A Conspiracy of Bones (Temperance Brennan #19)(24)

“We’re going to the crime lab?” I recognized the floor he’d chosen. Had been there many times.

“QD.” Slidell used the acronym for Questioned Documents, one of five specialty sections in the CMPD crime lab. But why?

A woman was waiting when the doors hummed open. Tiny, with tightly cropped black hair and cocoa skin. I didn’t know her, figured she must be new.

“Mittie Peppers.” Smiling with teeth too small for her mouth. Made me think of Chiclets lined up on her gums.

“Temperance Brennan.” Smiling back. We shook hands. Peppers’s grip could have crushed dandelion fluff.

“She’s been looking at the notebook,” Slidell said. To Peppers. “Brief her.”

“I prefer to show her.”

“We ain’t got all day.”

“It won’t take all day.” Not a single Chiclet in sight. I liked this woman.

Peppers chatted as we walked down a corridor that was totally empty. “I’m a bit nerd forward. My heart’s with digital—the internet and cybercrime—but I also work traditional QD evidence. Are you familiar with document examination?”

“The analysis of handwriting, typewriting, inks, counterfeiting.”

“Here we mostly look at forged or altered checks. Occasionally threatening letters, bank robbery notes, yada yada. But indented writing isn’t uncommon.”

“Wait.” My eyes whipped to Slidell. “You found indented writing?”

“Near the mumbo jumbo about the sinking ship.”

“Ferry,” I corrected. Needless, but I was jazzed. “So a sheet was missing from above that first page?”

“Thought I spotted grooves, angled my flash across ’em. Called up here.”

Peppers used her ID to swipe us through a set of security doors, again to enter the Questioned Documents section. Inside, she went directly to a blue-and-gray box with a flat white top and the letters ESDA on the front. Looked like a small photocopier except for a large roll of clear Mylar sheeting to one side.

“Can we stick to the basics?” Slidell, not at all subtly checking his watch.

Peppers ignored him. “I used a technique called electrostatic detection. Sounds high-tech, but it’s not rocket science.”

My mind translated the letters on the machine. Electro Static Detection Apparatus.

“The specimen needed some humidification. Not much. It was an outer page, and the trunk environment wasn’t too dry.” Peppers hit a button, and the apparatus began whirring lustily. “Vacuum pump.” Loud enough to be heard over the noise.

I nodded.

Peppers placed a paper on the platen, stretched Mylar across it, and snipped the edge free from the roll. After hitting a second button labeled corona, she ran a long, rectangular wand back and forth above the Mylar.

“The corona sends high-voltage static charges onto the paper.” Not shouting but close. “The positive charges from the wand are preferentially attracted to the indentations. I’m simplifying.”

I nodded again.

After turning off the corona, Peppers tilted the platen and shook black powder from a canister onto the Mylar. “The toner is similar to that used in dry-process photocopy machines. It’s negatively charged.”

I nodded again, feeling like a bobblehead. But I didn’t want to yell.

“The areas of the document containing the higher static electric charge will retain more of the toner, resulting in dark deposits in the indentations.”

A few seconds of shaking to distribute and clear off the excess toner, then she killed the vacuum pump. The room went mercifully quiet. “Take a look.”

I stepped closer.

On the paper, in squiggly black script, were the words Crime Scene Do Not Enter. I looked a question at Peppers.

“I couldn’t use the real evidence to demo the process for you, so I made this mock-up. When finished with my actual analysis, I photographed and preserved the detective’s specimen.”

Chiclet smile. Not returned by Slidell.

“Have a look.”

I followed Peppers to a side counter. The notebook page was there, solo now, covered with a sheet of adhesive-backed clear plastic. Through the plastic, I could read the Latvian words Nogrim?anas tra?ēdija. The name Felix Vodyanov.

Beside the words and name, three lines of writing not visible before. Fierce capitals and numerals.

I read them.

And felt a chill wash over my body.





9


The first line was a sequence of ten digits beginning with 704. The Charlotte area code.

The second line was also a telephone number.

The room had dissolved into a soundless whiteout. All I saw were those tiny black numerals, the grayness of the page roaring around them.

My mind was a maelstrom. Confusion. Disbelief. Fear.

For a moment, I felt I was floating. Then the stab of dread. Another migraine? No, this was different.

I blinked. Turned. Slidell and Peppers were watching me, identical frowns on their faces.

“That’s my mobile number.” Barely audible.

“It is,” Slidell said flatly.

“Sonofabitch.” Not my best. But I felt violated. As though a stranger had hacked my email or pawed through my underwear drawer.

“You put yourself out there for any of this social-media hooey? He Harmony? Snatch Match? Some egghead chat-room jabbering bones?”