Chapter 12
Detective Bart Romanski crumpled an empty can of sugar--free Red Bull and tossed it into the hallway trash can before keying himself back into the CBI trace evidence room.
Most of the room was dark, except for a corner with fluorescent lights where he and a technician, Michael Reno, had been laboring away, analyzing the remainder of the Grooms evidence.
They had been working for sixteen hours straight now, and Romanski was hoping to get through the rest before dawn.
It was nine o’clock at night, but he didn’t mind; he worked best at night.
“Energizer Bunny recharged?” Reno asked.
Reno was Romanski’s favorite technician to work with.
He cut quite a figure with his handlebar mustache and rolled--up sleeves revealing a forearm tattoo of Homer Simpson eating a doughnut.
What hair was missing on Reno’s head was sticking out in tufts from the V--neck of his shirt.
Before gowning up in lab gear, hairnet, and face mask, he looked more like a biker than a scientist. But Romanski loved the guy.
He was a competent technician who kept things lively with a wiseass sense of humor, and he was the only one out of the bunch who regularly volunteered to stay late.
Plus, they had survived escaping the Erebus disaster together.
Trauma bonding, Romanski thought. He gave an involuntary shiver.
“Recharged. Ready to rumble?” Romanski grinned, pulling on a fresh pair of nitrile gloves.
“All set to go,” Reno said.
Romanski measured out the different reagents that Reno would need to pipette into the reaction vials for the PCR run, handing them to Reno one by one, who hunched over the tray of tubes with his pipette, tongue sticking out in concentration.
“This Communion wafer shit is crazy, isn’t it?” Reno said. “Can’t believe the dude was eating Jesus bread when he died.”
“Yeah,” said Romanski. “I went down a rabbit hole on Communion wafers yesterday. Did you know that a long time ago, only bakers, parishes, and convents sanctioned by the church could make Communion wafers? And there was this whole sacred ritual that went into making them, even sprinkling the dough with holy water and using special ovens.”
“All for a tasteless piece of cardboard.”
“No kidding. But now they’re manufactured by big companies.”
Reno grunted in assent, continuing his work with the chemicals.
The DNA recovered at the crime scene had been in the form of pin-sized drops of blood, and Romanski had opted for a PCR analysis, instead of a RFLP DNA analysis, which was more reliable in court but required a larger sample size.
He watched as Reno pipetted the PCR buffer, deoxynucleotide mix, Taq DNA polymerase, and other reagents for the test into the reaction tubes, which would be centrifuged and then go through about thirty rounds in a thermal cycler, amplifying the DNA millions of times to an easily detectable level.
The entire process would take about two to three hours.
Romanski looked at his watch. If they pushed it, he could be out of there by two a.m.
Romanski dialed Cash’s number, half expecting her to ignore his call because of the late hour. Instead, she answered the phone after half a ring, sounding alert.
“When can I drop by?” she asked.
Romanski was a bit taken aback, then reminded himself this was Cash. She always threw herself into her cases. “Well, we should have DNA results by twelve thirty, if you don’t mind staying up late.”
“Gotcha. I’ll be there.”
“Cool. Come join the party,” Romanski said, and hung up. He sat down to finish typing up the forensic report on the other fluids they had collected.
“I hope you know I’ll be out of here as soon as this hits the cycler,” Reno said as he slid the test tubes into different sides of the centrifuge.
“Make sure to balance those out,” Romanski said out of habit, almost forgetting Reno was one of his most experienced technicians, “one on each opposite end of the centrifuge. Use water if you’ve got an odd number.”
“Dude, what’s with the back--seat driving?” Reno closed the centrifuge and set the timed cycle. “Speaking of, how is that new girl Aisling doing?”
“She’s pretty good. She attended CU Denver’s forensic science program—-same school I did—-so I know she’s got the smarts. I worry she’s getting a little too distracted with Tyrone, though.”
“I’ve noticed. Think they’re—-?” Reno made an obscene gesture with his hands and whistled.
Romanski laughed. “Not my business.”
Reno retrieved the solutions from the centrifuge and began programming the thermal cycler.
“Can you handle the rest of this if I bounce now?”
“Absolutely. Thanks for staying late, Reno, as always.” Romanski clapped a hand on Reno’s shoulder. “Say …” Romanski paused, wondering if he should even ask, but decided it was better to check in than to sweep it under the rug. “How are you doing?”
