Out at Night (19 page)

Mike nodded. “Our lab handled the CSI. Besides the chunk torn from Bartholomew’s jacket, it came up clean for stray fibers. Nothing, either, on the kill route and the soy.”

“They’ve been interviewed, everybody who worked this site?”

“So far, their alibis hold. Nobody remembers seeing Bartholomew or anybody strange. But there weren’t guards here until after the homicide. “Course, with last night, there’s a whole other angle we’re exploring, since it’s up on Indian land.”

Zsloski pointed at a path through the soy that ran adjacent to the crime scene. “CSI wants us to use this corridor.”

Grace turned and studied the path that Bartholomew had taken into the soy. The soy fronds were hairy and green, rising to midchest, the crushed route of Bartholomew’s flight made obvious by the damaged stalks flattened in a narrow swath. It looked as if a large, frightened animal had plowed headlong into the field, trying to get away.

Zsloski turned and headed into the soy. She followed him in, slipping on the uneven soy, which caught in her shoes and dug into her ankles. She grappled for purchase at some point, trying to right herself, and had an uneasy sense that Bartholomew must have done the same thing, under far more desperate circumstances.

They kept walking. The soy pressed in, the air hot, claustrophobic. She ducked under a soy frond. Zsloski stopped at the end of the path. The ground was stained by gasoline residue and darkened blood. The plants closest to the fire were blackened scarecrows, the leaves curled, fronds crackling in the wind. She wiped her forehead. She should have brought a hat. At least sunscreen. She hoped Mac was remembering to use sunscreen on Katie.

“I had a sit-down with Andrea,” Grace said. “She talked about Radical Damage. Nate kept trying to shut her up. She runs a small business, importing from Third World countries. She partnered with Bartholomew.”

“We did a background check on Professor Bartholomew and that came up.”

She nodded. She expected it. “That crossbow theft might be part of something bigger.”

“Also know. Working with Union Pacific. They have their own police to monitor trains.”

“Might want to check out a guy named Tony, works at Windlift as a welder.”

Zsloski stared at her.

“He’s a convicted felon. Murder two. Killed his first wife.”

“We got that already.”

She felt a slow burn. It had to be clear she’d gotten an FBI consulting ID but no deep briefing. “Then you got everything I know. Don’t need my help.”

“You’re doing good, though. You’ve been here, what, forty-five minutes?”

He was trying to make her feel better and she appreciated it.

“Maybe a bolt cutter—like the kind used in the cargo thefts—cut the wire on that fence there.” She took another gulp of water. Of course he knew that; she was trying to save face.

“Might be worth finding out what they’ve imported lately, at Square Pegs, and where the stuff has ended up. Anything useful yet from his house?”

“Bartholomew had a housekeeper he paid in cash. Her prints haven’t come up in the system. Only reason we know about her was that he spilled that he had a maid during the part of his class dealing with sexual oppression. It chewed on him: paying a woman to clean for him every two weeks so that he could lecture about how women were held down in the marketplace by low pay and traditional jobs.”

“Interesting that he let anybody in there. Must have been somebody he trusted.”

“Like I said, no match on the prints yet.”

It wasn’t Andrea, then.

“We’re finding nasty shit, Grace,” he said quietly. “He had a complete set of Jolly Roger cookbooks inside a hollowed-out John Muir biography.”

She thought back to the Mexican restaurant; Nate’s reaction when Grace had casually brought up bombs. “I met Nate last night. I brought up bombs in the conversation.”

“That sounds nice and light.”

“He turned on Andrea, wanted to know what she’d told me.”

“So you think it could be a bomb Monday night.”

“Sure. A bomb and then pick off any survivors with crossbows. Bartholomew flag anything in that cookbook?”

“We’re checking the pages that are most thumbed to see what we get.”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw something on the periphery of the field.

Zsloski straightened. He was a lot taller than Grace and whatever he saw enraged him. He turned and plowed past her, back the way they’d come, bellowing and sliding over the soy. “Hey, hey, hey, what did I tell you about stepping into the crime scene?”

He disappeared ahead of her and she was left enveloped in a green dusty wall of soy higher than her head. Tell her, Vee. Tell her about the GM soy turning the rat testicles blue.

