Latin?”
“Well, it was complex for me,” said Chad.
“The STU,” Danny reminded him.
“Right,” said Chad. “Scents collected from expended cartridge casings in drive-by shooting cases have been used to track down the shooter. Collected the scent of Jacob Vorhees from the shoes and the scent of Kyle Shelton from the samples of his clothing you brought from his apartment. No trace of the boy’s scent on the clothes. But,” said Chad, holding up a finger, “they had been touched. The only human scent on the shorts, shirt and jeans was Kyle Shelton’s.”
“Shelton wore the boy’s clothes?” asked Danny.
“How could he…,” Chad began. “You’re kidding me.”
“I’m kidding you,” said Danny. “Shelton handled the boy’s clothes.”
“A conundrum that echoes through the history of life’s vagaries,” said Chad.
Danny nodded. Chad wanted to say more but saw that he did not have an attentive audience.
“I’ll run your samples through the gas chromatograph,” said Chad.
Danny nodded and headed for the door as Chad said, “You like Barenaked Ladies?”
“Who doesn’t?” said Danny.
“Sexist,” said Chad.
“I’ll live with it,” said Danny.
Chad noticed that Danny’s hand was no longer trembling. Danny wouldn’t notice for another ten minutes, after he had called Mac to tell him about the clean clothes and the scent of Shelton but not the boy on them.
“Fits,” said Mac.
Danny wasn’t sure how, not until Mac explained.
Stella entered her apartment. It was still relatively early in the day, but she knew she needed at least a few hours’ sleep. It wasn’t just her allergies. She had been working long days and knew that if she got too tired she might well miss something. It had happened to her before. Mac had on more than one occasion ordered her to get some rest. She had learned less from her trust in his judgment than from her experience when she didn’t get at least a minimum of sleep.
She kicked off her shoes and left them by the door. Her plan was to drink some bottled water, eat a banana yogurt and a slice of toast, and get out of her clothes.
She hadn’t finished locking her door when she sensed that something was different. It wasn’t ESP. Stella knew that even a minimal human or animal scent would be registered by the brain. So too with the flow of air if furniture had been moved. Or a slight move of an object—furniture, a vase of flowers, one of the paintings on her walls. She considered taking her gun out of her holster. What was the line from that old Night Stalker episode? “If you don’t look up, maybe it’s not there.” Stella turned into the room and looked up.
The list of people who might be seeking revenge for having been caught by her over the years was long. Then again, it could be a burglar or even the building superintendent, who had been told not to enter her apartment without her permission.
Her paintings, paintings she loved and had picked up over the years in Europe, seemed to be in pla
ce. They were not without value, but they probably were not worth more than a few thousand each. She had never had them appraised. They were not an investment.
She moved cautiously to her kitchen, everything in place, cabinet doors closed. Nothing in the refrigerator—not that there was much there—seemed to have been touched. The clothes in her bedroom closet and her drawers did not seem to have been moved and her bed was well and tightly made as she had learned to do in the orphanage. Then she moved to the bathroom. She thought there was a trace of a scuff mark on the tile floor but she couldn’t be sure. She got her kit and carefully took a sample of the material from the scuff mark.
Paranoia, she decided when she was sure she was the only one in the apartment. I’m tired, paranoid and allergic to much that exists in the world. She sneezed and moved to the medicine cabinet in the small bathroom. She definitely needed some antihistamine. Stella opened the cabinet door, saw what she was looking for and reached for the bottle.
Flack stood in front of the counter of the electronics store and listened patiently to the man who was speaking with a heavy Indian accent. The man was short, dark, thick head of hair, bad skin and about forty. He was also perspiring. His name was Al Chandrasekhar.
“I’m a second cousin of the famous physicist,” Chandrasekhar said proudly.
Flack nodded.
The small shop was crowded with glassed-in cell phones, walkie-talkies, tiny radios, tape recorders that could fit in a side pocket or purse, electronic toys, compact computers and printers, cameras and clocks. There were two potential customers at the rear of the shop, a boy and girl in their twenties, casually dressed.
Flack counted five video cameras around the shop. None were hidden. Chandrasekhar wanted potential thieves to know they were being watched.
“You have some information about who killed those two men?” asked Flack.
“I’m sorry I called 911,” the man said. “I know it wasn’t an emergency, or perhaps it was. It is really for you to decide.”
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