Robert Walker - Killer Instinct

“ I thought there could be.”

J.T. gulped, his Adam's apple bobbing just below the double eyepiece of the massive microscope that hummed with life. “I think you've really hit on something here, Jess.”

“ If what I think went on at the crime scene did go on, we've got one cold bastard on our hands, J.T., and he's likely to strike again. Most likely sometime around the beginning of next month.”

His eyes went from the sample to her, staring.

“ Don't look at me! Get those shots in sequence.”

Each layer of the throat had been put in culture and prepared for the microscope, placed atop one another and slipped below the eyepiece in rapid succession, making a kind of movie of the photo process. This would then be fed to the computer for enhancement and contour.

Death investigation required large sums of money for personnel and for extremely expensive equipment, like the scanning electron microscope. The SEM detected the minutest of changes in the surfaces of tissue, telltale evidence left by, for example, a bullet, a knife or a blunt object. With a record of patterns and through experience, Thorpe could detect, for instance, if the section of skin he was looking at was punctured by a screwdriver or an ice pick. This instrument had a magnification of up to 50,000 times the size of the specimen, and this was projected onto the accompanying television screen in a three-dimensional image. It could detect the difference between a burn from a cigarette, a fire or torture; it could detect microscopic metallic elements down to rust from an unclean knife. It helped determine whether a knife wound was from a finely honed knife or a dull one, a scalpel or a serrated blade. It could even tell whether a cancer was caused by asbestos, and of the four kinds of asbestos, the SEM could tell which was present.

The SEM accomplished these feats because it did not work on the principle of light passing through the specimen, but bombarded the specimen instead with electrons, creating an incredibly precise image through the electromagnetic lens. Still photos could be taken as the image was sent back. These could be blown up for the nonscientist to see more clearly.

The much more portable TEM, transmission electron microscope, was an electronic version of the tried-and-true microscope. Both instruments were so sensitive to vibration that they were intentionally located in a subbasement, surrounded by solid concrete; the place sometimes made people claustrophobic, but not the scientists, whose minds were so directed on what was beneath the electron spray of the scope that hours might pass by without their realizing it.

An array of other computerized instruments that measured, sifted and otherwise separated the minutiae of a crime-the puzzle pieces-such as the gas chromatograph, or GC, machine, filled the rooms of Section IV of the Quantico labs.

Jessica was in love with the place. So, too, was J.T.

John Thorpe was a tall man, large with hands like a pair of flatirons, and yet his touch over the instruments was sensitive and light. He was aware of what she'd found now, a telltale straw hole that had punctured the dead girl's jugular but had been masked by the larger butcher's cut that had torn half her throat away, the cosmetic wound which they were supposed to have taken as the killing wound, one Raynack had possibly allowed himself to be fooled by in earlier cases.

“ So tell me what you see, John.”

He ran his hand through his hair. “It's peculiar, a circular cut definitely present, like… like a tracheotomy scar, isn't it? A catheter or tube of some sort with a beveled, sharp end, the kind used to free a blocked artery, make a circumvention in the blood or windpipe.”

“ I'll check with the family physician, see if there's any record of a tracheotomy ever having been performed on the Copeland girl.”

She glanced into the microscope now that it was on its last frame, the tissue all but gone. “Certainly a precision cut; sure knew what he was doing. Didn't sever the back side of the vein; knew just how deep to penetrate to the millimeter, like he'd had some practice.”

J.T. took a deep breath and let it out with his words. “Just lodged this thing into her jugular to… to…”

“ To open a vein,” she finished for him, then saw that he had gone a bit white. “You okay? Want to get some breakfast before taking these to the computer?”

They both knew the process of computer enhancement would take some time and that at this point a slight error could cause irreparable damage.

“ You need everything you can get by sixteen-hundred hours. But this… this'll blow their socks off. Just how the hell did you see it at the scene?”

“ Didn't. I missed the severed tendons, too. Picked up on both at autopsy yesterday.”

“ Still, even at autopsy? How'd you ever know to look below the larger gash for this?” He indicated the microscope.

“ Stumbled on it when I was taking measurements of the throat gash. I took two measurements, and they didn't add up. The creep dug deep on both sides of the jugular, but he left the center almost intact. Either careless error or he's taunting us, playing games, hiding his little secret almost too well. I just got lucky.”

He lightly laughed at this. “Nahhh, nobody just lucks onto something like this. You're a wizard, lady.”

“ No, no, I'm just careful, like yourself,” she replied before her tone again became serious. “You do realize what this means, J.T.? That we're going to have to take another and a closer look at the earlier victims.”

“ Raynack's mistakes.”

“ Now, come on, no one made any mistakes,” she corrected him. “Like I told you, if you weren't looking, or if you weren't lucky enough to stumble on it, this wound to the jugular would never surface. It just so happened that I looked for strangulation signs in the larynx and-”

“ I rest my case. You thought to look more closely at the throat, ignoring the gross wounds. Raynack-”

“ J.T., no more about Raynack's oversights. Regardless, we're going to have to do some exhuming.”

She saw by his facial expression that his enthusiasm had taken a nosedive. No one cared to exhume a body, not even a forensics specialist. ' 'Sure, makes sense… check each victim for the straw-hole mark, right?”

“ It could tell us the whole story, or it could be for nothing. I'm going to put in the order, and we'll see what comes of it.”

“ Better not let Raynack get wind of this.”

“ He won't… not from me. So I'd appreciate complete discretion, okay?”

“ You Jcnow you can trust me.”

“ And as for the enlargements on the electron photos, and the computer-enhanced-”

“ Count on it.”

“ By sixteen hundred?”

“ Sure… don't worry about the pictures. They'll be in your hands by three.”

“ Two-thirty.”

“ Don't push it.”

“ And J.T.?”

“ Yeah, boss?”

“ I'd like you to be in the meeting with-”

“ Aw, come on, I hate those things.”

“ We've got to convince them of what we've got here, and I may not be able to do that without you standing there corroborating everything I say.”

He shook his head over this. “Come on, you're department head here, Jess; time to throw off that mortal coil and those chains of womanhood that-”

“ No, it's no time for any bullshit, or for me to stand on principle, however good! Dammit, J.T., trust me. There can't be a man in that room that leaves with even a shadow of doubt about what kind of fiend we're dealing with.” At the back of her mind, also, she wanted no one leaving the meeting thinking that Chief Boutine had blundered in sending her to Wisconsin. “Please, J.T.”

“ It's your show. Boutine wants you to handle it, not me.”