She shifted uneasily, slapped a hand over her nose, and tried not to breathe.

Not that she had testicles to worry about. But still. She put her head down and followed Detective Zsloski out.

Chapter 22

Deputy Sheriff Rogener stood outside the tape in a heated argument with a man Grace didn’t recognize, Zsloski bearing down, waving his fists and bellowing, everybody talking at once.

“It was only a little.”

“He sneaked, Detective. He went right by me and sneaked in.”

“And how did he do that exactly?” Zsloski growled.

“I have permission, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. From the FBI.”

The speaker had white hair tufting far back on a receding hairline, a bulbous veined nose, and a too-wide smile that made him look alarmingly like a clown named Bobo who had terrified Grace as a child.

She’d forgotten all about Bobo until that very minute. She was a person doomed to go through life remembering, reconnecting the perilous parts of her past in a painful voyage of rediscovery.

He was wearing what appeared to be a safari outfit, the kind Grace had seen on sale in the gift shop at the San Diego Zoo. Strapped to a wide cotton belt jangled a set of plastic sample containers filled with dark orange bits of leaves. He’d slung a canvas bag over a narrow shoulder. It appeared to have everything he’d need for a long journey except a porta-pottie.

“Grace. Dr. Gordie Turngood. Turngood, Grace Descanso. He’s a plant pathologist I was telling you about, checking the soy for soybean rust.”

Dr. Turngood nodded, gripped two sample bottles convulsively and pulled, as if he were milking them. He looked ready to confess. To whatever it was.

A police radio crackled to life and Zsloski cupped it in a massive palm and spoke into it, his voice a mumble.

The plant pathologist’s gaze wandered and Grace saw him look with longing at a soy frond, just out of reach. He leaned his body toward it, feet on the ground, eyes down as if he really wasn’t ready to whip his hand up past the crime scene tape, snap off the frond, stuff it into a fresh bottle and cap it. Grace had seen Helix do exactly the same thing, creeping toward a stray cookie.

“This is a crime scene. Nothing is removed from here and
you
—” Zsloski pointed a square finger at Gordie Turngood and the scientist flinched and bobbed to an upright position, a bouncy toy. “Stay with
her
. Deputy, I suggest you sit in your chair, stop listening to the pregame chatter.”

Sheriff Deputy Rogener’s hand clapped over the ear bud in his left ear.

“I’d hate to have to confiscate that before kickoff.”

Zloski cracked up the crime scene tape for Grace and she scrambled under it. Up close, the scientist smelled of cinnamon and musk, liberally applied.

“I’ve got work to do.” Zsloski headed back to his unmarked. “The perimeter, Grace. Don’t let Gordie Turngood under that tape.”

____

“It’s sporulating like crazy. Not this field, but the others.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

They were walking back to the cars. A fine cloud of dust sifted over the parking lot where Zsloski’s unmarked had been. Deputy Sheriff Rogener was on the folding chair, back listening to the game, a finger wedged in his ear to hide the ear pod.

Dr. Turngood fished out his car keys from his pocket. “Oh, that’s a very bad thing, Grace. There were six different strains of GM soy planted in fields here. Most of them have been hit.”

“But not this field.”

He looked longingly back at the field and tried again. “I wanted a sample of the gasoline residue, that’s all.”

“For what, so you could sell it on eBay? Are you married?”

“Not anymore. Why?”

Grace thought of her mother, Lottie, who never met a boundary she couldn’t do an end run around, usually in hot pants and stilettos.

“No reason. What makes soybean rust so bad?”

“You want the stomach-turning version, or the regular one?”

“I’ve got a great imagination. Stick with the facts.”

“Pustules,” Gordie Turngood said matter-of-factly. “Brown, squishy ones shaped like sci-fi miniature pinecones that, if left untreated, erupt with a volcanic surge of spores that—”

“Okay, I get it,” she said irritably.

“Actually, it’s worse than that. It’s a parasite. It needs green, living tissue to survive.” He unlocked his car door and grappled his pack into the backseat.

Grace had never thought of soy as “green, living tissue” before. It gave her pause.

“It’s host specific. Affects only soy.”

“Well, there you go,” Grace said. “There’s no other soy around for miles and miles. This is date palm country.”

