LITMIR.BIZ

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      “All I want is for you to help us look for a ring. And maybe a couple of disintegrating bullets.”

      “DASHING THROUGH THE SNOW…”

      Holly Masterson’s singing softened to a hum as she squinted at her computer screen and typed in the next line of her autopsy report. COD—Natural Causes. Massive heart failure due to…

      “In a one-horse open sleigh…”

      Her fingers danced over the keyboard in time to the music playing over her earphones. Indigent lifestyle of malnutrition, exposure to elements and lack of medical…

      “…laughing all the way. Ha, ha, ha. Bells on—”

      The red light flashed on her office phone, indicating an incoming call. Holly killed the music as she saved her report. She spared a few moments to back it up to a disk and send it to the printer before pulling off her earphones and answering the call. “Crime lab. Dr. Masterson speaking.”

      “Do I really have to call you Doctor? Can’t I just call you Squirt, the way I used to?” Holly grinned at the teasing in her older brother Eli’s voice. “So,what’s keeping you at the lab so late tonight? I tried to call you on your cell, but it went straight to voice mail.”

      After a half dozen calls from the same unnamed cell phone, with no one on the other end when she picked it up, Holly had turned hers off and plugged it into its charger. But she had helped Eli raise herself and their younger sister since she was in high school and their parents had died in a plane crash. They’d weathered their sister’s rebellious choices and cocaine addiction together. A wrong number was nothing to worry an overprotective big brother about.

      “I like to call it ‘work’,” Holly deadpanned. “You know I man the late shift at the lab, or you wouldn’t be calling me this close to midnight. So what’s up?”

      “A guy can’t call his sister just to see how she’s doing?” That dry wit was a Masterson trait. “So…your car’s running all right? You got the stopper on that bathroom drain fixed? You’re not dating anyone I need to check out?”

      “Yes. I’ll get to it. And no.” Holly grinned. “So, what’s going on that’s so important you needed to stay up past your bedtime and chat before our regular Friday lunch?”

      Several minutes later, Holly was pacing in front of the windows that separated her office from the darkened lab and the autopsy room beyond. This close to the holidays, the crime lab ran a skeleton crew at night. Other than the derelict John Doe lying in the morgue, Holly was alone in the basement. She knew lab techs on the floors above her were monitoring ongoing fiber trace tests and editing background noise off some security camera footage. And she was having one of her own team members rerun a ballistics test on what she’d dubbed a disintegrating bullet—a mysterious new design of deadly ammunition that had shown up in several autopsies this year. Unfortunately, even by the time she’d discovered them inside the murder victims, the bullets had already begun to decompose, making it impossible to read striations and trace them back to the gun that fired it. They’d be lucky if her ballistics specialist, Rick Temple, could determine the manufacturer and caliber of the bullet.

      But that was all backlog work. Without any pressing case demands, Holly herself had been making the most of the relatively quiet night—destressing with some music and reading through hard copies of reports. Ever since a virus introduced by an offsite hacker had destroyed several computer records back in April, she’d been using slow nights like this one to rebuild files and rerun tests where there was still evidence available. She took pride in her team’s clean chain-of-evidence record, and it galled her to think that one happy hacker could throw a monkey wrench into what had previously been solid cases, forcing investigations to be delayed or even circumstantial corroboration to be tossed out of ongoing trials. It was a matter of professional pride for Holly to make those evidence reports right again. For the victims in those cases, it was a matter of justice.

      But with Eli’s phone call, a much more personal stress had returned. She’d find a way to handle this one, too. Raking her fingers through her short, dark hair, she repeated her argument to her brother.

      “Jillian will be just fine. She came out of rehab a lot stronger than either of us expected, so you know that hardheaded Masterson gene is in her somewhere.” Eli had been worried about his other sister, not her, after all. “There’s no need for you and Shauna to cancel your holiday cruise. Between your job with the D.A.’s office and her responsibilities running KCPD, you two have never even had a honeymoon. And you’ve been married almost two years. Go. Have a merry Christmas. Not having to worry about our little sister is my gift to you.”

      But Eli wasn’t convinced. “It’s not Jillian who concerns me. If that Blake Rivers bastard is back in town, then you know he’s going to put pressure on her to get back together with him. I swear to God, Holl, after all those years with the drugs when we thought we might lose her, Jillian is finally on a healthy, positive track. She’s gone back to college. She’s volunteering with those kids at the youth center. If getting back with her old spoiled, party-time boyfriend knocks her off her game again…”

      “You’ll do what? You know, just because you’re not a cop anymore doesn’t mean you don’t have to follow the rules.”

      “I didn’t follow them when I was a cop.”

      Holly tucked her long bangs behind one ear, nodding her head in wry agreement. Following the rules was one Masterson trait that was uniquely hers. “We have to give Jillian the chance to make her own decisions and then stand up to the consequences on her own. We can’t bulldoze in and take care of everything for her. That’d just be a form of co-dependency all over again.”

      The flicker of a shadow moved past the translucent glass door leading to the hallway, interrupting her thoughts and pacing. She was alone down here, wasn’t she? That’s why she’d dimmed the lights outside her office. No sense wasting the energy if she was the only one working in the lab. John Doe certainly didn’t need the light.

      She stared hard at the clouded glass, waiting for the movement in the hallway to repeat itself. She wasn’t one to doubt what she’d seen, but she did like to have an explanation for things—be it an overnight cleaning staff employee coming in early, an electric short in one of the hallway lights, or even something as arcane as a ghost. She just wanted to know.

      The glass darkened for an instant as the shadow passed by in the opposite direction.

      “Holly?”

      Jumping inside her skin at the prompt of Eli’s voice, she turned away from the distraction and focused on making her point. “You and Shauna need to get on that plane tomorrow and fly to Florida. Take your cruise. Enjoy it. Jillian needs to be the one to tell Blake where to get off if he tries to rekindle a relationship she’s not interested in.”

      “What if she is interested? What if Rivers won’t take no for an answer? I’ll be a thousand miles away.”

      “You’ll be right where you should be. With your wife.” Holly circled around behind her desk, double-checking the duty log and silently accounting for all the staff and techs scheduled to be in the building at this hour. “I can look out for Jillian. And I’ll handle Blake, too, if he causes trouble.”

      “I always could count on you to be the sensible one.” Some of the tension eased from Eli’s voice and she could imagine him smiling. “All right. I’ll go. I’ll have my phone, though. If you need anything, call me.”

      “No. I won’t. If something comes up, I’ll take care of it myself.” With one part of her brain still marking off people she’d seen in their labs, offices or the break room, Holly tried to put her brother completely at ease. He had a honeymoon to get to, after all. “I appreciate your concern, but I’m a big girl. So is Jillian. The two of us have already planned to have Christmas dinner and exchange gifts. We’ll be fine. Have a wonderful trip. Put on some sunscreen and give my love to Shauna.”

      Eli

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