Amanda's Eyes (24 page)

“She was found late last night by
one of her borders,” said Dennis, “a deputy coming off a double shift.”

“Li,” I offered.  “Ted Li.”

“Right.  He found her on the living
room sofa, fully clothed.  At first glance, she appeared to be sleeping, but Li
figured there were two problems with that picture.  One, nobody has ever known
the woman to take a nap; and two, she didn’t move a muscle when he came through
the door.”

“Sadie always slept light, with one
eye open,” Eagan said.  “That’s one reason she survived more than thirty years
in the field.”

“And it’s a hard habit to break,”
said Dennis.  “Anyway, long story short, Li checked, discovered she was dead—had
been for some time—and called it in.  Because there didn’t seem to be a mark on
her, the coroner was leaning toward natural causes.”

“She was only fifty-eight,” Jack
objected, “and in great shape.  She had a complete physical six months ago. 
They didn’t find any problems.  No sign of potential problems.”

“That’s why the doc planned to do a
routine virtopsy this morning to confirm.  She might have developed a blood
clot or something.  It happens, even
with
genetic engineering.  Anyway,
lucky for us, all former operatives are flagged, so we got pinged as soon as he
entered her info on the database.  An hour later, we had control of the scene
and custody of the remains, which were brought back here for special
processing.”

By
here
he meant the ultramodern
morgue housed in the Forensic Science Center at CIIS headquarters.  The lab
spanned eight thousand square feet and sported two free-floating multipurpose
scanners; a couple industrial-sized sinks; an acre of shiny white countertops
dense with scopes, spectrographs, and computer stations; and a ceiling hung
with a tangle of robotic arms and tracked, computer-controlled light fixtures. 
The rear wall was your standard checkerboard of square metal doors.

Jack and I were virtual visitors, a
tense audience of two beamed in for the postmortem rundown.  Exactly four
sentences had passed between us since he told me about Sadie.  I was chockfull
of questions, but Eagan was tightlipped and taut-jawed.  The rage rolling off
him in waves couldn’t have been colder if he had been transfused with liquid nitrogen. 
All in all, it seemed like a good time to put a lid on it, hope this briefing
gave me some answers, and thank my lucky stars Iceman and I were on the same
side.

“She didn’t die of natural causes,”
he repeated tersely.

“No.”

“What then?” Jack asked the woman
standing next to Dennis.  “Poison?”

Great minds, same wavelength
, I mused.  Poison would explain the
absence of marks on Sadie’s body.

Doctor Mary Smith was about five
three with brown eyes, a button nose, and a chestnut-brown, chin-length
pageboy.  Dressed in jeans, a short-sleeved turquoise t-shirt, and beat-up
white cross trainers, she looked more like a soccer mom than a hotshot forensic
pathologist.

“Poison would have been easy,” she
said.

Jack slowly straightened in his
chair.  “What the hell does that mean?”

“I’ll show you.”  She crossed to a
seven-foot-high virtopsy tablet mounted on the right-hand wall.  “Computer,
recall final, with drape, case five-two-seven-one.”

A figure coalesced deep within the
tablet’s screen and started to rise like a ghost ascending from the underworld. 
My palms started to sweat.  So much for emotional distance. 
Knowing
Sadie was dead was bad enough, but
seeing
her dead?

Like I told Jack that night at the
hospital, I’ve seen dead bodies before.  In my line of work, if you do your job
right, you often arrive at the scene of a homicide before the victim is processed
for transport.  I can’t speak for anybody else, but corpses don’t inspire
objectivity in me; I always have to reach for it.  It’s harder to come by when
I know the vic, of course, but so far I’ve been able to maintain that slim
margin of detachment I need to preserve my sanity.

This time, it was different.  My first
encounter with the remains of someone I had lived with and gotten close to.  It
was also my first virtopsy.  In all honesty, I wasn’t sure I was up to either first.

I wiped my hands on my jeans as the
image levitated free of the screen’s two-dimensional confines.  Clothed in an
off-the-shoulder, ankle-length white muumuu, it morphed into a
three-dimensional cadaver atop the obsidian surface.  Because the tablet was
hung vertically, the “body” was upright, the soles of the feet suspended a foot
above the floor.

I made a last-ditch lunge for
objectivity, and missed it by a mile.  Reminding myself this wasn’t actually
Sadie’s body but a computer-generated composite built slice-by-slice from the
inside out using a complex array of scans and photographs didn’t help.  The image
was accurate to the last hair follicle, so seeing it was, for all practical
purposes, the same as seeing the real McCoy.  This was how Sadie looked now.  Café-au-lait
complexion waxy, freckles leeched to ashy beige; slack facial muscles; sagging
jaw; neck faintly creped.  But it was the eyes that got me—open and empty, like
windows staring out of an abandoned house.  Which, I supposed, in a sense, they
were.

