Exposed (6 page)

Quantico, Virginia

R. J. Tully couldn’t believe he was missing out and all because Emma didn’t have a ride to school. He didn’t want to think she might have orchestrated the entire event just to convince him she needed her own car. He wasn’t ready to believe his seventeen-year-old daughter could be that manipulative. And he certainly wasn’t ready to give in. He hated the idea of her having her own car. A car was a huge responsibility. He had a job for three years—starting at age fifteen—before he was allowed, or rather, could afford his own car. A car was a level of independence he wasn’t willing to grant Emma just yet. It should be something she earned. Although he wasn’t sure what she’d need to do to prove herself worthy.

“How many doughnuts?” Keith Ganza’s monotone brought Tully back to the FBI lab. Getting in late put him in charge of the evidence, so here he was in Ganza’s glass-enclosed work space.

“I don’t know,” Tully said. “Does it make a difference?”

“It does if they’ve been tampered with.” Ganza’s skeletal frame with sloped shoulders was bent over the center counter as he dissected a glazed cruller.

Maybe there was something wrong with Tully because, tampered with or not, the cruller still made his mouth water. He’d had only coffee for breakfast, most of it spilled over the interior of his car, and lunch was a couple hours away. He glanced instead at a couple of white-coated scientists in the glass-enclosed labs across the hallway. Tully disliked his claustrophobic office, four floors below the earth back at BSU, but he knew he’d never be able to work here in the labs where your every movement could be observed. Each lab—the techno-term was “biovestibule”—really amounted to a glass cubicle, a sterile workstation surrounded by metal contraptions, test tubes in trays and microscopes attached to computers. The glazed cruller on Ganza’s stainless-steel tray seemed out of place.

“Doughnut places don’t deliver, do they?” Tully asked, thinking out loud.

Ganza looked up at him, pale blue eyes over half glasses that had slid to the end of a hawkish nose. He reminded Tully of a friendly version of a mad scientist or of a tall scarecrow wearing a Boston Red Sox baseball cap. The cap forced Ganza’s thinning gray hair to stick straight out over wide-rim ears, adding to the overall picture. His lined and haggard face registered a perpetual frown, and now he shot Tully a look that said, “You’ve got to be kidding,” but Ganza would never say that. He knew that ridiculous questions sometimes ended up cracking a few cases.

“There might be a place in the District that’ll deliver, but out here to Quantico? I’d guess, no.”

“We’re going over everyone who came and went this morning. So far there’s been no unusual activity,” Tully said.

Tully noticed that the box was plain white cardboard with no logo imprinted anywhere outside or inside.

“From the note it sounds like the doughnuts were only a means to deliver the threat,” Tully said, “rather than the actual threat.”

“You never know.” Ganza slid crumbs from the cruller into a test tube.

Ganza was a process machine, a scientist before a law officer. He didn’t decide what needed to be done, he simply did it, discounting chance, luck or speculation. For Ganza, the evidence always told the story. It wasn’t just props for a story or theory already in progress.

He poured a clear liquid into the test tube, capped it with a rubber stopper and began to agitate it. Tully watched him rock back and forth on the balls of his feet as he rocked the test tube, almost like someone would rock a baby to sleep. He tried not to think of Ichabod Crane doing the Robot or he might burst out laughing. That was the kind of morning he was having.

Tully’s stomach growled and Ganza raised an eyebrow at him. They caught each other glancing at the counter where the remaining doughnuts sat in their box.

“There’s a tuna sandwich in the fridge. You’re welcome to half,” Ganza offered, nodding toward the refrigerator in the corner where Tully knew there were also lab specimens. Possibly bits and pieces of tissue and blood. It would all be contained, bagged or capped, even on a separate shelf, but still too close for Tully.

“No, thanks,” he told the lab’s director, trying to sound grateful instead of disgusted.

Tully had watched Ganza eat between tests and he had seen his partner Maggie O’Dell eat a breakfast sausage biscuit once during an autopsy. But Tully viewed it as his last bastion of civility that he wouldn’t cross that line. There were so few in this business left to cross. At least, that’s what he told others. Fact was, it made his skin crawl just a little to combine the idea of eating a meal with the blood and guts of a murder.

