The Moon Stands Still Page 2

  “Butter, sour cream, bacon—”

  Jack sighed. “Go ahead and bury the potato.”

  The waiter turned to him. “And for you, sir?”

  “Filet mignon, medium-rare. And broccoli rabe so I can live to eat another day.”

  “Perfect choice, sir,” said the waiter who knew where his tips were coming from. He took our menus and disappeared into the dark.

  Jack reached over as my hand dove for the bread. “Let’s dance.”

  “What? No. I can’t—”

  He was already standing, coming around behind my chair, taking my now-clammy hand and leading me onto the dance floor. The sax player ribboned his tune into the bass line. Jack slid his hand down my back, resting it on my hip.

  “This dress,” he whispered, drawing me close. “The velvet’s soft as a cat.”

  I resisted the urge to purr. “It belonged to a CIA agent.”

  “Really?”

  I swallowed. “I bought it. At a consignment store. In D.C.”

  “When you worked in the Bureau lab?”

  “The woman who owned it.” I tried to breathe again. “She was a spy. During the Cold War.”

  “Now I really love this dress.”

  Stroking my back, he led me across the dance floor and suddenly all the feline intelligence of the spy seeped into my skin. After a long moment of a losing debate, I leaned into his muscular body. Maybe Lani was right. Maybe I was scared of my feelings, scared he wouldn’t love me back. But what was the point of living like that? Like I was insisting on being lonely just so I wouldn’t have to feel any more pain. I closed my eyes. Nuzzled his strong jaw. Oh, he smelled good. So good. Kitty purred.

  And yet, when my mouth opened, these words escaped. “So, this thing I need to show you, it’s really important.”

  “Harmon.” His hand tightened on my hip. “The only way we’re going to talk about work right now is if you’re paying for this meal.”

  “I’ll pay.”

  He drew back his head, grinning. “Did you happen to notice your menu didn’t show any prices?”

  I stared into his eyes. Deep inside my rib cage, a terrified village stampeded, as if some volcano had blown up and fiery lava was now flowing toward their houses. The band seemed to realize this scenario because the keyboardist chose that very moment to send a B-flat into the world that glided through the room and circled the air like a love vulture.

  “Alright.” Jack set his hand back on my hip, sighing into my hair. “I hear your silence. Go ahead. Tell me.”

  I lifted my face. In two-inch-heels, I was still four inches shorter than his 6’3”. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “We found some buried money.”

  “We—meaning you and Lani?”

  I nodded.

  “On that fossil-hunting trip?”

  I nodded again.

  He pulled me closer. “What kind of money?”

  “Twenties. All twenties.” My lips were next to his ear. I described the bundles, how they were held together by rubber bands. “And I’m guessing there’s at least ten grand there.”

  He turned us so that he faced the room of diners. I gazed over his shoulder at the band.

  “Where was this?” he asked.

  “On the Olympic peninsula in the town of Raymond.” I described the Willapa River, the nearby campground, how concretions were buried there.

  “Concrete?”

  “Concretions.” I could smell cologne on his neck. Warm pine and citrus. “They’re a natural phenomenon but kind of rare. There was once a shallow sea in that area. Volcanoes warmed the air. The sea grew coral reefs and warm-water marine life. Snails, clams, fish—”

  “Harmon.”

  “—burrowing shrimp.”

  “Okay.” He whirled me around. “Now fast forward the geologic timeline.”

  I laughed. In this moment, we owned our own universe. Just us. “Speeding up, the sea disappears and kills off marine life, their dead bodies deposited into sedimentary soil which then accretes around the corpses—”

  “Corpses.” He turned me around once more. “Please tell me nothing you are about to say will involve human corpses.”

  “At this point, humans don’t yet exist.”

  “Why don’t I feel any better?”

  “Because … the money.”

  “And we have to discuss this now?”

  “Well, no…”

  He drew his head back again. The color in his eyes shifted, more blue. Which meant it wasn’t just me. Jack wanted to know about this money, too.

