“How about her family? Have they seen her?”
“I’ve spoken with people who haven’t seen her skinny, tight leather ass in years! Where the hell is she?”
“Calm down…” It was probably just as well she couldn’t decipher the words that followed her suggestion. “Maybe you should come back here tonight.”
“Right. I’ll hide under your bed. Smart thinking, Nina.”
“Maybe you should call me when you get over yourself!”
The phone clicked, and he was gone.
About three o’clock in the morning, after driving off a bridge at Big Sur and finding it difficult to open the windows once the car was submerged in the Pacific, Nina gave up her nightly battle for rest and made herself a cup of coffee. She pushed open the creaky living room window and looked out at the empty street, smelling the salt of the ocean and listening to its whispers.
The phone rang.
A phone ringing at three o’clock in the morning is not like a phone at any other time of day. It bawled through the house, more frightening and piercing than a child screaming in distress, a siren announcing imminent calamity. She stumbled, running to stop it. “Hello?”
“Ms. Reilly? This is Carol Elliott. I share a lab with Dr. Hirabayashi.”
“Ginger?”
“I know she’s been doing some time-sensitive work for you, and I thought I should call. Also, I didn’t want you hearing about it in the media tomorrow without some warning.”
“Hearing what? Where’s Ginger? Why isn’t she calling?”
“She can’t. I’m calling from the hospital. Someone broke into the building where we work. He stabbed the guard on duty, stole his keys, and ransacked our lab. Ginger’s still unconscious.”
Nina touched the scar on her chest, cold, remembering. “Was she stabbed?”
“No, although I wasn’t sure at first when I found her. She put up one hell of a fight. The lab’s wrecked.” She must have realized how frightening this sounded, so she went on hastily, “He hit her in the forehead with something and knocked her out. She’s had a mild concussion. She has a cracked rib and a black eye. But she’ll be fine.”
“Thank God. How’s the guard?”
“He took some serious cuts on the arms and hands, but he’ll make it. Another guard saw the attack happening and called for help right away. Unfortunately, nobody came quick enough to catch the guy that got Ginger.”
Horror tugged at Nina. Ginger could have been killed. “Who did this? Do the police know?”
“They don’t know who and they don’t know why. They seem to think maybe someone was looking for drugs. There’s a surveillance video but the police said it wasn’t helpful. He was wearing a mask.”
“Were any drugs stolen?”
“Nothing that we could determine.”
She puzzled over the information. “Was anything taken?”
“Nothing of value, although it did look like her bench had been swept clean.”
“What was on it?”
“As far as I can remember, bones. Labeled as being from you. That’s why I called. I’m assuming the bones were taken by this intruder. I told the police and gave them your number.”
Bones, again. What was the story on these damnable bones? “When can I talk to her?”
“Tomorrow morning. They want her to rest.”
“Should I come up? I’m only a few hours away.”
“No, really, you can’t do anything. I wish I could tell you more, but I just got here.”
“You’ve heard something,” Paul said, once he was awake enough to answer his phone. Nina explained about Ginger. When she was finished, he said, “Shit. This is my fault.”
“You couldn’t have prevented this.”
“She was up against a pro. Amazing that she survived.”
“She practices karate three times a week. She fought like crazy, probably kept herself alive. You’re sure it was Krilov? The Russian?”
“It was the Russian.”
“The bones, Paul. Why would Sergey Krilov take them? Why are they worth a guard’s life, a priest’s life, a doctor’s life? He’s gone on some sort of rampage. I’m calling Alex Zhukovsky again.”
“I think the rampage is over,” Paul said. “He wanted the bones, and he has them. Have the Sacramento police call me too when they get in touch. I can’t believe I let that bastard touch Ginger.”
Friday morning Nina made a few calls, then got Bob off to school, which wasn’t simple.
“I hate this school. I hate all the kids.”
“Why don’t you make more of an effort?” she said. She was making his lunch, slapping blackberry jelly and peanut butter on wheat bread, tossing a bag of chips and a milk carton in the brown bag. Ordinarily, he made his own lunch, but when he was this contrary, he would go without rather than compromise. “Join a club. Get involved in fund-raising for the cross-country team. People are the same everywhere, you know. It’s not a regional thing.”