You want to be careful about
indulging in similes and metaphors at inappropriate moments; they’ll take your
mind on a detour before you know what hit you.  There I sat, peering into those
nobody’s-home eyes while the ME started her report, only instead of paying
attention and getting my answers, I found myself wondering where my former
landlady had gone.  Given the fact that energy can neither be created nor destroyed,
where was the strong, vibrant life force that had been the essence of Sadie
Carter?  What did it look like, now that it had been brutally evicted from its
shell?  Had it been reduced to a microscopic uptick in the cosmic microwave
background radiation?  Somehow, I couldn’t picture Sadie blending in with the
rest of the universe.

Well, one thing was certain.  If
consciousness did go on in some form or fashion, Sadie was one unhappy camper
right about now.  She would
hate
being on display under the morgue’s
unforgiving white lights, yielding her carefully kept secrets to strangers.  A
virtopsy had to be the ultimate invasion of privacy, and here I was with a front-row
seat, getting an earful of Sadie’s business.  Imagining her reaction, I winced.

“Are you all right? Jack asked.

“What?”  I blinked, dispelling the
mental fog.  I forced my attention back to the business at hand.  “Yeah, I’m
okay.  Sorry, Doctor.  You were saying?”

She waited for a nod from Eagan
before continuing, “No evidence indicating physical restraints were used—no
fibers; traces of adhesive; or marks on the wrists, ankles, or neck.  There
were no lacerations, abrasions, or contusions.  Scrapings from under the fingernails
didn’t yield any transfer evidence.”

Jack’s brow furrowed.  “So no signs
of a struggle.”

“None.”

“Not like Sadie to go down without a
fight.”

“I’m sure you’re right, but resistance
wasn’t an option in this case.  Remember, I said no
physical
restraints
were used.  We found traces of KZ-14 in her nasal mucosa.”

“Sleep agent,” Jack explained in
answer to my questioning glance.

“It’s an odorless gas originally
formulated for use in hostage situations,” Smith added.  “Fast-acting,
extremely potent, dissipates quickly.  In and of itself, it’s harmless.”

“Until it falls into the wrong
hands,” I guessed.

“Ah, but KZ-14 is tightly
controlled,” Dennis singsonged.  “Designated strictly for law enforcement or
military use.”  His lips twisted sardonically.  “Of course, we all know how
that song goes.”

“Yeah,” Eagan muttered.  “All you
need is one bright bulb—an inventory clerk, a crooked security guard, maybe
even one of the chemists working for the company that makes the stuff—who
decides to go into business for himself.  Brains, access, and the right passwords,
and you’ve got yourself a black market bonanza.”

“Probably vented it in through the
HVAC,” Dennis figured.

Eagan nodded.  “Okay, that’s how
they got to her.  The gas wouldn’t have kept her out long.”

“Long enough,” the doctor assured
him.  Cupping a hand on “Sadie’s” left shoulder, she guided the image away from
the tablet.  The body hovered eerily in mid-air as Smith gently turned it face-to-the-wall. 
She traced a square on the nape of the neck with her index finger and
double-tapped to call up a section.  She nudged the section away from the body before
tugging at the corners of the frame to enlarge the segment.

“Can you see it?  Here, right above
the third vertebra.  I admit it’s faint.”

“That red mark?”  Jack nodded.  “What
is it?”

“An injection site.”

With a flick of her index finger she
peeled away skin and muscle to reveal the spinal cord.  Since I was the only
virtopsy virgin present, I was probably the only one who got queasy at that
point.  Sucking in a covert breath, I fought to control the greasy roll of my stomach
and focus on the tiny black fleck clearly visible against the whitish tissue.

Jack pointed to it.  “And that?”

“A microchip,” Smith answered, “designed
to block select signals from the brain.  Based on our analysis, it would have
produced quadriplegia similar to that caused by spinal cord injuries.”

It took a second for the obvious
implication to niggle its way through the lightheadedness and hit me.  “Oh, my
God!”

“She was interrogated.”  Jack summed
up the obvious in an icy monotone.  He looked at the ME.  “How bad?”

“As bad as it gets.”  She closed the
slice view, rotated the body so it was facing us again, and tenderly maneuvered
it onto the tablet.  “Computer, close case file.”  Sadie’s digital double did a
slow fade as Smith turned back to us.  “Based on the indicators—brain lesions, evidence
of cellular cavitation, the presence of certain telltale metabolites—we believe
she was subjected to torture by means of focused, high-frequency, pulsed
ultrasound.”

“I’ve had ultrasounds.”

I wasn’t aware I had said it out
loud until she answered me.

“We all have. 
At lower frequencies it’s harmless,
even therapeutic.  Pocket devices are standard equipment for physical
therapists working in home health settings.  Psychotherapists routinely use
ultrasound in behavior modification techniques that involve remotely altering
brainwaves.  But as Ms. Gregson pointed out, a good product in the wrong hands
can be devastating.

“Unlike its low-freq cousin, focused,
high
-frequency ultrasound wreaks havoc with the human nervous system and
internal organs.  One of the ways nonlethal sonic and ultrasonic weapons incapacitate
is by triggering intense pain.  In Sadie Carter’s case, that effect was multiplied
exponentially.  The location of the tissue damage and changes to brain
chemistry indicate manipulation of the rostral anterior cingulate cortex, or
rACC, the part of the brain responsible for the awareness of pain—or, more
accurately, the emotional component of pain.  This is the region that experiences
pain as suffering and feels compelled to try to make it stop.  When physical
sensations surpass a certain threshold, the rACC is activated.

