This was another reason Private was the best place for Justine to work, or investigate a murder. Processing DNA took an eternity at the city lab because of the length of the line and the sheer volume of cases. At Private, it would take twenty-four hours from the git to the go because the forensic lab was Private’s, and because Wendy Borman was job one.
The basement level was blazing with artificial light at four in the morning. Sci’s crew had been working for twenty hours straight, running swabs over Wendy Borman’s clothes, which had been stored in the LAPD evidence room for five years.
The clothing had been packaged correctly after Borman’s body was discovered, but the rain and garbage had already contaminated the evidence. Still, more sensitive equipment and a new form of capturing trace had emerged since the murder. It was called “touch DNA.”
Sci believed in happy endings, and his optimism drove him across the desert of repetitive tasks, inconclusive results, and negative findings.
He had ordered the Borman clothing to be swabbed under the left arm of the jersey shirt and in the fold of a sock, places that hadn’t been soaked by the rain.
After separating the DNA from the substrate and copying the DNA in a thermal cycler, Sci ran the samples through an instrument the size and shape of an office copy machine, a method called capillary electrophoresis. In this procedure, the material was sent through a long pathway, a capillary, that separated the DNA with attached dye by size and electrical charge. The output would be displayed as an electrophoretogram, ready to be matched against the national DNA database.
Kat’s image was on one of Sci’s desktop monitors. He glanced in her direction to tell her how the work was going.
“Still here with me, sweetheart?”
“You forget the time difference, Sci,” she said. “There are other things I should be doing.”
“Like what? Name something.”
“Anything would be more productive, darling. Defragging my hard drive. Organizing my tax receipts. Having a nice lunch with Helga, whom I despise-Sci. Look at your integrator. You have something there!”
Sci looked at the printout. There was one set of peaks-and then another. It was a freaking miracle: two single-source samples had been identified, both with Y chromosomes.
This was a bombshell, actually.
Sci turned to Kit-Kat, his open mouth curling into a smile.
“Two males put their hands on Wendy Borman’s clothes. You believe it, Kat? We’ve got evidence. Beautiful, solid evidence.”
Kat was saying, “I must be bringing you the luck.”
“Baby, baby, what a lucky charm you are.”
“So, you are welcome, and I will be going now.”
“Stick around while I run the profiles through the system.”
“You are looking for a spindle in a haystack,” said Kat. “And there are haystacks out to the horizon. As far as the eye can see.”
“We can pass the time together, anyway,” said Sci. “I like it when you’re here with me.”
Kat smiled. “Okay. Let’s dance, good-looking.”
Chapter 71
Everybody at private was involved with Schoolgirl, and they all cared about the case. Mo-bot was in her pod in the lab down the hall from Sci. She’d personalized her windowless space with a recliner, scarves draped over her lamps, a slide show of her kids on the monitor to her left, an aquarium of utsuri to her right, and incense burning at all times.
Jason Pilser’s laptop was open in front of her.
Mo used a unique program she’d developed. She called it her “master key.” She had already begun to pick Pilser’s passwords, frisk his hard drive, rifle through the remains of his electronic brain.
“I’m into his e-mail,” she called out to Sci. “I’m the best. Right, Sci?”
“Motherboard of all geeks, Mo,” he called back to her.
“You got that right. Watch me now.”
Jason Pilser had been a pack rat when it came to electronic communication. He deleted nothing, and he utilized several screen names. Mo easily cracked open his office account, skimmed the memos to and from his bosses and colleagues. They revealed nothing, meant nothing, led to nothing, so she moved on.
Pilser’s Commandos of Doom mailbox was listed under the screen name Atticus. Mo-bot attacked the password and it fell. Then she ransacked the suspect’s files. Pilser used “Atticus” to enter gamer message boards and send private messages while he pillaged kingdoms and slaughtered foes in the virtual netherworld of Quaraziz, circa 2409. What a fricking dork this guy must have been.
Mo made note of his friends and enemies in Quaraziz, then accessed Pilser’s MyBook page with her electronic passkey.
Pilser had posted photos of himself on his page, blogged movie reviews, hailed and poked his MyBook “friends.” But there was nothing on his web page more sinister than political vitriol. No screen names crossed over from Commandos of Doom to MyBook, and Mo found no indication that Jason Pilser had been depressed. Though it sure was depressing to probe into his life.
Closing his mail folders, Mo-bot clicked through the icons on Pilser’s toolbar. One intrigued her-a graphic of lightning shooting from a pointed finger. It was captioned “Scylla.”
Mo-bot clicked on the link and was taken to a new web page. Pilser had titled the page “Scylla Lives.” It was a trapdoor to Pilser’s personal journal-and it almost stopped Mo’s heart.
She read quickly, clicked through links, then found a bridge between the real and virtual worlds.
She pushed away from her desk, and her chair rolled back. A moment later, she was standing in the doorway to Sci’s office.
Sci stared as if he were looking through her.
What was wrong with him? Didn’t he get it? She’d unlocked the whole damned murder plan. She was the female modern-day Sherlock Holmes.
“Less than a week from now,” she said, “there’s going to be a Freek Night. You hear me, Sci? That’s what they call their killing game. Jason Pilser would’ve been part of it-if he’d lived.”
“I’m sorry. I’m distracted. I’m running the DNA-”
Mo said, “Listen to the words coming out of my mouth. There are two of them. They call themselves Street Freeks. Their screen names are Morbid and Steemcleena, and they’ve already picked their target. She lives in Silver Lake, calls herself Lady D.
“Sci. Are you getting this? In five days, they’re going to kill this girl.”
Chapter 72
Jack had called ahead to Private’s new East Coast office. A senior operative, Diana DiCarlo, was waiting at the gate when Emilio Cruz disembarked at Miami International Airport.
CIA trained, DiCarlo was very efficient. She handed Cruz a briefcase with everything he would need: gun, surveillance equipment, car keys, and phone numbers of Private sources throughout South Florida. And she told Cruz where his subjects were staying.
Cruz checked in to the Biltmore, the room directly above the men he was tailing. He set up his microphones and listened.
Later, he followed his subjects from the hotel to clubs and restaurants, even watched them place their bets
