Final Disposition (37 page)

      Sitting back down at the table, she quickly used an alcohol-soaked gauze pad to clean off the tip of the pliers and then started to reach for the first coin envelope.

      “Oh, and as a precaution, you might want to wear protective gloves while you’re doing that, Cellars added with a smile.  “We definitely are working in uncharted territory here.”

      “You want to do this yourself?” Marcini inquired, giving Cellars a dangerous glare.

      “Be happy to, but I’m still a little dazed from that roundhouse … and besides,” he added with a smile, “I don’t think a crime scene investigator is supposed to be forensically examining his own evidence.”

      “I think I’m starting to see a pattern, here,” Sutta commented to Marcini, who had retrieved a pair of latex gloves from her lab coat and was starting to pull them on.  “He only follows instructions and protocols when it happens to be convenient.”

      “Actually, I think I’m becoming a strong believer in the philosophical view that actions always have unintended consequences,” Cellars corrected.

      “In your case, I’m sure that’s true,” Marcini muttered as she reached for the coin envelope marked ‘#10’.

      “Meaning he’s likely to suffer accordingly for all of this at some later date?” Sutta inquired with a hopeful expression on his grizzled face.

      “Exactly,” Marcini said, giving Cellars a meaningful look as she tore the envelope open, slid the heavy bullet out onto a clean piece of white paper, and then reached for the needle-nosed pliers.  “Now let’s see what we have here.”

      Thirty seconds later, she looked up from the dissecting scope’s dual lenses.

      “It looks like the copper jacket edges of this bullet trapped several small shreds of bloody tissue,” she said.

      “Enough to analyze for species?” Sutta asked.

      “More than enough,” she said as she carefully moved the first bullet aside and reached for the envelope marked ‘#11’.

      Thirty seconds later, she muttered “same for bullet eleven,” moved that bullet aside, and then reached for the last coin envelope.

      This time it took Marcini almost five minutes of working under the scope with the needle-nosed pliers before she whispered “I’ll be damned.”

      “What?” Cellars and Sutta both demanded in unison.

      In answer, Marcini reached over and clicked on a monitor connected by cable to the digital camera mounted in the head of the dissecting microscope.  Seconds later, the greatly-magnified image of a small chip of stone appeared on the monitor.

      “I’ll be damned, indeed,” Sutta muttered with an incredulous tone to his voice, but Cellars wasn’t satisfied.

      “But does it actually fit the broken stone?” he demanded.

      Twenty seconds later, the now-significantly-less-magnified images of a small stone lying very close — but not touching — a much smaller chip of visually identical material gave Cellars his answer.

      “Okay,” he said with a satisfied smile.  “Now we can begin to experiment.” 

*     *     *

      “Those were the three bullets I fired yesterday evening at the first shadow that tried to get into — or steal — the Humvee I stole from Sergeant MacGregor when I was busy busting out of the Clinic and avoiding the clutches of my floor nurse,” Cellars explained to Sutta as Marcini sat in front of a lab bench full of varying sized instruments, working dials and key-boards.

      “He really likes to push the envelope at every opportunity, doesn’t he?” Sutta commented in the direction of Marcini’s lab-coated back.

      “Yes, he does,” she agreed, keeping her eyes on a monitor’s digital readout, “but that’s what pay-backs are all about.”

      “Scared?” Sutta asked, looking over at Cellars with a raised eyebrow.

      “Of pretty much everything, these days,” Cellars acknowledged.  “Lightning bolts, vengeful shape-shifting aliens, pissed-off MPs, fire-breathing Reverends
and
Sicilian women.  I’m beginning to think my Karma quotient isn’t quite up to what it should be.”

      “A very relevant concern, but things may be picking up for you in these last laps,” Marcini said as she spun away from the instrument bench on her lab stool.  “The elemental composition and the density of the small chip are — according to the data library that I’m going to have to trust, because chemical analysis isn’t my strong suit — consistent with a granular igneous rock otherwise known as granite.”

      “A plain old stone, visually indistinguishable from several trillion like-stones of varying sizes on the planet,” Cellars said with a smile.

      “Exactly,” Marcini nodded.  “And since the small chip didn’t explode in the XRF or turn into some kind of miniature nightmare-bitch, I felt reasonably safe in analyzing the larger broken stone using the same procedures.”

