"The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars."
~ Carl Sagan
~**~~**~
The doctor bent over the microscope, adjusting the eyepiece with the tips of her gloved fingers. The pounding in her head had worsened and the magnified light did not help one bit. The cuts on her hands cracked with each movement of the tweezers and she groaned, irritation spiking.
The previous forensic scientist who worked on the case had cataloged the striations crudely. Part of her doubted that the person who had 'Frankenstein-ed' the ammunition pieces together even had a scientific degree.
Mentally berating the lack of forensic professionalism, she cracked the bones in her neck, rolling her head side to side.
Nothing was making sense.
The report stated that the bullet matched a 357 Magnum but she was seeing no evidence of that. She had had to piece the bullet fragments together like a miniature steel puzzle that refused to be solved.
Eventually, the battered segments had some semblance to the bullet and she dabbed the moisture on her forehead.
Craning forward, V.C. examined the crumbling of the metal.
Firing pins on every gun make a unique pattern on every bullet fired. Never were there two guns that made the same pattern. The rifling on the barrel of each gun also left spiraling grooves on each fired bullet.
And looking at the bullets from Silvia's house and the one recovered from Mateo's body, she could have sworn they were identical. Besides the fact one had ripped through a body and the other two torn into some drywall, she wouldn't be able to tell them apart.
And that was a problem.
A big problem.
Furthermore, her Mass Spectrometer had told her, the bullets were made of a lead alloy and a gliding alloy composed of copper and zinc. The inner core carried a 1.8% tungsten center to be heat resistant.
V.C. furrowed her brow for what seemed the hundredth time that day. She wracked her brain on her knowledge of weapon manufacturing.
The first thing professors teach in forensics is that when evidence looks identical, it's never a coincidence.
Each box of bullets was manufactured differently. No matter if the creation process was exactly the same, there was always differing amounts of metal components in each bullet.
It meant that not only had the first bullet been incorrectly reconstructed, but also incorrectly identified to match a 357 Magnum.
Dr. Coldwater would stake all of her Ph.D.'s and her Maserati that what she found was right.
V.C. was just about to finish cataloging her findings when a tap on her shoulder caused her to jump. Yanking her earbuds out roughly, the last stanzas of 'Don't Stop Me Now' by Queen flowed out into the open room.
She rotated to find a nervous Thomas hovering at her shoulder. While he was taller than her sitting, he seemed to sink into the floor at her questioning gaze.
"TheThermalCyclerBuzzedAndYouDidn'tHearItAndMr.PagerToldMeNotTo BotherYouButIKnowIt'sTimeSensitiveSo. . ." He talked so fast V.C. didn't even know if he knew what he said.
He. Is. Adorable.
She smiled and nodded her thanks to the boy.
Rising swiftly from her chair, she walked over to the cycler resting on a nearby table. V.C. flipped open the lid and retrieved the small test tube. Inside was a DNA sample from the blood Jack had taken from the Emblem House.
Grabbing a micropipette, she siphoned the fluid into a capillary for gel electrophoresis. She snapped the lid shut and turned back to face the curious officer.
"But I have a question. . ."
At that, the boy gulped visibly and V.C. swore she saw beads of sweat lining his forehead.
"How did you know what it was called? Page, who has been with me for a year, still calls it a spinny thingy."
Thomas blushed his characteristic pink and stared at the ground. "I-uh- I. . .studied forensic pathology."
When V.C. asked him where, he responded 'John Hopkins University'.
For the first time since she had taken this case, V.C. was noticeably shocked. She never imagined that this shy policeman had attended one of the most prestigious universities in the country. And that he had majored in forensics above all!
"Wow. I had no idea. Why did you become an officer then? Did you finish school? No? Why did you stop?" She bombarded him with question after question, not even giving him time to answer, but she quickly rectified her statements.
"You know what, its none of my business. Sorry for asking, I've never been good at knowing when to shut up." She gave him a guilty smile and turned back to the table behind her.
