weep for the imminent end of times. And wonder if there is time still to stop it.
5:20 AM LAPD Forensics Lab
F our stories above the morgue where Guy Severin watches and listens to body parts creak back to wholeness, Stacey Chang, lab tech extraordinaire, pulls test tubes from a centrifuge and waits for the printout of DNA and tox results. Stacey’s entire backlog has been put to the side until all the results of the Crane Massacre remnants are IDed and her report sits atop the captain’s desk. She even gets to use the fancy new machines, the ones reserved for only the most high profile of cases.
Usually there are two other lab techs with her, bumping elbows and generally irritating her loner spirit, but they haven’t shown up to work today and neither called in sick. Stacey tries to remember if they ever mentioned going to raves. Unlike many of the other teams on her floor, hers never really gelled and conversation in the DNA lab was limited to the cases at hand and what take-out people wanted for lunch. Their one attempt at group bonding resulted in Carl getting wasted, hitting on her, and having a hard time taking no for an answer. Awkward City ever since. More so after Carl’s petition for transfer was denied.
The machine chortles and spits out a series of colorful pages. Graphs, bars, and zigzags adorn the flimsy computer paper. The tox results are off the charts for each body part sample: high levels of ecstasy, and LSD. Some of the samples contain marijuana, and one shows high levels of Psilocybe cyanescens , colloquially known as magic mushrooms.
The DNA results take longer, and by the time Stacey’s done it will have cost the City of Los Angeles upwards of fifty thousand dollars for the dozens of analysis kits. One of the lab’s five monitors makes a ding ding and Stacey rides her office chair across the room to take a gander. Clicking through the results and sending them to the printer, her first impression being that each sample noted as a body part by on-site CSIs is a unique individual, no family members or relatives.
She gets a hit in the DNA database, common alleles to Rosemary Green, likely the mother of one of the victims, but deceased. Rosemary is also a witness and victim in an assault case. Another hit on the same sample leads to Xavier Marsh, a convicted felon known as The Parking Lot Rapist, serving life in prison, who also shares alleles with what Severin sent up from the morgue. How sad , Stacey thinks, wondering why the woman didn’t abort. Click click , the printer whirrs and churns out more sheets of paper.
The next hit comes with the name Karma Devi, whose DNA was connected as a person of interest to the investigation of one Kevin Danville’s death. Stacey clicks through and reads that Danville turned up in the ER, his testicles removed. Died of sepsis shortly after. DNA samples of almost a dozen women were found in his apartment along with evidence of sexual misconduct, the details of those included in the hefty case file. Print, print, print. Whir, whir, whir.
Stacey’s computer freezes and red words strobe across her screen:
Access Denied
flash
Security Clearance Required
flash
Insufficient Authorization
“What the hell,” she mutters to herself. Three files have been flagged; she cannot open them. The pseudo coat-of-arms with winged creature logo blinking on her screen is one she doesn’t recognize. Not DOD, not CIA, not FBI. She takes many screen shots and calls her boss, Pete Mazzotti, to give him the heads up.
What she glimpsed of the results just before the freeze-out was enough to turn her blood to ice: the samples did not have either human or animal DNA.
5:30 AM Spruce-Musa Hospital
D etectives Red Feather and Günn smoke a cigarette in a hospital stairwell illustrated with a prominent NO SMOKING sign. She knows she shouldn’t, but her legs won’t stop shaking and she needs an excuse like nicotine in case Red Feather notices.
“I’m just gonna get it off
5:20 AM LAPD Forensics Lab
F our stories above the morgue where Guy Severin watches and listens to body parts creak back to wholeness, Stacey Chang, lab tech extraordinaire, pulls test tubes from a centrifuge and waits for the printout of DNA and tox results. Stacey’s entire backlog has been put to the side until all the results of the Crane Massacre remnants are IDed and her report sits atop the captain’s desk. She even gets to use the fancy new machines, the ones reserved for only the most high profile of cases.
Usually there are two other lab techs with her, bumping elbows and generally irritating her loner spirit, but they haven’t shown up to work today and neither called in sick. Stacey tries to remember if they ever mentioned going to raves. Unlike many of the other teams on her floor, hers never really gelled and conversation in the DNA lab was limited to the cases at hand and what take-out people wanted for lunch. Their one attempt at group bonding resulted in Carl getting wasted, hitting on her, and having a hard time taking no for an answer. Awkward City ever since. More so after Carl’s petition for transfer was denied.
The machine chortles and spits out a series of colorful pages. Graphs, bars, and zigzags adorn the flimsy computer paper. The tox results are off the charts for each body part sample: high levels of ecstasy, and LSD. Some of the samples contain marijuana, and one shows high levels of Psilocybe cyanescens , colloquially known as magic mushrooms.
The DNA results take longer, and by the time Stacey’s done it will have cost the City of Los Angeles upwards of fifty thousand dollars for the dozens of analysis kits. One of the lab’s five monitors makes a ding ding and Stacey rides her office chair across the room to take a gander. Clicking through the results and sending them to the printer, her first impression being that each sample noted as a body part by on-site CSIs is a unique individual, no family members or relatives.
She gets a hit in the DNA database, common alleles to Rosemary Green, likely the mother of one of the victims, but deceased. Rosemary is also a witness and victim in an assault case. Another hit on the same sample leads to Xavier Marsh, a convicted felon known as The Parking Lot Rapist, serving life in prison, who also shares alleles with what Severin sent up from the morgue. How sad , Stacey thinks, wondering why the woman didn’t abort. Click click , the printer whirrs and churns out more sheets of paper.
The next hit comes with the name Karma Devi, whose DNA was connected as a person of interest to the investigation of one Kevin Danville’s death. Stacey clicks through and reads that Danville turned up in the ER, his testicles removed. Died of sepsis shortly after. DNA samples of almost a dozen women were found in his apartment along with evidence of sexual misconduct, the details of those included in the hefty case file. Print, print, print. Whir, whir, whir.
Stacey’s computer freezes and red words strobe across her screen:
Access Denied
flash
Security Clearance Required
flash
Insufficient Authorization
“What the hell,” she mutters to herself. Three files have been flagged; she cannot open them. The pseudo coat-of-arms with winged creature logo blinking on her screen is one she doesn’t recognize. Not DOD, not CIA, not FBI. She takes many screen shots and calls her boss, Pete Mazzotti, to give him the heads up.
What she glimpsed of the results just before the freeze-out was enough to turn her blood to ice: the samples did not have either human or animal DNA.
5:30 AM Spruce-Musa Hospital
D etectives Red Feather and Günn smoke a cigarette in a hospital stairwell illustrated with a prominent NO SMOKING sign. She knows she shouldn’t, but her legs won’t stop shaking and she needs an excuse like nicotine in case Red Feather notices.
“I’m just gonna get it off
Similar Books