  “My guess,” I said, ignoring his cologne’s warm scent, “is the money came from a bank robbery.”

  Like most new FBI agents, I’d spent my first years working bank robberies. I hated it. The job reminded me of baseball—an excruciating exercise in patience. Nothing happens, then something really happens, and you gather numbers, calculate their meaning, then wait for something else to happen. Just like baseball.

  “What makes you think the money’s from a bank robbery?” he asked.

  “Why not spend it? Why bury that much money in that location?”

  “You’re going to tell me.”

  “Somebody know the serial numbers can be traced. Which means the serial numbers were recorded. Which means banking.”

  Jack had worked bank robberies, too, before moving to the Violent Crimes Unit. “And when you and Lani discovered this money, neither of you called the local authorities?”

  “Jack, it wasn’t even five in the morning.”

  “Harmon—”

  “Monetary value alone makes it a federal investigation. The locals would just turn the money over to the Bureau. I saved us all a step.”

  “You think?”

  “I think, therefore, I’m right.”

  He gave me a smile that melted all the muscles around my knees. I leaned into him for another turn and the drummer eased the song to a close with a gentle brush over the snare. Holding my hand, Jack led me back to our table, did the whole polite maneuver with my chair, then sat down across from me. I shifted my feet and found my purse that I’d pushed deep under the white tablecloth. Reaching down, I opened it and pulled out the evidence bags now concealed in a nondescript brown grocery bag. I set the brown bag on the table beside the bread basket.

  “Harmon.” Jack stared at the bag. “You are the least romantic woman I’ve ever met.”

  “I know.” I smiled. “But would you have it any other way?”

  Our drinks arrived right at that moment, so I thought that was why he didn’t answer my question.

  But I was wrong.

  4

  Early Monday morning, still feeling fluttery from the romantic dinner with Jack, I climbed into the 1972 white Ghibli and headed north for Seattle. My mom’s dog was perched on the back ledge between the two leather buckets seats. For more than an hour we silently watched the wipers sweep across the sloping windshield, squeegeeing away the drizzle that leaked from the gray clouds. November in Seattle was mostly wet, mostly gray, but utterly nuanced, too. Perched on the outer edge of the North American continent, Seattle’s cloudy skies plumed with all the sensuality of slow-curling smoke.

  At the exit for the West Seattle Bridge, I peeled off the interstate and cut through south Seattle’s industrial section until I reached the mirrored-glass-and-steel office building with one small identifying sign. I turned toward the dog.

  “I won’t be long.”

  She sighed and moved into the passenger seat for a nap.

  Inside the Washington State Crime Lab, I signed the visitor’s log and clipped the ID badge to my jacket, walking up the cavernous stairwell feeling both hope and dread. At the top of the stairs, Tom O’Brien waited. His lanky body seemed older, more bowed at the shoulders than last year when we first met. His hair had gone gray.

  “I’ve got a rock that has your name on it,” he said.

  “Should I feel grateful, or concerned?”

  “Exact
ly.”

  In the Materials Analysis Unit, one male tech glanced up, gazing at us through his safety glasses. Behind him, the windows framed Interstate 5’s soaring concrete ramparts and the still-crawling morning traffic. I nodded at the tech, and made a mental note to leave town earlier today.

  “Before I show you that rock,” Tom said, leading me past the usual odd array of evidence, “I want you to see our new toy.”

  We passed the exam stations where more techs were working, plastic bags laying open on stainless steel counters, the usual baffling cornucopia of evidence spilling out. One coal-black wig with bright golden streaks. Two acrylic trophies that named the Salesman of the Year—one of them spattered with iron-brown droplets that had to be dried blood. And an American flag whose fifty stars now existed as burn holes. At the medical school skeleton standing in the corner, we turned left. The skeleton held an unlit cigarette between two bone-fingers, a sign overhead reading, “What doesn’t kill you makes you crazy.”