      “And?” Cellars pressed.

      “You still need to work on that Karma,” Marcini replied with a smile.  “The elemental composition indicates granite as well, as we might expect, but the density is considerably off … which is to say a lot higher.”

      “The big stone is
more dense
than the smaller chip?”

      “Correct.”

      “Okay, then there has to be something else in there — something a lot more dense — along with the granite matrix,” Cellars reasoned.  “So what do we do now, split the damned thing open?”

      “If it’s all the same to you, and as unlikely as it may sound, us Sicilian gals generally prefer a more subtle — and far less violent — approach to our work than ‘hey, let’s split the damned thing open and see what’s inside,’” Marcini replied evenly.

      “Meaning?”

      “There’s a lot to be said for modern technology,” she said with a grim smile as she quickly transferred all of the bullets, stones and envelopes on a large tray.  “Follow me, gentlemen.”

      “You know,” Sutta said to Cellars as they got up to follow Marcini out of the Instrumental Analysis Lab, “I’m starting to become quite fond of this young lady.  Like that wine bottle you tossed in my general direction earlier today, she may actually be much too good for you.”

*     *     *

      “Very nice,” Dr. Elliott Sutta commented as he looked around the X-Ray Lab, “the U.S. Army clearly doesn’t stint when it comes to spending my tax dollars on first class radiology equipment.  I assume this is the latest in digital technology?”

      “So I’m told,” Marcini replied absentmindedly as she worked to set the four stones in a close row along one edge of a thick twelve-inch-square Imaging Plate with a motorized platform surface.

      “Good, then I’m anxious to see how my set-up compares,” Sutta said as he followed Marcini and Cellars out of the X-Ray Scanning Room, heard them shut the shielded door securely, and then walked over to a nearby desk, sat down, and began to open the pair of large manila envelopes resting on the large tray while his teammates clustered themselves around a computer console.

      “I’ve programmed the tube head to rotate around the row of stones as the platform progressively moves them across the x-ray sensitive screen of the Imaging Plate in twelve separate steps,” Marcini explained.  “That should give is twelve rotational images of each stone, which the computer will merge into four individual composite images.”

      “Okay, I’ll take your word for all of that,” Cellars nodded agreeably as he watched Marcini double-click the ‘START’ icon on the monitor screen.

      For thirty seconds, the X-Ray machine in the closed Scanning Room hummed loudly.  Then, in rapid succession, the four composite images began to appear side by side on the monitor screen.

      “What the hell?” Cellars muttered, staring at the images in disbelief.

      “They’re hollow in the center … all four of them,” Marcini whispered.

      “How can that be?” Cellars demanded.  “If those stones
are
hollow in the center — and I agree, it certainly looks like they are — and they’re made out of the same granite material, which is what the XRF data indicated, then that broken stone and the other three whole ones would all have to be
less
dense than that smaller chip … not more.”

      “I agree,
more
dense just doesn’t seem possible,” Marcini agreed, shaking her head slowly as she stared at the crystal-sharp images.

      “Wow, you’re absolutely right,” Sutta said as he came up beside Cellars and Marcini, and briefly glanced at the images on the monitor, “the contrast and sharpness on your digital x-ray gear is far superior to mine,” he said as he tossed the x-ray image of Allesandra’s head and upper torso on top of Marcini’s keyboard.

      “But, on the other hand,” he added as he watched Cellars pick up the digital photo and then stare at it with his mouth dropped open in amazement, “my older gear is certainly good enough to demonstrate something that every pathology intern learns during their first lecture on radiography: that pure diamonds are much more dense than granite … not to mention completely invisible to x-rays, even when they’re mounted on gold ear rings and necklaces.”

CHAPTER 29

      They were assembled together now — the diamond necklace and ear rings that Allesandra had worn, along with the four stones and the small broken chip — on one large piece of paper spread out on the Instrumental Chemistry Room’s central examination table.

      Cellars, Marcini and Sutta were standing around the table, staring intently at the now-presumably-related items as if their combined visual data would somehow explain the relationship.

      “Do we have any idea of how much data could be stored in the carbon matrix of a diamond?” Cellars finally asked.

