The Burning Season

by Jeff Mariotte

  “Would you like to come to my office?”

  “That would be fine, thank you.”

  “Right this way.” She led him back the way she had come, her pace slower, letting him keep up. People in the medical professions got used to being around the infirm. She didn’t make small talk; not a word passed between them until they were inside her office with the door closed. Instead of sitting, she leaned against a corner of her desk, gestured toward a straight-backed leather chair. “Please.”

  “Thank you,” Ray said. His gratitude was genuine; he was more than ready to avail himself of the opportunity.

  “What is it I can do for you, Dr. Langston?”

  “I need information. I’m a medical doctor, I understand all about patient privacy, but I also know the law. Someone’s life is at risk, and if I have to get a court order, I will.”

  “Let’s see if we can avoid that,” she said. She still wore the same smile she had composed in the hallway, and it had all the authenticity of a horsehair wig.

  “That would be my preference, as well. Here’s the story. A severed hand was found here in the city, and when we tested the bone marrow for DNA—the tissue was too severely compromised—we came up with a match to a man named Carter Hawkins. Mr. Hawkins has both of the hands he was born with; however, Mr. Hawkins has also been a bone marrow donor, through your facility.”

  Belinda Jones blinked three times. “I’m not sure I’m following you.”

  “Under certain circumstances—to which, in this case, I think we have to stipulate, barring other information—donated bone marrow can completely replace native marrow. The DNA of the recipient matches that of the donor, as long as that DNA is derived from marrow. Which, in this case, it was. In order to discover who the hand belongs to, and to find out if its rightful owner is alive or dead or perhaps in serious need of medical attention, we need to know who received Mr. Hawkins’s donated marrow.”

  She was, he noted, a very composed woman. Medical administrators tended not to be emotional types, he had found. They had to stay calm in times of crisis, had to keep cool heads. Ms. Jones’s was positively arctic. “I understand.”

  “So, will you help me? Or do I have to come back with a court order, and sheriff’s officers to help me enforce it? It would be unfortunate to have to disrupt your operations for even a day or two, much less weeks, but if we had to search through every file . . .” She came off as so unflappable that he was playing it tough, trying to flap her anyway.

  “I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” she said. She didn’t appear the least bit flapped, but she shifted off the corner of the desk and walked around it, sat in her chair, and opened a laptop computer. “The donor’s name was Hawkins?”

  Ray spelled it for her, and gave her the address and date of birth. Her fingers tap-danced on the keyboard. “The patient’s name is Ruben Solis.”

  “Can you brief me on his circumstances? It might help to find him.”

  She wrote something down on a sheet of paper, tore it from her pad, and slid it across the desk toward Ray. “There’s his address and phone number. He was diagnosed with aplastic anemia. His body stopped producing new red blood cells, because of some damage—”

  “Damage to the bone marrow, I know. So his native marrow was depleted—”

  Her turn to interrupt, and she seemed glad to do it. “With radiation, in his case.”

  “And then the donated marrow introduced. It set up housekeeping and generated new blood cells, new stem cells, reproducing itself.”

  “And so his marrow’s DNA would match that of Mr. Hawkins. Very strange, but I guess it makes sense.”

  “It’s an extremely rare occurrence, but not unheard of.”

  “Well, there’s Mr. Solis’s contact information. I hope you can find him, and give him back his hand.”

  “I’m afraid it’s a bit worse for wear,” Ray said. “But I would like to know how he lost it, and what his present condition is.”

  “I would appreciate it if you didn’t tell him how you found him. We perform an essential function here, Dr. Langston. Getting people to donate blood is a walk in the park compared to marrow donations. People are terrified of the whole idea. They imagine that we’re going to have to carve into their bones and scoop it out with spoons, or something. Patient privacy is something that I take very seriously, but I know you could prevail in court if you tried. I gave in, but not happily.”

  “Noted,” Ray said. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

  “I’ve never met Mr. Solis, but I hope you find him well.”

