Jeff Mariotte: Blood Quantum

A book in the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation series, 2010

My sincere gratitude goes out to all the hardworking people behind CSI, to Maryann, to Ed, to Dianne Larson, to Howard and Katie, to the Crime Lab Project, and to authors Jeff Edwards, Jan Burke, and Dr. D. P. Lyle, MD.

It all happened so fast.

That was what people always said about this sort of thing, as if their minds couldn't quite keep up with the rocket-propelled pace of events. That wasn't how Drake McCann felt about it, though. To him, it had happened at the speed of life, no faster and certainly no more slowly.

He had been kicking back in his suite on the Cameron estate, watching some late-night TV with Kathleen Slides, the family's live-in housekeeper. They were friendly, nothing more complicated than that. Both were single, but he knew he wasn't her type. If he had a type, he had never figured out what it was, despite years of trial and error. And although he had dated fellow employees a couple of times, it always seemed to go bad. Someone made a mistake, and the whole situation ended up in Mrs. Cameron's lap, and she gave one of those stern lectures she was so good at, talking to the help as if they were wayward toddlers, and then fired one of them. So far, he had been lucky and had not been the primary target of her wrath, but last time it had been dose, and McCann had decided not to take that chance again. The world was full of women who didn't work for his employer.

Kathleen was a petite blonde who wasn't hard on the eyes, they had some laughs together, and they both enjoyed watching celebrities plug their wares on the tube after Mrs. Cameron had dismissed them and the day's work was done. That was good enough for now. He didn't need romance, and he enjoyed her company, and she seemed comfortable in his. Safe all the way around.

McCann was in charge of security for the estate, so even though he had a man on duty, when the front gate opened up, red lights flashed on instrument panels in his living room and bedroom. No visitors were expected that night, so he flicked on a monitor and selected the camera trained down the driveway toward the gate.

He was reaching for his phone when the call came in.

"I see him," McCann said.

"Know him?" Lyle Armstrong asked.

"Never seen him before." The monitor showed a white male who looked homeless at best and maybe deranged on top of it. His clothes were filthy, pants with the knees blown out and the hems ragged from being walked on, a shirt that might once have been white underneath a corduroy blazer that looked as if it had been wrapped around a truck tire and driven on for a hundred miles of hard road. The guy could have been wearing the jacket at the time. His hair was long and wild, ditto his thick brown beard. McCann could make out some facial scars from there, over the small monitor. The man's eyes glinted with madness, and he had an uneven gait, not quite a limp but almost. His hands were empty, but they kept bunching into tight fists, then relaxing.

"I'm in the control room. Want me to -"

McCann cut off the question. "You stay on the cameras, Lyle. And call the police. I'll intercept him."

He turned away from the monitor and nearly ran into Kathleen, who had come up behind him and was staring at the screen. "Who do you think that is?" she asked.

"No idea."

"But he came through the gate, right?"

The gate had still been swinging shut when the image first appeared on McCann's monitor. "Yeah. He must have got the code from someone, or he just got lucky. Either way, he's not supposed to be here."

Because Kathleen had been over, McCann was still dressed in a polo shirt and khaki pants. He pulled on a windbreaker against the cool of the April night, slipped on some loafers, and took a.38 revolver from his gun cabinet. It was loaded – he didn't keep unloaded weapons in the cabinet – but just the same, he checked to make sure.

"Be careful," she said.

"This is what I do," he reminded her. "Anyway, that guy's not going to be a problem. His kind never is. Probably just off his meds."

"Should I go to my room?"

"You can stay here if you want. I'll be back in a few. Let me know if Letterman says anything funny."

With the.38 in his hand and his hand in the windbreaker pocket, he went out, locking the suite's front door behind him. He had a private entrance, off the back of the main house. A paved walkway led around the west side of the building, down along the tennis court, then wound through a rose garden and over to the driveway. McCann took it at a near jog, wanting to get in front of the guy before he got close to the house. Helena Cameron had enough problems these days. The last thing she needed was to worry about intruders.

When McCann emerged from the roses, the stranger was still a good way down the flood-lit drive. His limp made his progress slow and ungainly, almost as if he had to remind his left leg to keep up with the right at every step. He was looking down at the ground and muttering something McCann couldn't make out.

"That's far enough, pal," McCann said. "Let's just stop right there."

The guy snapped his head up and glared at McCann. He could have been anywhere from twenty-five to forty-five; hard living and desert sun had creased and leathered his skin. Eyes that had looked a little crazy on the monitor a few minutes ago burned with rage. As far as McCann could tell, that rage was directed at him.

The guy shouted something. McCann couldn't make out the words, so garbled they might have been in a foreign language, but the tone was of barely restrained fury.

"I said hold it right there," McCann ordered. He showed the gun.

The guy took it in at a glance and spat out more unintelligible words, but he didn't stop or slow. He was stoned, drunk, mentally ill, or all three at once. McCann wasn't quite sure he was speaking English or that he understood it when it was spoken to him. He suspected that what came across as anger probably wasn't really, that the man just couldn't control his emotions or project them the way sane people did. But he couldn't afford to count on that hunch. He had to play it as safe as he could and assume the intruder was every bit the threat he appeared to be.

"Freeze," McCann said. He pointed the gun at the guy's midsection. "You've gone far enough. The police are on the way."

The man kept coming. A wave of stench engulfed McCann, the sour reek of clothing gone too long without washing, of a body that hadn't bathed in some time. His feet spread for balance, McCann held up his left hand, palm out, the universal signal for stop right there.

But this guy didn't clue in. He took another awkward step forward, then another. The smell of him closed around McCann's throat like the fingers of a strong hand. "I won't warn you again."

The guy said something else, his words so slurred that McCann couldn't make them out, and he shoved his right hand deep into the pocket of his shabby blazer. In the unrelenting wash of the flood-lights, the shape in that pocket looked threatening.

As promised, McCann didn't bother with another warning. His job was to protect Mrs. Cameron and her property. Since he didn't hear sirens yet, and Willy hadn't arrived to provide backup, he squeezed the trigger, and the.38 in his hand boomed.

The shot tore into the man's left side. He staggered back, pulling his right hand out of the pocket with something clutched in it. McCann fired once more, twitching the barrel just a little. The second shot hit the man dead center, and he crumpled and went down.