Reno had taken a month off from work after the Erebus disaster, but after his first week back, he’d suffered a massive anxiety attack, leaving him a hyperventilating mess crouched in the corner of the lab.
After a second and longer break, he had returned to work and now appeared to be doing better—-so Romanski hoped.
Reno busied himself cleaning up his station. “My psychiatrist says I have PTSD, but what can you do? One step at a time.” He began wiping down the area near the weighing station. “Do you ever dream about the Neanders?”
“No,” Romanski lied. “You?”
Reno hesitated. “Yeah. I dream that I’m trapped down in the mines, lost, and no matter where I turn, it’s a never--ending tunnel of darkness and stone, and I can hear them in the pitch blackness behind me.
” Reno shivered. “It always ends the same way. I’m choking on acrid smoke and those creepy, high, breathy voices get louder and louder before they grab me and tear me apart. ”
Romanski frequently woke up screaming too, his husband shaking him awake from the same nightmare: that he was tied up at the Neander altar, about to be burned, human heads on spikes around him. But no way was he ever going to tell anyone at work about that. Never.
Reno said, “The FBI seems to have dropped the ball. And then all these crazy pro--and anti--Neander protestors? Holy fuck, the world’s gone mad.”
“They’re getting a new special agent in charge,” said Romanski. “And they’re gonna bring CBI back in, they say.”
“No thank you. I don’t want back in.”
“I’m not sure we have a choice,” Romanski said, feeling jumpy in the dark lab.
“Sure you don’t want me to stay, boss?” Reno asked, pausing from unbuttoning his lab coat.
“Naw, Cash’ll be here soon,” Romanski said. “Get out of here before you grow fangs and start hissing at sunlight.”
Reno brought the right unbuttoned side of his lab coat across half of his face like a cape. “There are bad dreams for those that sleep unwisely,” he intoned in a fake Hungarian accent.
Romanski gave a chuckle.
Reno gathered his belongings and paused, silhouetted in the doorway from the hallway light. “Hey, Romanski, thanks for checking in on me. You’re a decent boss … and also a friend.”
Romanski watched the door close behind Reno, leaving him in the silence of his lab. He fiddled with his Bluetooth speaker, and soon Etta James’s crooning broke the stillness. Feeling a little better, he resumed typing his report.
About an hour later, the thermal cycling was complete.
Romanski pipetted the samples into individual wells of the gel box and ran the gel with electrophoresis—-the electric current would move the DNA molecules through the gel, allowing the bands of DNA to be seen under a UV light.
That process would take an additional hour.
To pass the time, Romanski took out a sketchbook and began drawing his next sculpture.
In a junkyard, he had found a pair of rusted boilers, some condensers, warped springs, a crate of angle iron, and a large box of gears.
He had previously decided to make a giant head out of it.
But seeing Willy Grooms’s creations had given him inspiration to make something different, something creepy.
Maybe a winged creature—-with bones of angle iron and torn cloth for wings.
He began to draw in confident strokes as the electrophoresis worked the DNA through the gel in the background.
Another hour passed, and the gel was done—-the DNA had been mapped.
Where that would lead, who it might connect to, would come later.
Just as Romanski was finishing up, he heard Cash’s light knock on the door window, causing him to jump.
He let her in, noticing she looked different from her usual getup, having donned sweatpants and a wrinkled Red Sox T--shirt.
Dark circles ringed her eyes, auburn hair uncombed.
She didn’t look good. Probably working too hard, Romanski thought.
“Burning the midnight oil as usual?” she said, putting on a disposable lab coat, hairnet, gloves, and a mask. She sat at one of the center tables as Romanski collected and stacked the reports.
“You’re also up past your bedtime,” Romanski remarked.
She ignored his quip and gestured at the reports. “Can you summarize those for me—-and mind if I record? I need to play it back for Colcord tomorrow.”
“Go ahead.”
She placed her cell phone on the table and pulled out her notebook.
“I’ll make it quick, ’cause it’s late,” said Romanski.
“I’ll start with fingerprints. We found a bunch of latents, mostly Willy’s and Margie Brooksfield’s.
A few old latents from Samuel Grooms, Willy’s son.
He has a short rap sheet for drunk and disorderly and a DUI in his twenties, which is where we got the hit from the database.