Red Herring

by Archer Mayor

  “But they aren’t wild guesses, either,” Shepard put in supportively, as if softening the implication that he might be more rigid than was reasonable.

  “No, no,” Eric followed. “Absolutely not. I wouldn’t have put this forth otherwise. There is a growing body of increasingly reliable research centering on what we call EVAs, or Externally Visible Characteristics. These are traits like skin, hair, and eye color, and maybe obesity, height, and whatnot; speaking of which, gender is actually an EVA. Anyhow, the goal is to come up with some Star Trek–style device where we’ll eventually be able to put a drop in one end, and get a picture of the blood’s owner out the other. That’s all science fiction right now, of course, but we are making baby step inroads.”

  “With ethnicity, for example,” Joe suggested.

  “Right,” he said brightly. “It turns out some of these EVAs are easier to nail down than others, gender being one of them. Even so, as with gender, none of it is flawless. Still, it seems that red hair and blue and brown iris color are getting much more predictable.”

  “And black skin color?” Lester suggested.

  “Right,” Eric agreed slowly. “To a slightly lesser degree, but I thought it looked good enough to suggest.”

  “Any idea on the type of cancer?” Joe asked.

  The DNA man ducked his head a moment, choosing his words. “This gets trickier. Medicinal radiation is designed to minimize damage to DNA, for good reason. Also, localized radiation is going to affect the body’s general blood supply less than radiation that’s being applied to let’s say leukemia or bone cancer. Now, of course, we can’t actually know the realities involved here, but my sources—who have a huge knowledge of irradiated blood samples—are leaning toward something long term and generalized.”

  “Like leukemia?” Joe reiterated, to be sure he understood.

  “Correct,” Eric reassured him, before following with, “but that could be completely wrong.”

  Joe shrugged. “I’ll take it anyhow, given what we’ve got. Is that it for Drop Number One?”

  Marine hit a keyboard button. “It is. This is Number Two. She’s a female with blue eyes, but that’s about it, except for the two small details that I promised to explain.”

  Joe smiled at the obvious come-on. “Which are?” he played along.

  “Let me proceed with one at a time, or none of it will make sense,” Eric said. “To begin with, the DNA is degraded.”

  “What’s that mean?” Les asked. “The guy left the sample lying around?”

  “That’s a distinct possibility,” the scientist agreed. “But I was intrigued by an additional hypothesis: that the blood was extracted from someone dead.”

  “What?” Joe blurted out.

  Eric held up a hand while striking another key, explaining, “This is Drop Number Three, which is not only what made me return to Number Two to consider my hypothesis, but which also explains the second unusual feature I mentioned about Number Two. Let me start by saying that Number Three is significantly degraded, far more so than Number Two. That coincidence made me consider the possible parallels between either collection techniques or—shall we say—the raw material used.”

  Mimicking his colleague earlier, Wayne Shepard chuckled and muttered, “You’ll love this.”

  His partner continued. “Here’s the kicker that lends it credibility: Number Three is contaminated with just a smidgeon of leftover Number Two DNA.”

  Marine beamed at them both as if he’d just delivered the goose to Tiny Tim’s family.

  Lester merely stared back at him. Joe had to concede, “I’m sorry, Eric. I’m afraid I just don’t get it.”

  “Think funeral home,” Wayne suggested.

  “The blood came from there?” Joe asked, his mouth open.

  “Not definitively, but it fits,” Eric said enthusiastically, his face cheerful. “It strikes me as more reasonable that this person stole blood from two corpses, in the privacy of a funeral home, than that he was using a technique so sloppy that he consistently ruined his samples. I mean, how would such a worker stay employed? And the contamination is the smoking gun: He extracted Number Two’s blood first, using a clean syringe, and then followed by immediately drawing Number Three’s sample, with the same syringe, thereby tainting Three with a bit of Two’s DNA. That not only links the two samples, but it puts them in a logical sequence.”

