Fair Warning (Jack McEvoy #3)(54)

“Which is?”

“He only bought female DNA from Orange Nano.”

“Okay, yeah. What’s this guy’s name?”

“Marshall Hammond.”

“Let me write that down.”

I spelled the name out loud as I wrote it down, the phone held in the crook of my neck. Emily confirmed.

“We need to background him,” I said.

“I tried but nothing came up,” Emily said. “I was thinking you might try some of your old LAPD sources, see if you can get a take on him.”

“Yeah, not a problem. I’ll make some calls. Are you still at the office?”

“No, I went home. I didn’t want Myron to see this stuff on my desk.”

“Right.”

“You get anything from Deep Throat?”

“Yes. He texted me the transcript of the interview with Orton and the DNA report that cleared him. I think Deep Throat is Detective Ruiz.”

“I’d like to read that interview.”

“I’ll send it when we get off.”

“Where are you?”

“Meeting a friend for a drink.”

“Okay, see you tomorrow.”

“Let’s take one more run at Myron with all of this stuff. See if we can get a couple more days.”

“I’m there.”

“Okay, see you then.”

I went back into the bar and saw that Rachel had finished her drink. I slipped back onto the stool.

“Ready for another?” I asked.

“No, I want to keep my wits about me tonight. Finish yours and let’s go to your place.”

“Yeah? What about dinner?”

“We can order in.”





THE SHRIKE





24

He waited until it was dark.

He loved the silence of the Tesla. The car was like him. It moved swiftly and stealthily. Nobody heard him coming. He pulled to the curb a block from the house on Capistrano and got out, silently closing the door behind him. He pulled the hood of the black nylon runner’s shell up over his head. He already wore a clear plastic mask that distorted his facial features to better guard against identification should there be a camera in the neighborhood that picked him up. Everybody had motion-activated cameras around their homes these days. It made his work difficult.

He carefully moved down the street, staying tucked into the shadows and out of the circles of illumination created by the streetlights. He had a small black duffel bag he kept tight against his body and under his arm. He finally reached the side yard of the target house and slipped into its backyard through an unlocked gate.

The house was dark but the oval-shaped pool was lighted—most likely on a timer—and cast a shimmering glow into the house through a row of sliding glass doors. There were no curtains. He checked each of the sliders and found them locked. He then used a small pry bar from the duffel on the bottom of the center door to raise it up and out of its track. He carefully lifted it out and onto the concrete patio surface. This created a slight popping sound. He remained still, squatting next to the door and waiting to see if the disturbance had triggered an alarm or alerted anyone.

No lights came on. No one checked the living room. He got up and slid the door open along the rough concrete surface, then entered the house.

No one was home. A room-by-room search of the house determined that there were three bedrooms where no one was sleeping. Thinking it possible that he had indeed awakened someone by popping the slider and that they were hiding somewhere sent him through the house in a more thorough search that again produced no occupants, hiding or otherwise.

But the second search led him to the garage, which he found had been converted into a laboratory. He realized that what he had found here was the lab support for Dirty4. He set to work examining the equipment and the notebooks left on a worktable, as well as data marked on hanging whiteboards and a calendar.

There was also a desktop computer. When he pressed the space bar, he learned that it was thumbprint protected.

He reached into his duffel for the roll of clear duct tape he kept among his tools and bindings. Leaving the garage, he walked through a TV room and found a powder room—the closest bathroom to the lab. He flicked on the light and peeled two three-inch segments of tape off the roll. He put one down on the sink counter with the sticky side up, then carefully and lightly applied the second to the top of the toilet’s plastic flush handle. Raising the tape, he looked at it from an oblique angle. He had lifted a print. He could tell it was big enough to be a thumb.

He put the tape down on top of the other segment, locking the print between the plastic. He then returned to the lab and sat at the computer. He took off a rubber glove and wrapped the plastic containing the captured print against his own thumb. He pressed it down on the desktop’s reader square and the computer’s screen activated. He was in.

He put his glove back on and began moving through the files on the desktop. He had no idea where the homeowner was but there was plenty on the computer for him to look through and attempt to understand. His study went on for hours and only ended after dawn, when he heard a car pull into the driveway on the other side of the garage door.

He was alerted but did not bother to hide. He quickly prepared for the homeowner, then turned off the lights in the lab and waited.