  Tom stopped at the door for the DNA lab and knocked, opening the door without waiting for a reply. Inside, two young women sat on counter-height metal stools and peered into oversized microscopes. Neither woman looked up until Tom began his introductions. Tracy and Darcy, he said. Which didn’t help me because both of them were tiny blonde women in white lab coats and hairnets, and when they looked over at me, both of them had wistful blue eyes. To tell them apart, I’d need DNA.

  “Raleigh’s the forensic geologist I told you about,” Tom said. “Her company’s offered to help us with some of the colder cases.”

  Not my company. But the company that had hired me. The company that was struggling to get a foothold in the private forensics business. I still hadn’t seen a paycheck that covered my expenses. But there was hope.

  “Could one of you show her the M-Vac?” Tom asked. “I think it’s a good idea before she starts working the Long Beach murder.”

  Darcy—or was it Tracy?—climbed off her perch and moved down the long counter. A steel box the size of a bread machine waited in the corner. Like some game show hostess, Darcy-Tracy swept her gloved hand over the machine. “Meet the M-Vac, our new liquid-based biological evidence collection system.”

  I smiled. “Pretend I have no background in forensics.”

  She glanced at Tom, as if saying, You said she was a scientist.

  “I’ll need to know how to explain it to a jury.”

  She nodded crisply. “The M-Vac sprays a sterile buffer solution over any surface and almost simultaneously vacuums it up, collecting all the cellular material present on that surface.” She glanced at me with those wistful eyes. “Better?”

  “Much. Once the machine collects the cellular material, then what?”

  “It starts searching the liquefied solution for DNA.”

  “The solution stays in the machine?”

  “Correct. One-stop shopping for us. It even gives us the DNA profile.”

  “Just like that?”

  She nodded. “We don’t even look at the collected cellular material. Yet we get the DNA profile.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.” Darcy-Tracy sighed. “This wonderful little machine will probably replace me soon.”

  Tom was still standing by the door. “The M-Vac’s a game-changer.”

  “And y’all used it on this rock you want me to look at?”

  “Y’all.” Tom shook his head, smiling, and turned to the lookalike women. “Raleigh’s from the South but I think the Northwest is growing on her.” He looked back at me. “You’re correct. We used the M-Vac on the rock. It gave us three DNA profiles.”

  “Identifiable?”

  He opened the door wider, ushering me out. “That’s where you come in.”

  The rock with my name on it waited on the other side of the lab at Tom’s exam station. We both pulled latex gloves from what looked like a Kleenex box and tugged them on. Mine took longer because my fingertips were damp with perspiration. The excitement. Some fear.

  “We’re coming up on seven months since the murder happened.” Tom lifted a large evidence bag. Inside, the rock was the size of a boxing glove. “This rock was used to bash in the skull of a fourteen-year-old girl.”

  I took the bag from him. “And the DNA?”

  “Two profiles were identified. The third remains unknown. And the rock. We don’t know where it came from or how it got there. However, I hear the prosecutor plans to use it as strong circumstantial evidence.”

  I heard doubt in his voice. “And you think…what?”

  Tom shrugged. His shoulders seemed to slope even more. “Depends on who you ask. The brand new prosecutor out on the peninsula thinks he’s got this case all locked up. And he might.”

  “But you’re not sure?”

  He didn’t reply.

  I took the rock out of the bag and carried it to the windows that faced the interstate. At first glance, it appeared to be a granite. But the crystals were too large. More like a pegmatite, the metamorphic rocks grown from slowly cooling magma in an enclosed area. “Tell me about the case.”

  “Middle of May, this year, a girl’s body was found at night on the beach, a place called Long Beach.”

  I looked up. “California?”

  “Southwest Washington, a peninsula on the Pacific coast.” He nodded at the rock. “Her DNA showed up on it. And the DNA of the man who found her. That guy’s now the prime suspect.”

  I looked up again, hearing something in his voice. “You don’t think that guy killed her?”

  “I don’t know—and I don’t even know about not knowing. If you know what I mean.”