“I disagree,” he said, folding his arms. “Here they are all the same. They wear the same stupid Carmel clothes. They like the same jerk music and the same lame movies. They grew up together and I’m a freak and I hate it, Mom.”
He would not go, he informed her, refusing to eat, refusing to dress, and finally, refusing to get into the car until she threatened him with various punishments, and one finally caught his attention. “Get in that car now,” she said, “or I will take away your music. I will take away your computer and I will dump it in a ravine!”
One thing she had done right with him. She never made promises she didn’t fully intend to keep, and he knew it. He dragged around, but he got dressed and made it outside.
All the way there, while he maintained a silence as noxious and pervasive as the fumes spewing from the garbage truck up ahead, she agreed with him in her heart. For sensitive souls, such was high school. But if he was that kind of boy, it would probably prove just as hellacious at Tahoe.
After she dropped him at the school, forcing him to lean in for the kiss he was still just young enough not to refuse her, she parked on the street and tried calling the hospital. They found Ginger right away.
“Hey, you,” she said. “They shaved a perfect bald square very neatly in the hair above my forehead so they could dress the cut,” she said. “Normally, I might consider it a serendipitous style- statement, but I just got a really good haircut, damn it.”
“How are you?”
“Leaving as soon as they unhook the IV.”
“The guard’s doing okay.”
“I heard. Phil fought back. And the funny thing is, this kid, this loser, the other guard? He was quick enough to get people there that got Phil help, and interrupted the attack on me, without risking his own skin. Phil’s saving for a houseboat so he and his wife can spend their golden years floating around on Lake Shasta, drinking mai tais. Right this second, I’m motivated to join them.”
“What happened, exactly?”
“I knocked the knife out of his hand, I do remember that, but there were too many potential weapons in our lab, turns out. He whacked me on the head with the ezda, I’m told, although I jumped away and avoided serious damage. I hope I got his nuts good, at least.”
“The ezda? What’s that?”
“That bum, Kevan, talked us into buying an ESDA a couple of months ago. It’s an electrostatic device that detects indented writing on questionable documents. It’s as big as a portable copy machine, so this guy is strong.”
“Did you get a look at him?”
“No. He had a ski mask on. Somebody ought to outlaw those things, or at least register the name of any purchasers. I wish I knew who it was, because I consider our business unfinished. And I don’t like pending business.”
“We know-we think we know who attacked you, Ginger.”
“Great. I’ve got a pen. Just give me his address and I’ll take care of the rest.”
“His name is Sergey Krilov. He’s involved in our case, although I’m not sure how. We don’t know where he is. Anyway, you leave him to the police, Ginger.”
“Speaking of that, the police asked Carol to make a list of what’s missing from the lab, and it’s pretty clear what Krilov wanted, Nina, since he took every single thing on my bench.”
“He wanted the bones.”
“Yep.”
“And he got them.”
“Yep.” But Ginger sounded almost blithe, and Nina thought, she must be on Vicodin.
“Shit,” Nina said. “Now I’m more sure than ever-”
“Don’t fret, baby, he didn’t get everything. Just before he arrived, I decided to do another marrow extraction. I took fresh samples. I stored them in the fridge. I asked Carol to check this morning. Still there, frosty as they ought to be.”
“Really?”
“No shit.”
“That’s a great break!”
“The son of a bitch missed ’em. Yippee! We still don’t know why the bones are important, but it’s more obvious than ever that they are. I have new test results. I wish I could tell you what they meant. I can’t. Yet.”
“Right.” That meant Nina should cancel the appointment she had rushed to make this morning with Jaime. She had thought, with the bones missing, there was a chance she could get some time out of him, more time to develop their case. Since they still had marrow, that wouldn’t play.
“Ginger, this is important. Don’t tell anyone you have the marrow. That’s between you, me, and Paul.”
“And Carol. She’s cool. I’ll need new copies of the DNA profiles for our defendant and victim from you. They’re gone.”
“Done.” She made a note for Sandy to send copies immediately.
“I’ve run some new tests on the marrow, and I’m getting some good ideas. Sorry I can’t say what yet. I’m not sure I even remember. But the results weren’t lying on my bench, they were on the counter by the fridge, and Carol has ’ em safe. Is that cool or what?”
“That’s very cool. Do you feel able to stay on the phone with me a few more minutes? I have a strange little angle we’re working.” Nina filled her in on what she and Paul had been thinking, that