“You don’t get it. It’s already gone by now, on the wind. Like snow birds, soybean rust likes to hunker down, winter in warm climes. We found it on Florida beggarweed.”

“In Florida?”

“Georgia. Misnamed. It can wipe out eighty percent of a soy crop. And it can respore, so it comes back. And some strains appear to be resistant to every known antidote, so we have to GM the soy to stave it off, and that takes time.”

A sudden wind snapped through the parking lot.

“This stuff was deliberately placed. It jumped about six states to get here, but on this wind, it’s halfway to Monterey by now.” Turngood undid his belt and carefully put the samples in the front seat next to him.

“I’ve got a sample of something I need you to process.”

He shook his head and the curls bounced. “Can’t get to it for at least two weeks, with the backup from this.”

“It might have something to do with this case.” Grace pulled an evidence envelope out of her bag. “This came out of the vic’s shoes.” She tucked it back in her bag.

“The vic?” He blanched. “You mean the victim? Professor Bartholomew.”

“I need you to tell me where it came from.”

___

Dr. Gordie Turngood’s lab was in a medical and technical building off Date Palm Drive, gray glass windows and beige cement. Palm trees and yucca studded the lawn. She parked and followed him up the exterior staircase to the second floor. He unlocked a door across from a clinical psychologist’s office.

Files buried the desk. A putting green poked out from a debris of papers on the floor, the hole for the ball filled with paper clips. A half-finished charcoal sketch of a nude woman stood positioned on an easel. A Gibson guitar leaned against the wall, its strings sprung and curling in hard wiry strands. If there was a phone and computer, Grace didn’t see them. Silently, she cursed Zsloski.

“Looks like you’re too busy. I’ll just take it—”

“You’re put off by the mess.” He sounded affronted. “It’s adult ADD. Diagnosed when my kid was evaluated. Your choice, but I’m the only game in town if you’re in a hurry. And clearly Homicide Detective Mike Zsloski must believe in my abilities or he wouldn’t have sent you my way.”

Reluctantly, Grace pulled the evidence packet from her bag and he signed for it. She was relieved she had the second envelope, relieved that if Gordie messed up the first sample, she still had something clean she could take someplace else.

“There’s not much in the envelope. Use it all. I have a second sample if we need to retest.”

He looked at her shrewdly. “You mean retest someplace else.”

She shrugged.

“I go all over the world fingerprinting vegetables, not just the Coachella Valley.”

A beat. “I’m with the San Diego Police crime lab; we analyze DNA all the time.” She was trying to make nice. It made her face itch.

He sniffed and rooted through a stack of papers, found something, and passed it to her. It looked remarkably similar to human DNA: a series of sharp, well-defined peaks, resembling a supermarket bar code.

“This is a date palm bar code from a farm in Indio. A strain that’s been cultivated to yield richer-tasting, plumper dates. They patented their procedure, but these guys have to protect their project, and this is a way of doing it. I profile the DNA, and that way, if it turns up in some other farm’s product, there’s a way of collecting. It’s big business and that means theft is right behind it.”

“So the stuff that was in Bartholomew’s shoe, you could tell me what it is and where it came from.”

“If it’s plant, sure, I could tell you where it didn’t, at least. There’s a library of bar codes I’ll compare it to, but not every grower goes to the trouble of registering his strain. The USDA and a lot of universities have overlapping programs, and some of that’s on the Net, but there’s a long way to go. They haven’t even completely decoded the soybean genome. Humans have about three billion bases—building blocks—in just a single cell. The humble soybean only has a third of that, but that’s still a lot of bases to cover.”

He smiled at his little joke.

A bell went off in the lab and he turned toward the sound, remembered the packet and came back for it.

“Got to go. I’ll call. Make sure you lock that door when you leave.”

He darted into the lab and closed the door behind him. Grace ripped off a piece of notepaper from her pad and blockprinted her name and cell phone number. She stepped over the debris and slid it under the lab door.

“Got it,” Gordie Turngood said, his voice muffled and distracted.

Grace hesitated, staring at the door, wondering if she needed to write a reminder and slip it under the door again.

She locked the outer door behind her as she left.

Chapter 23