Tully was still thinking about his stomach when he picked up the two plastic bags, one containing the note, the other the envelope. He had used plain white paper sold anywhere from office supplies stores to Wal-Mart. The ink he used would, no doubt, test to be the same ink used in just about every ink pen. And the guy didn’t seal the envelope, so no chance of salvia, no chance of DNA.

Tully had put in a call to George Sloane before joining Ganza. Sloane was Cunningham’s choice documents guy ever since the anthrax case in fall 2001. Tully thought forensic document sleuthing was more luck than anything, but he didn’t see any harm in letting Sloane play his magic. Of course, Tully realized that his thinking of Sloane’s contribution as little more than voodoo was no different than what some people thought of criminal profiling. Both depended on recognizing behaviors of the criminal mind, which was never as predictable as any of them hoped.

Ganza had set aside the test tube and was poking around the box again. With long metal forceps he pinched what looked like microscopic pieces, and was putting them into a plastic evidence bag. He pushed up his glasses and dived the forceps in, suddenly getting excited.

“Might be his,” Ganza said, showing Tully the half-inch black hair now clenched at the end of the forceps.

Tully caught himself before he winced. So much for craving any of those doughnuts.

Ganza placed the hair on a glass slide and slid it under a microscope. “Got enough of a root for DNA.” He twisted the focus and swooped down to the eyepiece for a better look. “At first glance, I’d say he’s not Caucasian.”

“Also could be someone at the doughnut shop,” Tully said.

Tully looked at the note and envelope again. “So how many people would know how to do an old-fashioned pharmaceutical fold like this?”

“He may have read about it somewhere. Could be showing off,” Ganza answered.

Tully lifted the envelope and piece of paper higher so that the lab’s fluorescent light shined through both. That’s when he saw it, almost invisible in the corner on the back side of the envelope. Sometimes you didn’t need a forensic documents expert to catch stuff like this.

“We might have something here,” Tully said, continuing to hold the plastic bag to the light, waiting for Ganza to leave behind the microscope and come around the table.

“Son of a bitch,” Ganza said before Tully could point out the subtle indentations on the envelope. “Bet he didn’t plan on leaving that behind.”

Quantico, Virginia

R. J. Tully couldn’t believe he was missing out and all because Emma didn’t have a ride to school. He didn’t want to think she might have orchestrated the entire event just to convince him she needed her own car. He wasn’t ready to believe his seventeen-year-old daughter could be that manipulative. And he certainly wasn’t ready to give in. He hated the idea of her having her own car. A car was a huge responsibility. He had a job for three years—starting at age fifteen—before he was allowed, or rather, could afford his own car. A car was a level of independence he wasn’t willing to grant Emma just yet. It should be something she earned. Although he wasn’t sure what she’d need to do to prove herself worthy.

“How many doughnuts?” Keith Ganza’s monotone brought Tully back to the FBI lab. Getting in late put him in charge of the evidence, so here he was in Ganza’s glass-enclosed work space.

“I don’t know,” Tully said. “Does it make a difference?”

“It does if they’ve been tampered with.” Ganza’s skeletal frame with sloped shoulders was bent over the center counter as he dissected a glazed cruller.

Maybe there was something wrong with Tully because, tampered with or not, the cruller still made his mouth water. He’d had only coffee for breakfast, most of it spilled over the interior of his car, and lunch was a couple hours away. He glanced instead at a couple of white-coated scientists in the glass-enclosed labs across the hallway. Tully disliked his claustrophobic office, four floors below the earth back at BSU, but he knew he’d never be able to work here in the labs where your every movement could be observed. Each lab—the techno-term was “biovestibule”—really amounted to a glass cubicle, a sterile workstation surrounded by metal contraptions, test tubes in trays and microscopes attached to computers. The glazed cruller on Ganza’s stainless-steel tray seemed out of place.

“Doughnut places don’t deliver, do they?” Tully asked, thinking out loud.

Ganza looked up at him, pale blue eyes over half glasses that had slid to the end of a hawkish nose. He reminded Tully of a friendly version of a mad scientist or of a tall scarecrow wearing a Boston Red Sox baseball cap. The cap forced Ganza’s thinning gray hair to stick straight out over wide-rim ears, adding to the overall picture. His lined and haggard face registered a perpetual frown, and now he shot Tully a look that said, “You’ve got to be kidding,” but Ganza would never say that. He knew that ridiculous questions sometimes ended up cracking a few cases.