  “But do funeral homes use anticoagulant?” Lester asked. “And where did he put Two’s blood to make room in the syringe for Three?”

  All three of them looked at him.

  “Good point,” Joe said, impressed.

  “Maybe it’s not a funeral home,” Wayne suggested. “A hospital morgue would have blood tubes nearby. Your bad guy could be filling his pockets as he walks down the hallway—a little here, a little there. Still, scientifically, there are anomalies, perhaps indicating that we’re completely wrong.”

  Joe scratched his forehead. The transition from evidential dead end to suggestion overload was fogging his brain. “No. I like it. It’s not that it doesn’t make sense. It just takes getting used to. Okay, okay. Let’s leave that where it is for the moment. What more did you get on Number Three?”

  But Eric had to admit defeat. “That was it. A male. Nothing else stood out. Sorry.”

  “Except that both Two and Three could be dead,” Lester pitched in.

  Eric couldn’t allow that, as hopeful as it sounded. “Or that their blood was carelessly collected. Degraded blood is just that, no more or less. It doesn’t necessarily speak of its host.”

  There was a telling silence before Lester said hopefully, “We still have the fact that all the blood was stored in tubes with anticoagulant.”

  “And the likelihood,” Shepard added, “that both Two’s and Three’s blood was collected at the same time in the same place, regardless of whether that was a funeral home or a hospital morgue or someplace else entirely.”

  “Which tells me,” Les contributed, “that both bodies were sharing a rack. That means records that can be checked for a blond, blue-eyed female who was stored alongside a male.”

  Joe nodded and stood up, smiling broadly and releasing the two scientists from any more speculation. “We’ve got a ton better than that, even, all because of you two and your willingness to help. There’s more on our plates now than I know what to do with until we sort it out at home.”

  He leaned over and shook their hands warmly, adding, “But that’s what we’re supposed to know how to do.”

  Eric Marine looked saddened that they were parting ways. “You’ll tell us what happens?”

  Joe laughed. “Not only that; I may be bugging you for more details as we go. In fact, count on it.”

  Wayne Shepard stood also. “We will. It’s been a real pleasure putting science to such use.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Joe sat on the edge of the conference table and took in the scattered debris of coffee cups, doughnut boxes, discarded stirrers, and crumpled napkins. There had been fifteen people circling the table moments earlier, from various departments and agencies, convened from as far away as Burlington’s VBI office—the largest in the state—for a top priority, highly confidential law enforcement meeting to explain the Brookhaven findings and coordinate a massive, and discreet, task force response.

  And now they’d left on their various assignments, trickling out of the Brattleboro corporate headquarters’ parking lot of Vermont Yankee in unmarked cars so as not to attract attention. VY, as it was commonly known, often made its conference rooms available for quiet assemblages—yet another public service that the state’s sole nuclear energy provider probably offered to atone for sins no such plant believed existed.

  It had been a risk for Joe to expand the numbers of those cops in-the-know, but he didn’t have much choice. He needed the manpower. Besides, word was going to get out soon enough that they were pursuing a triple murder serial killer, after which the Stan Katzes of the world would turn the entire
investigation into a free-for-all.

  “You don’t look happy.”

  Sammie Martens was standing in the distant doorway, watching him.

  He gave her a half smile. “Just meditating.”

  “You got a lot of good stuff at Brookhaven.” She stepped inside and resumed the seat she’d had at the meeting.

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “Something’ll come of it. Sooner the better, though.”

  “You good with inviting VSP to play?”

  He crossed to the white board and began erasing his talking points. He’d started from the beginning, with Doreen, and taken them all for the entire journey. It had lasted two hours, including questions, and he’d covered a lot of wall space.

  “They’re a good outfit,” he said, slightly irritated. “The divide-and-conquer days are over, or ought to be. We may bitch about each other, even with good cause, but we more than most have to set an example. Where’s Willy, speaking of which?”

  She let out a short laugh. “He thinks he’s in the woodshed.”

