LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter 22

      A rolled photo under his arm, Harry Nautilus strode into the morgue, more correctly the pathology department of the Alabama Forensics Bureau, south-western region. He waved at Vera Braden, the creamy-voiced receptionist, saluted Fred Tomlinson, the elderly security guard. Tomlinson returned the salute and went back to reading the newspaper.

      Nautilus found Doctor Clair Peltier behind her massive wood desk, a crystal vase on her desk overflowing with flowers from her garden. Given the competing scents in the morgue, Nautilus was happy the Doc was a gardener.

      “So what is it, Harry?” Peltier asked. “Your call wasn’t exactly a font of information.”

      Nautilus leaned back to look out Peltier’s door; no one in the hall. Still, he closed the door. “I wanted to show you something, Doc. Just between us.”

      Puzzlement clouded Peltier’s arctic blue eyes. “Sure.”

      Nautilus unrolled the photo. He stood across from Peltier’s desk and held it up. She studied the shot.

      “He’s a damn good-looking … wait, is that? My God, Harry, is that …?”

      “Yep. Jeremy Ridgecliff dressed only in his own skin. A recent photo.”

      Peltier pulled her lanyarded reading glasses to her face, studied the photograph. “I’ve only seen photos from Ridgecliff’s arrest. He looked like a kid, though he was twenty-six. He still could pass for early thirties.” She dropped the glasses back to her waist. “Any specific reason you wanted me to see this?”

      “Because you’re one of the few who know the secret about Carson and Jeremy Ridgecliff. And you know Carson. Put your glasses on again. Look at Ridgecliff’s expression.”

      She pulled the half-glasses to her face. “And?”

      “The look on Ridgecliff’s face … isn’t that almost the exact expression Carson gets when he’s …” Nautilus let the words hang, wanting to be no further influence.

      Peltier’s mouth fell open. Her hand flew to cover it.

      “When he’s about to confess something he’s been hiding. Half-frown, half sad-ass smile. Teeth tight together. Jeez, Harry, now that you mention it, that’s Carson’s Ready or Not, Here it Comes look. I once told him I could hear that look in the dark.”

      “The boy’ll never be a poker player. I’m glad you agree. I thought maybe I was going nuts.”

      “You’re not. Who the hell took the picture?”

      Nautilus re-rolled the photograph. “Uh, it looks like the photographer was Evangeline Prowse. It would have been taken at the Institute.”

      Peltier raised a dark and slender eyebrow. “Carson’s trip to New York. It’s bad? He’s been real close-lipped.”

      “He’s walking a fine line. I get the feeling the less we know, the better. I think he’s trying to keep me insulated for a couple reasons.”

      Peltier prodded a small clear bag on her desk. “I just received my own piece of New York. A sample of hair and fiber evidence collected at two Manhattan crime scenes, heavy on the hair follicles. You heard? Gathered from New York salons and barber shops, mixed with a ragpicker’s sampling of fibers. The NYPD forensics folks think it’s useless, especially since they’re convinced it was gathered by Ridgecliff, and he’s already the prime suspect …”

      “Gotcha. So why is it here?”

      “Carson wanted me to see if there was anything I could discern from the material.”

      Nautilus sighed. “Carson being Carson. What’re you planning to do? Wait until he forgets about it and fixates on something else?”

      “I’m going to load it all in the gas chromatograph. I’ll burn it, then the toxicologist and I will read the combined results of the hairs from several hundred heads.”

      “Isn’t that stuff usually run a hair or two at a time?”

      “It’s all I can do. It’s like dropping a net over a thousand horses.”

      “Won’t the result be a net full of horses?”

      Peltier folded her arms and stared at the bag of hair like it had challenged her to a duel.

      “Unless I somehow see a zebra.”

      Nautilus held his confusion in check. He tucked the photo under his arm. “I’m out of here. I’ve actually got a Mobile case or two to deal with. Then I have to call Carson and fill him in on what I’ve been digging up.”

      “Anything big?”

      “A mish-mash of weirdness with no common denominator. There was the photo, of course. Plus an invisible client of Prowse’s, and from nowhere a mention of the DC Snipers. What happened to the good old days of drive-bys and domestic shootings?”

      “Thanks for showing me the photograph, Harry. That look on Ridgecliff’s face is amazing and kind of scary. It truly is Carson’s confession look.”

      “They’re brothers,” Nautilus said. “Same blood, same genes. Carson said that when they were kids, one could start a sentence and the other would finish it without missing a word.”

      “Like twins, born six years apart.”

      “A few differences, thankfully,” Nautilus said. He flicked a wave and walked out the door.

      Peltier suppressed a shudder that came from nowhere. She stared at the bag of evidence from the NYPD, then filled out the request for a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer test, underscoring the word immediate.