  “As do I, believe me. As do I.”

  Ruben Solis’s home was between Indigo Valley Blood and the crime lab, so Ray swung by on his way back. The neighborhood was the polar opposite of the medical park with its sleek, modern buildings and lots full of new, pricey cars. Approaching Solis’s street, Ray covered block after block of run-down homes, neglected yards, corner liquor stores with barred windows and graffiti-stained walls. The few pedestrians eyed him as he passed, their skin mostly brown, hair mostly black, expressions ranging from curious to hostile. This was the Las Vegas the tourists never saw, the neighborhood where hotel maids and dishwashers and landscapers went when their shifts ended.

  Ray parked in front of a small house covered in cracked brown stucco, falling somewhere in the architectural range between Santa Fe style and cardboard box. The front yard was poured concrete, painted green. It made a certain sense in a desert climate, but there were more elegant ways to go about it. He crossed the concrete, pulled open a flyspecked screen, and rapped on the door. He could see light through a peephole, and then it went dark.

  “What do you want?” a female’s voice asked from the other side.

  “I’m with the police department’s Crime Lab,” Ray said. “I’m looking for Ruben Solis.”

  “I don’t know no one like that.”

  Ray held his badge to the peephole. “Please, ma’am, this would be easier if you could open up. If you want, I can give you the lab’s phone number so you can call and make sure I am who I say.”

  She was quiet for a moment, but then the door opened a few inches, to the length of the security chain. A pretty face appeared in the gap, a mane of thick black hair, brown eyes with laugh lines at the corners. “What?” she asked.

  “Doesn’t Ruben Solis live here?”

  “I told you, no.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Lucia.”

  “Lucia what?”

  “Lucia Navarre.”

  “Ms. Navarre, I’m Dr. Langston. I’m not a cop, I’m a scientist.” He held up the cane, as if to demonstrate his harmlessness. “It’s very important that I find Mr. Solis. He’s not in any trouble, but he might be in some kind of danger.”

  Lucia closed the door again. Ray heard her release the chain, and then she opened it. She was short, on the heavy side for a city that idealized tall, thin, and leggy, but with hints of a lush figure beneath a baggy Las Vegas Chiefs jersey and black jeans. She was probably in her twenties, but had the kind of skin that could stay youthful well into her forties. She kept her gaze aimed somewhere toward the ground behind Ray. “I told you already twice, I don’t know him.”

  “Do you live here alone, ma’am?”

  “Since my husband went away, yes.”

  CSIs were trained to notice things that others might miss. In this instance, Ray noticed that although she had willingly opened the door, she clutched it in a death grip so tight that her knuckles were blanched. Her weight was on her left leg, and the heel of her right foot was tapping fast enough to power the city, should Hoover Dam fail. She was nervous. There were plenty of reasons for a Latina to be anxious in the presence of law enforcement, but the most common involved immigration status, which was no concern of Ray’s.

  “I really need to find Mr. Solis,” he said again. “I’m not here to make trouble for you or anyone else.”

  She met his gaze at last, giving him an exasperated look.
He knew why—because he wasn’t buying her story. Maybe it was the truth. But this address was the only thing Ray had to go on. And Lucia was so nervous he couldn’t help thinking she was hiding something. Maybe Solis was the husband who had moved out.

  The place was furnished inexpensively, with little in the way of decoration. But on shelves in the living room there were dozens of strange little constructions, wooden boxes with scenes inside them. There were street scenes and desert scenes, interiors and out, all the people fabricated with what looked like found objects—pieces of hardware, nails and bolts and bits of shredded screen, scraps of wood, melted plastic, chunks of tire. “Those are interesting,” he said. “Did you make them?”

  “My . . . my husband did.”

  “What was your husband’s name?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “Enrique.”

