Stuart Kaminsky - Deluge

"What else can you tell me about the knife?" Mac asked.

"The blade nicked the pelvic bone three times," said Hammerbeck. "Punctured the spleen and liver. Impressions taken from the bones and organs should help identify the size and shape of the blade. I think I can give you enough to identify the specific knife from small indentations on the blade. Almost as good as a fingerprint."

"You've got something else," said Mac.

The ME looked down at the body and said, "Residue in the wounds, not much, but enough. I've bagged and sealed it for you. What it is I do not know."

Mac had already taken blood samples and the Starbucks cup to Jane Parsons in the DNA lab. The lab had been busy. It was always busy. The lab and the City of New York had resisted what so many other crime scene units across the country had done, sending their evidence to private labs. Time was a factor, but so was money.

Jane had promised to do the DNA testing as soon as possible and to run it through CODIS, the national DNA matching system, but first the DNA had to be extracted and analyzed. Television had created the illusion that testing could be done in a few hours or overnight. The truth was that even three days on a high-profile case was pushing the clock, depending on how many tests were scheduled and the availability of scientists. Mac also knew that it was possible, just possible and seldom done, to do a DNA test in as little as three or four hours. The use of a genetic analyzer had sped up the actual DNA test time.

But before the DNA is run through the analyzer, it has to be extracted by placing the evidence material in a vial and adding a chemical to separate the DNA from the surrounding material. Then the DNA is replicated so the scientist has more than one piece to test. The DNA is then placed into the genetic analyzer, which has ninety-six tiny wells into which scientists inject the DNA. The wells are in a rectangular block of plastic, twelve rows of eight wells. Positioned just above the wells is a row of needle-size capillaries. When the wells are filled, the scientist closes the machine and turns it on. The capillaries are then dipped into the first row of wells, where they draw up the DNA and send it into the machine. A laser light then picks out the different-size DNA particles as they pass by. The smaller pieces shoot by first, followed by the heavier, larger pieces. The result, an electropherogram, is recorded in a series of peaks, or alleles, which look like the readout on an electrocardiogram.

Jane had a lot of work to do before Mac could get any DNA results.

"Lunch in my office?" Jane had asked.

"If I can get away," he said.

"Can I lure you with pastrami on a kaiser with mustard and a pickle? On me?"

"Who could resist," he had said with a smile.

But now Mac watched Patricia Mycrant's blood wash away on the autopsy table in front of the medical examiner. Stubborn clots clung to the steel.

"Have you ever eaten Festivo Pollo Con Carne Dolce?" asked Sid.

Sid had been a successful chef for years after giving up his medical practice. No one, perhaps not even Dr. Sid Hammerbeck, knew why he had returned to medicine, why he had chosen to become a medical examiner.

"Can't say that I have," said Mac.

"I'll be happy to prepare it for you sometime," said Sid, carefully eyeing the pale corpse as he continued to wash it down.

"Thanks," said Mac.

"The trick is in the marinade," said Sid. "Marinate it too briefly and it fails to penetrate the flesh. Marinate too long and the spices overwhelm the texture of the bird."

"Fascinating," said Mac.

Sid reached down and moved Patricia Mycrant's left arm to expose the single wound in her armpit.

"This wound, almost surgically placed," he said, "dropped and nearly paralyzed her."

Mac looked at the medical examiner and said, "He knew what he was doing."

Sid nodded and continued hosing down the body.

"Ah, what have we here," he said, aiming the water at a clot along the left thigh.

Remnants of blood peeled away to reveal something deep red carved into the flesh.

"One more mystery," said Sid.

Mac leaned in closer.

"Or a clue," said Mac.

Cut into the dead woman's inner thigh was a distinct letter D.

In the small basement of the Wallen School, Bill Hexton sat in front of a black-and-white screen. Danny and Lindsay stood behind him.

Hexton looked less like a security guard than a student playing dress-up in tan slacks, a blue blazer and a loose-fitting blue and brown Wallen School tie.

"Been here long?" asked Danny.

"Not counting the six years I was a student at Wallen," Hexton said, "it's been three years. After I graduated, three years in the army, military police and then a little time in intelligence. Then right back here."

Hexton looked military. Super-close-cropped haircut, clean shaven, shoulders back.

Images drifted by on the screen, corridors, gymnasium, a dining hall.

"No bathrooms," said Hexton. "Privacy issues. No classrooms. Academic freedom issues. You can see the images roll from one camera to the next. We've got sixteen cameras. We can't afford to record all sixteen all the time so we roll from one to the other."

Both Lindsay and Danny knew the routine, but they listened patiently and watched the screen.

"There," said Hexton. "That's the corridor outside the chem lab just before nine this morning."

"Slow it down," said Danny, leaning in closer.

Hexton turned a knob on the console. Students, gray figures, moved in both directions down the hall. Some students started to enter the chemistry lab.

"Freeze that," said Danny.

Hexton pressed a button. The image stopped moving.

"Can you identify the students going into the room?"

"Sure. But we know who was in the class," said Hexton.

"Humor me," said Danny.

Hexton shrugged, pointed to the students about to enter the classroom and identified each of them.

"Okay," said Danny.

Hexton pressed a button and the image shifted to another corridor, another classroom, moving at normal speed.

"Can you jump forward, show the chem lab corridor and door when the class ended?" asked Danny.

"No problem," said Hexton. "Class would have ended at ten to ten, but Havel dismissed them halfway into the class."

"You know why?" asked Lindsay.

Hexton shook his head "no" as he watched images flash by, then slowed the tape down just before the white numbers at the top of the screen said nine-twenty.

The tape showed four students coming out of the lab. Then the image switched to the dining hall, where students were starting to trickle in.

"Find the next tape of the chem lab corridor," said Danny.

Hexton found it. The corridor was empty. The chem lab door was closed. Hexton found tapes of the corridor for the next half hour and then the image of Wayne O'Shea entering the lab.

"O'Shea says he fainted," said Lindsay.

"He could be lying," said Danny.

"Good actor? He knew the camera might be on him," said Lindsay. "I don't see any blood on him."

"I can't see O'Shea doing it," said Hexton.

"I knew a ninety-pound, eighty-two-year-old Baptist Sunday school teacher named Eloise Pringleman who'd never raised her voice to anyone," said Danny. "One morning a large, young deliveryman with a small shipment of fax machine paper for the church used the word 'fuck' as a recurring adjective. Eloise asked him to stop. He didn't. Eloise picked up a pair of very sharp scissors and created one of the bloodiest crime scenes I've ever seen. We'd like to take your tapes from this morning."

"I should check with the headmaster," said Hexton. "Student privacy issues."

"No one outside of our lab is going to see them. You gonna make us get a warrant?" asked Danny.