Thomas cleared his throat and spoke, "No, no, it's fine, really. I-I. . .My mother--she--she died and my little brother. . . Well. . . I just needed to take care of him so I came back to Rinshawn. Sheriff Stan gave me a job." He trailed off into awkward silence.
The 'Abort mission' mantra streamed across V.C.'s brain as soon as she heard that. Luckily she was still facing away from him so she could debate on how to handle the situation.
When it came to a case, she always knew what to say or how to act; it came as natural as breathing to her.
But now, during interpersonal interactions, her brain shut off.
For someone so smart, her mind ironically was the one thing that got her into trouble. And that trouble usually involved her making jokes at inappropriate times. She couldn't help it; it was sort of a defense mechanism. One that had gotten her kicked out of far too many wakes.
Whatever you do, V.C. do NOT make a 'kick the bucket' joke. Just nod with pity. Or something.
Thankfully, the PCR machine dinged before she could humiliate herself and the awkward tension dissipated.
The structure for the attacker's DNA had finally been determined. Now all she had to do was upload the sample structure to the FBI database and see if it had a match. V.C. was just about to do just that when she saw Thomas eagerly watching her next movements.
Deciding that there wasn't a risk of error, she motioned him closer. "Hey, Thomas! Can you run this through CODIS for me? I have to see what Page and Rhodes found on the computer and it would really help me out."
She watched as his eyes lit up and his lips tugged up in an adorable smile. He nodded his head vigorously, taking a seat in front of the screen and eyeing it intently.
V.C.'s own lips curved into a smile as she watched his enthusiasm. Grabbing her clipboard from the adjoining table, she went to find Jack and the rest of her crew.
Outside, the sky was darkening, covering the room in shadows. V.C. found Jack thumbing through a stack of papers underneath lamplight. A bent elbow gave rise to one muscular palm which cradled his own head.
He looked like the human equivalent of The Thinker by Auguste Rodin. . .
Except for the fact he wasn't buck naked and sitting on a pedestal.
Golden light streamed across Jack's face, casting it in a combination of shadows and highlights. Long dark eyelashes that extended so far they almost brushed his brow. The perpetual scold that lined his face whenever he was around V.C. was smoothed, making him look younger than his 32 years as light danced off his high cheekbones.
As she drew closer, Jack lifted his head and closed the folder.
"Hey."
"Hey yourself."
Smooth, V.C, real smooth. . . kill me now. . . Start over.
She cleared her throat and took a seat across from Jack. He moved the stack of papers to the side to make room for her and leaned back in his chair.
"What did you find?"
"Well. First off: Imma find the forensic scientist who conducted this report and knock some sense into them because it felt like a child wrote this." She smacked the clipboard down on the table with a heated frustration.
"And secondly: we have a problem. Because the striations on both of the bullets match those from a Glock 19, not a 357 Magnum like the report previously stated. And they are matched to the same Glock."
Jack leaned forward to balance his elbows on the table, his shadow blocking the lamplight.
"So what are the chances that the Emblems were shot at with the same gun by different shooters?"
"Taking into account weapon abandonment, the ratio of people in the tri-state area, the number of murders committed in a square mile. . . I'd say approximately .0087% with a .0001% error. . ."
She took in Jack's blank face and inwardly groaned. "And that was rhetorical, wasn't it. . ."
She berated herself but trudged on. "Anyway, what we have here is either a crazy sisterhood of the traveling pants: murder weapon edition or--"
Jack jumped to finish her sentence, "It was the same person who took a shot at both of the Emblems. Whoever murdered Mateo is definitely trying to kill Ms. Praxton. What we need now is to find out why. And why all of the Emblem case files are compromised!"
His eyes strayed to her still bandaged hand and his brows furrowed again.
He's gotta find a new way to express his frustration. Else he'll need botox.