  Joe stopped to look at her. “You’re kidding. A) I didn’t think he cared, and B) he should know me better. I’m just glad he thought ahead to get a judge involved and make busting McNaughton legal. It would’ve been nice if he or the SA had told us that he had a search warrant all along.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “You’re not pissed he went after McNaughton?”

  Joe spoke as he resumed wiping with long, cursive strokes. “Chuck McNaughton’s a weasel. I never thought he did in Doreen, much less the other two, but I’m happy he’s staring at jail time for something. If Willy was trying to get my goat, he’ll have to do better than that.”

  “You think the real guy is done killing?” Sam asked, changing the subject.

  He paused again, his eraser poised over a list he’d been adding to throughout the meeting. “Hard to say. I mean, look at this.” He tapped the board. In his neat block handwriting was the stack of assignments his much expanded team was currently pursuing:

  Oil undercoating shops—customers

  Funeral homes—employees & records

  Hospitals—employees & morgue records

  Rescue squads—employees

  Lumber stores—customers for oak, especially

  Acetylene suppliers—customers

  Known welders

  Doctors’ offices—for black men with cancer

  Gun shops and reloader suppliers—for gunpowder

  Newspaper obits for recently deceased blond females

  “Somewhere in here,” he told her, “is a guy with a serious grudge. Logic says he’ll surface in several areas at once—like a woodworking welder who works at a funeral home and volunteers at a hospital. But we thought we’d find a common thread when we put our three murder victims under a microscope, too.”

  “And got nothing,” Sam added quietly.

  “Exactly,” Joe agreed, and continued erasing. “So, we have no rationale to pin on him. I haven’t a clue why he’s done this—or why he’s still doing it, maybe. And I sure as hell don’t know if he’ll keep going. The cliché is that these guys don’t stop, but I think that’s a dangerous assumption here.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “It misses that he might have a goal. It’s not like he has an appetite for kids, or brunettes, or people who love Chihuahuas. This all looks totally random to us, as if he walked down the street and shot a few people in the head on a whim. But he’s an arrogant son of a bitch, too, and I’m betting he has a huge chip on his shoulder.”

  “Because of the blood drops?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Why do that, unless you need to stand out somehow?”

  “He wants to be caught?” Sam suggested.

  Joe scowled. “Maybe, but that’s too easy and it doesn’t tell us anything. I think it’s more that he needs to look good—to himself, and maybe to someone else, too.”

  “He’s showing off.”

  “He’s looking for respect,” Joe corrected, adding, “I’m just not sure who his audience is. But if I’m right, and he achieves whatever stature he’s after, he’ll more than likely stop.”

  He finished erasing the list. “Not that I’d mind that,” he admitted. “God knows, we don’t need people to keep killing in order to catch them.”

  He stopped again to fix her with a quizzical look.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I was just reminded of something. A thousand years ago, when I was a rookie, I handled a small break-in at the high school. Someone stole some supplies—no big deal—but I was asked what I was going to do about it, and I answered, ‘Nothing.’ They were ticked off, of course. Thought I was being lazy. But I asked them, ‘Why do you do something like this? Because you’re in need of some pads and chalk and a few pens? You do it to brag about it later. You have to tell your buddies.’ ”

  Sammie was smiling. “And your buddies will trade it with us when we bust them for something else down the line.”

  “Right.”

  She nodded, but couldn’t resist asking, “Okay, Obi-Wan, did you nail your man?”

  He laughed. “Nope. Guess we never busted the right buddy.”

  Gini Coursen looked up into her son’s face. “Move it a little higher.”

  Ike Miller reached behind her and pulled the pillow closer to her shoulder blades, catching a whiff of her body odor in the process. He stepped back, his expression neutral. His mother didn’t actually suffer from any ailments that her own terrible habits hadn’t brought on, but that didn’t mean that by this point she could barely function.

  “Where’s the remote?” she asked.