  Ray decided to play a hunch. She wasn’t being honest with him, he could tell that much. If he tried to push too hard, she would just clam up. She was certainly within her rights to do so. He didn’t want that to happen, and if he had to employ a little subterfuge of his own to find Solis, he would do so. “I’m sorry to be a bother, Ms. Navarre. Since I was injured . . . I wonder if I could use your restroom.” As if thinking better of it, he turned away. “No, I’m sorry, that’s so rude—”

  “It’s fine,” she interrupted. “Go ahead.”

  “If you’re sure.”

  “Yes, of course.” She stepped back from the door and indicated a dark doorway down the hall. “It’s just there.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you so much.”

  He moved past her, went into the bathroom and turned on the light. Inside, he ran water at a trickle for a few moments, while he scanned the medicine cabinet to see if Ruben’s name appeared on any prescription drugs. It didn’t, but his gaze landed on a hairbrush, thick with black hair. Some strands were long and lustrous, like Lucia’s, but others were short and coarse. He took the piece of paper on which Ruben’s name and address were written from his pocket, put the hairs in the middle, and folded up the lower one-third of the sheet. He folded the upper third over that, then repeated the process with the sides. When he was finished, he tucked one end into the other. The result was called a druggist fold, and it was accepted in the forensic science field as a good way to secure small evidence samples, without fear that adhesives from tape or glue might contaminate them.

  He flushed the toilet, washed his hands, plucked a few more stray long hairs from the brush and emerged from the bathroom. “Ms. Navarre, I wonder if I might take a few hairs from your brush?” he asked, displaying the ones in his hand. “Just to run a DNA test, to make sure that I can exclude you.”

  “Exclude me from what?”

  “Well, the truth is we’re not positive that Ruben Solis is who we’re looking for.” Which was true, as far as it went—Ray had thought he was looking for Carter Hawkins at first. Until he found Solis, he wouldn’t know for certain.

  “So you might be looking for a woman?”

  “It’s hard to say. I don’t think so. But if I can test these then I’ll know for sure it’s not you.”

  “Well . . .”

  “I promise you, I’m not looking to create any problems for you. I don’t know what your citizenship status is, and I’m not going to ask. I don’t know if you are employed, or where. All I want is to answer some questions about the whereabouts and condition of Mr. Solis—or whoever—and leave you in peace.”

  “Okay, I guess,” Lucia said.

  “Thank you.” He tucked the hairs into his shirt pocket, patted it. Entirely useless, for evidentiary purposes. But she had granted permission to remove hairs from the house, and he was doing so.

  The long hairs, he was pretty sure, were hers. The shorter ones, almost certainly not. If Ruben Solis’s DNA—his own DNA, not the borrowed stuff—was in the system, then he could find out if they belonged to him. And if they did, Ray would be making a return visit to Lucia Navarre’s house, sometime very soon.

  11

  DETECTIVE LOUIS VARTANN walked close to Catherine as she made the rounds of the lab, checking in on her people. Though they were dating, Catherine and Vartann were too professional to let the depth of their attraction show in public, especially at work. But Vartann spoke in quiet tones, most of the time, and she didn’t mind keeping him near so they could speak freely. He seemed to like it as well.

  Her immediate concern—besides looking in on the progress David Hodges was making with trace evidence recovered at the bombing site, and seeing Archie Johnson’s progress enhancing security video from there and the alley where the fire was started—was trying to figure out who had targeted her for harassment, and why. She had described the broad strokes, and he had asked some pointed questions, many of which she couldn’t answer.

  “Here’s what I’m thinking,” she explained. “Maybe someone is just mad at me for whatever I said, or they think I said, or I was reported to have said—and believe me, by now I’ve heard so many different versions of it that even I’m not positive what I really said. If that’s the case, fine. I said something I shouldn’t have, and I’ll take my lumps. But what if whoever has filed these actions against me is doing it to steer me away from the investigation, to distract me? Then it might be the bomber himself. If we can find out who this John of Tipton is, that might lead us directly to the bomber, or to someone who knows him.”

  “And in a case like this, whichever angle gets you there fastest is the one you want to use,” Vartann added.