  I did, because once upon a time I worked in a lab similar to this one. Sometimes the evidence colluded with facts, and sometimes it insinuated disconcerting questions, growing as dangerously as hairline fractures in glass beakers. Tom had worked in the state lab for decades. I trusted his judgment. “The third unidentified DNA—that’s what’s bothering you?”

  “That, and the investigation was superficial. Not really anyone’s fault. The girl was killed right before the tourist season kicked off. They don’t have a lot of law enforcement resources available out there anyway, but the summer crowds really eat up their time.” He took in a deep breath, straightening his back. “And the guy who found her body can only afford a public defender.”

  “You think he’s innocent?”

  “Like I said, I don’t know. Twenty-one years ago, when I took this job, I probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought.” His long face tightened. “But I’m old enough now to realize my mistakes. And the repercussions. Maybe I’m overly cautious, but I don’t want to make any mistakes if I can help it.”

  “So you need me to—what? Identify the rock?”

  “Right. That whole geology-mineralogy thing you do. Find out where that rock came from. Maybe the geology can help us track who owns that third DNA. And if you can do more than just geology, we would appreciate it.” He paused. “I read about your case last month in the Cascades.”

  I turned the heavy stone. The crystals spread in soupy puddles. Milky splashes of quartz. Black fists of some base mineral—biotite, feldspar, olivine?—and glistening sheets of metallic-hued mica. I ran my finger down the most obvious incongruence, one smooth vertical coring column, about eight inches deep and two inches wide. “Did you guys core it?”

  “No. It was already like that. But I wondered… does it mean something?”

  “Could, given the host material.” I explained how sometimes slow-cooling magma produced near-perfect crystal, provided the chemical compositions were ideal and pockets of air were available that allowed the crystals to grow unimpeded. I hefted the rock higher. The coring’s symmetrical striations showed the use of a diamond blade, and a professional’s skill. Perhaps a jeweler. “I’ve seen pegmatites with crystals several feet long. Given the right chemistry, the crystals are highly valuable.”

  “What about the rest of the rock?”

  I turned it, fee
ling a certain kind of dread invade my heart. “I don’t think this rock is native to coastal Washington. No signs of how it got here?”

  “That’s one of the things bothering me. The prime suspect had a rock collection.”

  I gazed at Tom over the jagged edges. “Let me guess, including a pegmatite—a rock like this?”

  He nodded.

  Dread snapped on its heavyweight belt and dove into my gut. “This suspect—what’s his story?”

  “He claims innocence.”

  “Naturally.” I tilted my head. “Yet you seem inclined to believe him.”

  “Like I keep saying, I don’t know. But the case is highly circumstantial, which means whatever we find here in the lab can sway a jury one way or another. Meanwhile, all his public defender has is that there’s one unidentified DNA profile. The case goes to court in January.”

  “And you think—”

  “I think people get away with murder, Raleigh. And I think innocent people can get framed.”

  “That’s why people hire lawyers.”

  “Agreed. But we’re not talking about O.J. Simpson here. This guy’s just a middle school science teacher. He took out a second mortgage to post bail, and he’s going to court with a public defender who doesn’t have the time or money—or frankly the experience—to conduct a more thorough investigation.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “Don’t give me that look,” he said. “I could let it go. I could. But in ten years, it’ll still bother me. And don’t pretend you don’t know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  I turned the rock again. We all had cases that haunted us. The only thing keeping ghosts away was certainty. Some kind of assurance we’d done all we could, we’d fought the right fight, found indisputable facts. And I was intrigued by this pegmatite. On my many hikes around the state, I couldn’t recall seeing many pegmatite outcroppings. Maybe one in the North Cascades last month. But I was almost sure none existed on the sandy shores on the Pacific Ocean. “What about the victim?”

  “Krystal Jewel.”

  I lowered the rock. “What?”

  “That was her name.”

  I watched him. Was this like the med school skeleton, more gallows humor? But his long face looked terminally serious. “You’re not joking?”