  He located it in a fold of the comforter spread across the bed and dropped it on her lap. Across the dark and dingy bedroom, an enormous plasma TV set filled the room with a kaleidoscope of projected colors as a rapid succession of young women advertising shampoo swirled their hair like the skirts of contra dancers spinning across the dance floor.

  Gini Coursen began flipping channels, looking for anything with either canned laughter or contestants screaming with their hands above their heads—her two favorites.

  Ike watched her profile as she hunted, his emotions torn.

  “You want something to drink?” he asked.

  She didn’t turn her head. “Why?”

  “No reason. Just thought you might.”

  “What I want is the newspaper.”

  His gaze dropped to the floor. “There’s nothing in it.”

  She stopped mangling the remote long enough to stare at him. “Why not? I thought you had this figured out.”

  “I do, Ma,” he murmured, both angry and embarrassed.

  She shook her head and went back to patrolling the channels. “Doesn’t look like it. This big plan of yours. Ben would’ve been less talk and more action.”

  “That’s what put him in jail,” Ike blurted out, instantly regretful.

  Gini looked at him, openmouthed. “What did you say?”

  He held both hands out to his sides, palms open. “It’s true, Ma. I mean, I loved him, too, but he did . . .”

  She hit his thigh with the back of her hand. “Don’t you go there, you shit-bird.”

  He stepped back, his face red with fury, “Shit-bird? After what I did for you? You really think Benny would’ve given a flying fuck?”

  Now it was her turn to rue her words. She reached out to him. “Ike—honey. You’re right, you’re right. I didn’t mean it that way. It just came out.”

  “Well, stop it,” he cautioned, but his voice had lost its edge.

  “I just miss him sometimes,” she said, her sincerity jarring with the commercial music in the background.

  “I know, Ma. I do, too,” Ike conceded.

  She was finally able to take hold of his hand. He found hers too soft, warm, and damp for comfort, but he didn’t let it go.

  “Do you?” she asked.

  That sparked his ire again, and he took advantage of it to break off contact. “Jesus . . .”
r />   “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she quickly wailed. “It’s just . . . Sometimes, you act so hard.”

  Ike moved toward the doorway, hating this sort of emotional tar pit. He liked things more orderly.

  He looked around at his mother’s domain—cluttered, dirty, smelling of mold and human being. What she called her nest, and he tried not to think about. “You all set for now?”

  “Tea?” she asked, with the little-girl smile he hated.

  “Right.” He turned on his heel and left, walking rapidly, only stopping once he’d reached the kitchen.

  That wasn’t much cleaner—he was no neat-freak himself—but nothing smelled, and she virtually never came in there, preferring her bed and not willing to use the walker. That somehow helped it seem brighter.

  Instead of pouring her tea, he sat at the kitchen table by the window. He was at the far end of the house. The hallway, his bedroom, and the bathroom they shared lay in between her nest and here. He actually wasn’t sure what this house was called—a prefab, a converted trailer. It didn’t have wheels, but it was long and narrow and didn’t have a cellar. It was a dump, too, and on a plot of land that looked more like a car graveyard than a homesite, there were so many wrecks scattered around.

  It was also buried in the woods, off a dirt road few people traveled, shrouded by a tangle of uncared for trees and an odd and sudden outcropping of huge granite boulders that he presumed had been left behind by a glacier long before.

  They didn’t own any of it, including the car corpses. They were renters, beholden to a landlord Ike had met only once and who’d never shown any interest in them, their welfare, the integrity of the property, or even—to a large extent—the rent, which he seemed happy to get whenever it appeared.

  Which is exactly the way Ike liked it—from the cars to the mud to the leaky roof and poorly insulated walls, to the sagging wooden garage across the way where he kept his office, which is what he called a plank desk against the far wall of a dirt-floored shack equipped with an enormous and no doubt dangerous woodstove. His computer was there, though, and his collection of printouts and news clips. That’s where he did his thinking.