“Whoever did this kicked the rACC
into hyper-drive, one prolonged burst at a time.  Pain perception would have gone
off the charts.  During each burst, pain would have been her world, all she
could think about.  Anticipating the next burst would have been almost as
excruciating.  And since thinking about pain generates more pain ….”  Smith shook
her head somberly.  “No amount of training and experience could have equipped
her to deal with it, even marginally.  The plain fact is, she would have told
them whatever she knew.”

Jack closed his eyes and swore
pungently.  “Our names.  That was all she had to give them.  No information on
where we were going when we left town.  Hell, she didn’t even know
why
we
left town.  She wanted it that way.”  He opened his eyes and asked about the
cause of death.

“
Prolonged vibroacoustic stimulation disrupts the heart
rhythms, sometimes resulting in atrial fibrillation, sometimes bradycardia—when
the heart beats too slowly.  Either way, the end result in this case was sudden
cardiac arrest.”

Eagan washed a hand down his face
and glanced at Baker.  “What did we find at the scene?  Do we know how they got
in?”

“Hobson’s Hope, remember?  The door
opens with a key.  All you need for a B&E is an electronic pick.  She did
have a high-end security system, but it looks like they hacked it beforehand. 
Trujillo in digital forensics is working on tracing the software they used, but
it doesn’t look promising.  Jorge says it was slick and quick and didn’t leave
any digital fingerprints.  We didn’t find any useful forensics in the house.”

“I don’t suppose any of the
neighbors saw anything.”

“A marketing rep who lives two doors
down—blond name of  Marci Jentzen—remembers a heating/air conditioning company
van parked in front of the boarding house when she came home to let her dog out
at lunchtime.  She was in a hurry, so she didn’t pay much attention.  She can’t
remember the name of the company, but she thinks the van was white, or maybe light
gray.”

“Great, that narrows it down to a
couple million possibles.”

“Speaking of dogs,” I interjected,
“what happened to Cosmo?  He wouldn’t have let a stranger get within a city
block of Sadie.”

“Probably not, but he was at the
vet,” said Dennis.  “Sadie dropped him off around ten yesterday morning.  He
was listless to the point of being unresponsive, and she thought it might have
been something he ate.  Apparently, our pal Cosmo has a history of snacking on
the local flora, which doesn’t always agree with him.  But when the vet got
through checking him out, he realized the dog had been drugged.  They tried to
call Sadie, but … no answer.”

“What time was that?” asked Jack.

“Shortly before noon.  About the same
time the van was spotted.”

During the pregnant pause that
followed, nobody mentioned the obvious—i.e., what had probably been going on in
Sadie’s house while the vet was waiting for her to pick up—but I was pretty sure
we were all thinking about it.  Or maybe we were all trying not to.

Eagan finally broke the silence. 
“Time of death?”

“I put it between three and four,”
said Smith.

Jack rubbed his jaw.  “Okay, I get
the fact that it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out she would probably
be alone during the day when her boarders were at work.  The killers stake out
the house the night before and hack the alarm system.  Next morning, they watch
the boarders leave, dose the dog, then wait for Sadie to come back from the
vet.  What I don’t understand is why somebody didn’t find her earlier.  What
about the other tenants?  Are you trying to tell me they didn’t see her lying
there all afternoon and evening?”

“They weren’t home,” said Dennis.  “One
of the females, Fannie Jordan, had a hot date right after work and didn’t get
in until after two in the morning.  The systems analyst was babysitting a sick
friend.”

“What about Byron?” I asked.

“Away at a three-day conference on existentialism
in twentieth-century America.”

Eagan shook his head.  “So we’re
left with a big, fat goose egg.”

“That about sums it up.”

Eyes narrowed in thought, Jack
drummed his fingers against the arm of his chair.  “Okay, tell the others to
keep after the van and the hacking software, but put Oakley in charge; I want
you out here with us.  We’ve got independent confirmation of A.J.’s … ah ... eyewitness
testimony, and we need to decide how we’re going to play it.”

“Do tell.”  Baker’s eyebrows climbed
as his dark gaze swung my way.  “Now, that’s a story I can’t wait to hear.”

Jack cleared his throat.  “Listen, about
Sadie.”  Pause.  “She didn’t have any family.”

“Nobody but us,” Dennis agreed. 
“Not to worry.  She and Ito worked together quite a bit in the old days.  They
were even partners for a while.  Rumor has it, he’s already planning the sendoff. 
Gonna be a bona fide blow-out, from what I hear.”

“Good.  That’s the way she would
have wanted it.  The Sprite always hated funerals.”

“Don’t we all,” muttered Dennis.  His
eyes met Jack’s.  “Listen, I know you and Sadie were close, and I .… I’m
sorry.  If it’s any consolation, the whole team is up in arms.  She was one of
ours.  We’ll get the bastards who did this.”

“Dead or alive,” agreed Iceman, and
the arctic glint in his eye left no doubt about his preference.