“There might be a place in the District that’ll deliver, but out here to Quantico? I’d guess, no.”

“We’re going over everyone who came and went this morning. So far there’s been no unusual activity,” Tully said.

Tully noticed that the box was plain white cardboard with no logo imprinted anywhere outside or inside.

“From the note it sounds like the doughnuts were only a means to deliver the threat,” Tully said, “rather than the actual threat.”

“You never know.” Ganza slid crumbs from the cruller into a test tube.

Ganza was a process machine, a scientist before a law officer. He didn’t decide what needed to be done, he simply did it, discounting chance, luck or speculation. For Ganza, the evidence always told the story. It wasn’t just props for a story or theory already in progress.

He poured a clear liquid into the test tube, capped it with a rubber stopper and began to agitate it. Tully watched him rock back and forth on the balls of his feet as he rocked the test tube, almost like someone would rock a baby to sleep. He tried not to think of Ichabod Crane doing the Robot or he might burst out laughing. That was the kind of morning he was having.

Tully’s stomach growled and Ganza raised an eyebrow at him. They caught each other glancing at the counter where the remaining doughnuts sat in their box.

“There’s a tuna sandwich in the fridge. You’re welcome to half,” Ganza offered, nodding toward the refrigerator in the corner where Tully knew there were also lab specimens. Possibly bits and pieces of tissue and blood. It would all be contained, bagged or capped, even on a separate shelf, but still too close for Tully.

“No, thanks,” he told the lab’s director, trying to sound grateful instead of disgusted.

Tully had watched Ganza eat between tests and he had seen his partner Maggie O’Dell eat a breakfast sausage biscuit once during an autopsy. But Tully viewed it as his last bastion of civility that he wouldn’t cross that line. There were so few in this business left to cross. At least, that’s what he told others. Fact was, it made his skin crawl just a little to combine the idea of eating a meal with the blood and guts of a murder.

Tully was still thinking about his stomach when he picked up the two plastic bags, one containing the note, the other the envelope. He had used plain white paper sold anywhere from office supplies stores to Wal-Mart. The ink he used would, no doubt, test to be the same ink used in just about every ink pen. And the guy didn’t seal the envelope, so no chance of salvia, no chance of DNA.

Tully had put in a call to George Sloane before joining Ganza. Sloane was Cunningham’s choice documents guy ever since the anthrax case in fall 2001. Tully thought forensic document sleuthing was more luck than anything, but he didn’t see any harm in letting Sloane play his magic. Of course, Tully realized that his thinking of Sloane’s contribution as little more than voodoo was no different than what some people thought of criminal profiling. Both depended on recognizing behaviors of the criminal mind, which was never as predictable as any of them hoped.

Ganza had set aside the test tube and was poking around the box again. With long metal forceps he pinched what looked like microscopic pieces, and was putting them into a plastic evidence bag. He pushed up his glasses and dived the forceps in, suddenly getting excited.

“Might be his,” Ganza said, showing Tully the half-inch black hair now clenched at the end of the forceps.

Tully caught himself before he winced. So much for craving any of those doughnuts.

Ganza placed the hair on a glass slide and slid it under a microscope. “Got enough of a root for DNA.” He twisted the focus and swooped down to the eyepiece for a better look. “At first glance, I’d say he’s not Caucasian.”

“Also could be someone at the doughnut shop,” Tully said.

Tully looked at the note and envelope again. “So how many people would know how to do an old-fashioned pharmaceutical fold like this?”

“He may have read about it somewhere. Could be showing off,” Ganza answered.

Tully lifted the envelope and piece of paper higher so that the lab’s fluorescent light shined through both. That’s when he saw it, almost invisible in the corner on the back side of the envelope. Sometimes you didn’t need a forensic documents expert to catch stuff like this.

“We might have something here,” Tully said, continuing to hold the plastic bag to the light, waiting for Ganza to leave behind the microscope and come around the table.

“Son of a bitch,” Ganza said before Tully could point out the subtle indentations on the envelope. “Bet he didn’t plan on leaving that behind.”