      “I don’t think we even know if it’s possible,” Marcini said.  “If we’re talking ‘ones’ and ‘zeros’ … or ‘on’ and ‘off’ —”

      “But would the data
have
to be stored as ‘ones’ or ‘zeros’ … or ‘on’ and ‘off’?” Sutta asked.  “I certainly don’t pretend to know more about a computer than the ‘ON/OFF’ switch, but is there any reason to think their data storage would be limited to only two possibilities?”

      “If these creatures can travel intra-galactic distances and shape-shift, I don’t know how we can even begin to understand their ‘possibilities’, much less their limitations,” Cellars said quietly.

      “Let’s get back to ‘actions have consequences’,” Marcini growled, her dark eyes glaring dangerously.  “What was the bitch doing showing up at my apartment with nothing on except these diamonds, showing off her wares?”

      “Definitely showing off,” Cellars agreed, “but maybe not the way we’re thinking.  What was it she said to me?  Something like: ‘No, of course you don’t remember me.  How could you?  But you will … at least for a while … and then you’ll forget me again, forever.’”

      “’Forever’?  That sounds pretty … ominous,” Sutta said.

      “Yeah, no shit,” Cellars agreed.  “But she said something else too.  Something like: ‘But, first, you have to tell me something … and then you have to give me something.’”

      “Stone number one, broken chip and all?” Marcini suggested.

      “That would certainly fit her presumed ‘third rule’ incentives; but she could have easily killed us both and just taken everything I had, without bothering to say a word,” Cellars pointed out.  “But she did talk — playing with me, certainly — but also telling me that I knew something important … something that I was going to end up telling her, no matter what I said or did.”

      “How was she going to do that?” Sutta asked uneasily.

       “Tell you the truth, I think that’s something I’d just as soon never know,” Cellars replied.

      “But based on her ‘how could you?’ comment, she clearly knew about your memory loss, so she had to be after something you learned after you woke up in the fMRI Room,” Marcini reasoned.

      “Another possibility: something she
thought
he learned after he woke up, but didn’t,” Sutta pointed out.

      “Or maybe she was after some deep-seated memory that I don’t even know I have,” Cellars said with a shrug.  “But if that’s the case, how —?”

      At that moment, Sergeant First Class MacGregor — still looking pale, but otherwise markedly improved — stuck his head in the lab doorway.

      “Major Cellars, Sam — I mean Sergeant Harthburn — is in the Clinic Lobby, and he needs to talk with you ASAP.”

      “Did he say what it’s about?” Cellars asked.

      “No, sir, just that he really needs to speak with you … right now.”

*     *     *

      “What’s so urgent, Sergeant?” Cellars asked as he walked into Clinic Lobby, holding a small green canvas kit bag containing all of his evidence items, and followed by Marcini and Sutta.

      “Ah, several things, sir,” the still-snow-covered Harthburn said, a look of pure relief spreading across his broad face as he hurried over to Cellars with an opened field notebook in one gloved hand.  “First of all, there’s a whole bunch of people who’ve been trying to find you and talk with you, sir, starting with the General.”

      “The General … you mean General Byzor?”

      “That’s correct, sir.  The General himself called here and said … and I quote: ‘tell him to keep the damned j-Connector on his person at all times,
and
charged up, for God’s sake’, sir.”

      Cellars blinked.  “Where the hell did I leave that —?”

      “In your SUV, sir,” Harthburn replied as he reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out the small electronic device, and handed it to Cellars.  “Here you go, all charged up and ready to go.”

      “Appreciate that, sergeant,” Cellars nodded as he slipped the device into his own jacket pocket.

      “Yes, sir, uh, I believe the General wants you to call him, ASAP … but before you do that, I need to tell you some other things,” Harthburn said, glancing down at the opened field notebook.  “First of all, OSP Captain Talbert called and asked us to tell you that he wants you to do the things he
didn’t
tell you to do ASAP … first of all, because all three of the hikers are now missing, which includes the Senator’s son … and secondly, because Reverend Slogaan and his nut-case followers are heading that way with torches and pitchforks.  Oh, and so are a bunch of the Alliance of Believers … all because somebody announced to the crowd outside the station that you were going to be out there on the Reservation investigating the scene … and the shit is definitely going to hit the fan if you don’t get your ass in gear, uh, sir.”