  “That’s right. So far he hasn’t killed anyone. I’d love to keep it that way.”

  “Well, I haven’t found John of Tipton yet. But I’ve been doing some digging into the Free Citizens of the Republic group, and I have to say, they’ve got some strange ideas.”

  “I gathered that.” Catherine stopped behind Archie, who was intent on a video monitor. “How’s that going?” she asked.

  “I can run it back for you,” Archie said. “This is the street scene, an hour before the bomb went off. I’ve got video from two different angles, but unfortunately neither of them shows the whole street. There are people moving in and out of frame, but I haven’t been able to pin down anyone placing or detonating the explosives.” He paused the video and tapped the screen. “This is the only guy who keeps appearing and reappearing.”

  Catherine angled for a better view. The man Archie had indicated looked homeless, his clothing ragged, face unshaven. He pushed a baby buggy, but the buggy’s occupant didn’t look like any baby she had ever seen. “Is that a dog?”

  “Sure is.”

  “Oh, that’s Dogman,” Vartann said. “He’s harmless.”

  “He’s hanging around the bombing scene.”

  “Dogman’s mildly schizophrenic, but he’s no trouble when he takes his meds. He definitely doesn’t have the capacity to construct a bomb.”

  “He might have seen something,” Catherine pointed out.

  “Could be. Whether or not he’ll remember it is another story. And you wouldn’t want to have to rely on his testimony in court.”

  “What were you doing before we interrupted, Archie?” Catherine asked.

  “Looking for reflections.”

  “Of what?”

  “There are a lot of reflective surfaces on the block. Car windows, shop windows, polished chrome, that sort of thing. I’m trying to find and isolate those, then enhance as much as I can to see if maybe our guy appears somewhere.”

  “Good thinking,” Catherine said.

  “Oh, and I have this for you. Those ISPs you asked for.” Joanna Daniels had turned over threatening e-mails that had been sent to her husband, and several letters of the same nature that had come by regular mail. Those were with a Questioned Documents tech, but Catherine had asked Archie to run down the ISP addresses from which the e-mails had originated.

  “Thanks. That was quick.”

  Archie turned and gave her a smile. “I do what I can.”

  “B
est we can hope for.” With a subtle nod, she and Vartann kept walking. The lab was cool, and one of the city’s most advanced air circulation systems kept it virtually odor free, scrubbing every liter of oxygen several times an hour. “What have you learned?” she asked Vartann when they had moved out of Archie’s earshot.

  “Watson told you about the Free Citizens’ belief that the government turned traitor when they abandoned the gold standard,” Vartann said. “But did he tell you about the North American merit?”

  “What’s that, some kind of bird?”

  “It’s the currency that they believe is scheduled to replace the American and Canadian dollars, and the Mexican peso.”

  “Merits? Where did that come from?”

  “Who knows? Somebody with a high fever, I’m guessing.”

  “When is this supposed to happen?”

  “Soon, apparently. The black helicopters will bring North American United Army troops to our neighborhoods, and the jackbooted thugs will go door to door collecting dollars and replacing them with merits, legal tender in Mexico, the U.S., and Canada.”

  “Wow,” Catherine said. They passed by the ballistics lab, where Earl was running computer simulations to measure the explosive blast, in an attempt to figure out just what substances were involved, and in what precise quantities.

  “They’re getting ready for the changeover by buying precious gems, especially diamonds. Those, they say, will never go down in value, no matter what. There’ll always be an international market for them.”

  “I don’t understand how people come up with such bizarre ideas, Lou. Or why other people ever believe them.”

  “There’s pretty much no limit to what people will believe.”

  “I guess that’s always been true.”

  “Something else Watson said is true, too—they are hoarding weapons and ammunition. Most of it seems to be purchased legally, and there’s a paper trail. They go to states where gun laws are the most lax and buy up whatever they can. Nothing illegal about it, but when you put a lot of weapons together with a paranoid, extremist mentality, then you have the building blocks of a scary situation.”