V.C. was just about to tell him that when an outburst from Thomas sent both of their eyes skittering toward him.
"Match! Match! I've got a match from CODIS!"
Thomas scurried over with a laptop and placed it in front of Jack and V.C. "Devin Schinhold. Age 38. He has been arrested four times for a DUI and aggravated assault. He served 5 years in federal prison for drug trafficking. Was just released 6 months ago."
"Right around the time Emblem was killed?" Jack asked.
"Three weeks prior."
It was at that precise moment that V.C. wanted to shout from rooftops. They had a suspect and he probably did it. And if even he didn't, she was just going to pretend that he did.
Because her head was pounding and her face was bleeding again and all she wanted to do was go to that secondhand (probably flea infested) motel and fall into an oblivious sleep.
But.
She doubted that Jack would agree with her plan of shotty detective work.
He was all about the evidence. . .
In fact, he had already risen up from his chair and put his phone to his ear, walking toward the darkened window to make a call. Most likely to call in a BOLO for Schinhold but she held the far-fetched hope he was ordering takeout.
But, unfortunately, when technical jargon floated back to her, she knew her aspirations were unfounded.
Guess that is a no to the deep dish. . .
~**~~**~
The hours rolled on and on, further into the night. The moon had finally decided to make an appearance in the sky, shining through the industrial glass with luster.
The dim lighting from the desk lamps was giving Jack a headache. No matter how many times he scanned through Schinhold's case files and prison record, he couldn't find a connection to the Emblems.
Mateo Emblem hadn't even been a criminal justice lawyer so he would have had no contact with Schinhold.
It just didn't seem likely that Emblem and Schinhold had even met before, nevermind interacted.
The night dragged on and once the clock had struck seven, Thomas began checking his watch every minute like, well, clockwork.
Finally, V.C. had pity on the boy and suggested that he go home and rest to start anew the next morning.
Flynn had finished his work about the time that Thomas left but he decided that a good use of his night was to sit ominously in the opposite corner of the warehouse and glare continuously at Jack.
It took two hours for V.C. to push Flynn out the door.
Literally.
Jack was pretty sure she strong-armed him onto the elevator. But not before the man shot Jack one more soul-crushing stare as the metal doors slid shut.
And now, as the time drew closer and closer to midnight, only Jack and V.C. remained.
And Pager.
But Jack didn't think he was actually in the land of the living. The man's eyes were visibly glued to the Mateo Emblem's laptop continually. He hadn't even taken a noticeable breath. Jack doubted the man even knew that the others had left.
Dedication.
But when he noticed the drooping head of a normally rambunctious doctor, he flipped the file closed and approached her.
"Come on, up you go. We need sleep, we can start again in the morning."
She looked like she was about to argue with him but didn't. He had the sneaking suspicion it had something to do with her re-bandaged forehead.
"Alright, see you tomorrow Rhodes."
She pushed her chair in and grabbed her handbag off the table and started to walk away. She got halfway to the elevator before Jack placed a hand on her arm, twirling her around to face him.
"Where do you think you're going?"
A confused look passed over her face before she tentatively responded, "to bed. . .?"
"There's no way I'm letting you sleep alone!"
~**~~**~
A/N
Next chapter is: Wake Up Call!
Blurb:
A swirl of black ink which started at his left bicep traveled up to his shoulder, finally coming to rest over his heart.
The designs were blurry for her tired eyes, but she could tell they were intricate details.
The muscles flexed with every stroke of the razor, making the tattoos contort in patterns on his golden skin.
Her gaze traveled down his unclothed torso, past his prominent abdominal muscles and came to rest on Levi jeans hugging lean hips.
And then the 'Check Engine' light in her brain went on. Her hamster fell off its wheel. . . the filament in her light bulb burnt out. Whatever one wanted to call it; in summation, her mind stopped working.
Thank you so much for reading this far! I hope you like the rest of the book! :D