“You’re playing with your hair again.”
Bernstein looked up at his right hand. Strands of hair were wrapped around his middle finger as though it were a curler. He untangled his finger and put his hands on the table. “Saves on a perm,” he explained with a smile.
“So what else did you learn?”
He leaned forward. “This morning I went through the personal possessions found in Grey’s hotel room. Everything was there — wallet, ID, cash, credit cards, briefcase, change of clothes — even passport.”
“So?”
“There was no stamp for Mexico on the passport.”
“No mystery there. You don’t need to use your passport to go into Mexico. Just proof of citizenship.”
“Then why did he bring it with him?”
She shrugged. “What else did you find in the passport?”
“It’s what I didn’t find,” he said. “You know those pages where the customs officials stamp the country you’re visiting?”
“Yes.”
“One of those pages had been neatly clipped out of Grey’s passport. You would never notice unless you looked at it closely.”
Sara looked up at the ceiling. “So the killer doesn’t want anyone to see what was on that page. Maybe Bruce never went to Mexico. Maybe he went someplace else and the killer doesn’t want us to know where.”
“My thinking exactly. So I called the Oasis Hotel down in Cancun.”
“Did he check in?”
“Yes.”
She waited for him to continue but he just sat there, smiling. “Max, stop playing games with me. What happened?”
“I called your old contact at customs and immigration.”
“Don Scharf?”
“Right. I know I should have asked you first, but time was of the essence. Anyway, he remembered me from that case we did a few years back where that rapist fled to Puerto Rico.”
“What did you find out?”
“Well, it took a while but we finally traced down where Bruce went.”
“And?”
“And Bruce did go down to Cancun first. But he flew out of Mexico the very next day.”
“So where did he go?”
Max smiled. “Bangkok.”
“There’s no question about it, Eric,” Winston O’Connor, chief lab technician at the Sidney Pavilion, said with his Alabama twang. O’Connor had been working for the clinic since its inception and, in fact, had not lived in the South since entering Columbia University eighteen years ago. Still, the years had not subdued Winston’s deep Southern accent. “Take another look at the Western blot. The band pattern is unmistakable.”
Eric swallowed and reached out his hand. The wall clock, one of those noisy kinds that schools used, read five ten a.m. When was the last time he had left the clinic? Eric did a little quick math. Forty hours ago. He needed sleep something terrible, but all of a sudden he felt wide-awake.
He glanced down at the photograph and remained silent for a moment. Eric knew what the readings meant, but he kept staring at them anyway, as though he could make the bands on the photograph slide lower or higher by just concentrating on them. “Let me take a look at the ELISA test.”
Winston sighed. “We’ve already looked at it twice.”
“I want to look at it again. You sure you used the right sample?”
Winston looked at him strangely. “Are you kidding?”
“I want to make sure.”
“You were standing here when I did it,” Winston said. “I don’t make mistakes on these kinds of things. Neither do you.”
Eric lowered his head. “I know. I’m sorry.”
Winston crossed the room and opened a door that looked like it belonged on a refrigerator. His hand reached in and extracted a plate. “Here. And here’s the digital readout of the optical density.”
“Get me the T cell study too.”
“Again?”
Eric nodded.
“Here,” Winston said a moment later. “What the hell you looking for, Eric?”
Eric did not respond. He examined all the tests and studies at least a dozen more times. Somewhere in the background he could hear Winston sigh and curse under his breath every time Eric asked to look at the same thing again.
“For crying out loud,” Winston half snapped, “how many times are you going to view this stuff? There’s no mistake here. Shoot, we’ve never made a mistake on this test — ever.”
“It can’t be,” Eric muttered. “It just can’t be.”
“We’ve had hundreds of positive HIV tests come through here,” Winston continued. “Why all the double checking on this one? I’ve run the ELISA and the Western on this guy twice now. There’s no question about the results.”
Eric moved to a chair as though stunned by a blow to the head. He slowly picked up the phone and dialed.
“Who you calling?” Winston asked.
His voice came from far away. “Harvey.”
“I’ll put this stuff away, then.”
“No,” Eric said. “Harvey will want to look at it too.”
“But both of us have already—”
“He won’t believe us,” Eric said. “He’ll have to see this one for himself.”
9
Harvey buttoned his shirt and smiled toward the rumpled bed. If Jennifer could see him now…
“I still can’t believe you’re here,” he said.
Cassandra leaned back on the bed and stretched. A thin, white sheet was all that covered her body. “Why not? This is Day Number Four already, Harv.”
“Happy?”
“Blissful,” she replied. And it was true. From their first kiss she had felt intoxicated. It was strange, but even now she could feel her heart swell in her chest just thinking about him.
“No complaints?” he asked.
“Just one,” she said. “I don’t care much for your hours.”
“I warned you.”
“Yeah, but two hours a night?”
“Sorry.”
“Not your fault, I guess,” she said. “Anyway, it makes me appreciate my nine to seven at the agency more.”
Harvey searched the clothes-cluttered floor, found a pair of pants crumpled in a corner, and put them on. “When are you making your presentation to the airline?”
“This afternoon. Northeastern Air. I have a meeting with their handsome marketing director. Jealous?”
“Should I be?”
She looked at him. “No.”
