"The boss is out of town, but he told me you guys could have anything here you want, including his desk," Rhodes said as he led them into an amazingly clean and shiny evidence-control area of the lab, where a lab technician and another scientist were working around a bar-code scanning computer disassembling packages of evidence.
"This is Tim, one of our lab techs, who's helping Joe log in some evidence for Serology," Rhodes said. "Henry, Mike, Larry, and Dwight, from Special Ops. You guys about done there?"
"Yeah, just got some stuff in from the Army Crime Lab over in Georgia," Joe Biggs, the serologist, said and then looked at Lightstone more closely. "Hey, aren't you that guy who was involved in the bear case we got from Yellowstone a few months ago?"
"That's right," Lightstone nodded cautiously. "How'd you know that?"
"They sent us some photos taken at the hospital. Somebody had the bright idea of trying to match the claw marks on your arms and shoulder against one of the bears claws to tie you to the scene."
"Were you able to do it?" Lightstone asked, curious.
"Naw. That's the kind of thing these guys get from watching too much television. What we were able to do, though, was work up the blood on your clothes. Basically proved that you were covered with bear blood, which I guess you already knew," the serologist smiled. "Then we used our computerized DNA system to match up the stains on your clothes with the two bears in that guy's truck. No big deal, but it might help corroborate your testimony if it ever goes to trial."
"Don't count on it," Lightstone said grimly. "That case is just about over with."
"Yeah, that's what I heard," the serologist said, sounding vaguely disappointed. "Oh well, guess I'd better get back at it."
"Okay, Henry," Rhodes said, waiting until Tim and Joe left with their evidence and closed the door, "so what have you got for us?"
"This," Lightstone said as he handed the forensic scientist a small plastic bag containing the strip of hide he'd removed from the claw of the mother Kodiak.
Rhodes held the plastic bag up to the light and began to write notes in a new case folder as Lightstone explained the significance of the collected material, verified the seal on the package, and then signed the chain-of-custody forms.
"Not sure how much we're going to be able to tell you on something that small," Rhodes said as he reached for a nearby phone, "but we'll give it a try. Hey, Margaret? This is Ed. Yeah, listen, can you come down to Evidence and Property? Yeah, right now. I've got something interesting for you."
Two minutes later, after listening to Ed Rhodes' concise summary of the information Lightstone had provided, the white-coated mammalogist disappeared down the long hallway in the direction of her lab section with the evidence in hand.
"Want to see the rest of the lab while we're waiting?" Rhodes asked.
"Sure," Lightstone said agreeably.
"Okay, why don't we first go see what Joe's doing," Rhodes suggested as he led the four agents down the narrow hallway and into the main door on the right. "Then I'll take you around to morphology, criminalistics, the photo-video lab, graphic arts, and save the best part of the lab for last."
"Electronics and computers, the critical stuff," Mike Takahara nodded with a cheerful smile as Paxton and Stoner rolled their eyes.
"Christ, is this place all ours?" Lightstone asked in disbelief as they entered the modern serology lab, where he could see at least a dozen white-coated figures working in and around the red oak cabinets and black epoxy countertops.
"Yours, and about seven thousand other state and federal wildlife officers, not to mention a hundred and thirteen countries that signed the CITES treaty," Rhodes said. "Only lab of its kind in the world. Here we basically look at blood and tissue samples, and try to figure out what species is involved." Rhodes led them over to the serologist he had introduced earlier. "Maybe Joe here can explain what he's working on."
Joe nodded. "This is some bloodstain evidence that the Army Crime Lab guys sent over to us." Two sets of bloodstained, camouflaged clothing were laid out on a low examination table. "They're trained to work up human crimes, and these samples had both human and animal specificity. They sent them to us to see if we could work it out a little further. There are at least twenty or thirty separate stains on that one pair of pants alone. But with our new micro-separation system, the tagged probes, and one of Ed's computers hooked up to the scanners, we can work this kind of stuff ten times as fast as we used to."
"What he's saying is that he wants you to bring him more evidence so he can justify stealing another one of my computers," Rhodes interpreted as they thanked the serologist and continued on.
"And over here," Rhodes said as he stopped at the far end of the long room, "is probably the most important piece of equipment in the serology lab." He stood next to what looked like a large freezer, with temperature gauges on the front and a stainless-steel tank of liquid nitrogen hooked up to the side.
"A freezer?" Dwight Stoner asked dubiously.
"Yes, but not just any freezer," Rhodes smiled. "This one can keep blood and tissue samples down to minus eighty degrees Celsius. Which is cold enough that if you stuck your hand inside and kept it there for, oh, maybe about a minute or so, you could take it out, smack it against the wall, and then pick the pieces up off the floor."
"No shit?" Stoner whispered, moving in cautiously to take a closer look at the apparently lethal machine.
"Actually, what it is is their library of tissue samples from all over the world," Rhodes explained. "For example, if these guys are going to try to figure out the genetic code of a wolf, they're going to have to start out with samples from a pure wolf, not eighty-percent wolf and twenty-percent dog. The question, of course, is how do they know?"
"Because one looks like a wolf and the other-" Paxton started to guess.
"What did you say?" Lightstone interrupted, puzzled, because something in the scientist's comments had triggered his memory. Something about…
At that moment a woman's voice came over the loudspeaker.
"Ed Rhodes, can you come to morphology, right away please?"
Rhodes walked over to a nearby wall phone, picked up the handset, and punched in a three-digit code.
"Hi, Margaret. What have you got? Oh, yeah? Really? We'll be right there."
The morphology section of the lab consisted of three semicircular workbench areas and two freestanding layout tables, both of which were situated under wide skylights. When they got there, they found Margaret Kuo sitting in front of a comparison microscope that was equipped with a ten-inch-square split-view screen.
"Well, what do you think?" the Korean-born mammalogist asked as she moved aside to make room for Rhodes and the four agents.
"Looks good to me," the electronics engineer commented as he glanced casually at the two pieces of hide that had been magnified several times and then brought together side by side in the split screen. "What are we looking at?"
"You know, you computer guys are really pretty useless if you can't recognize a classic match of Ceratotherium simum hide when you see it," the white-coated mammalogist grinned as she reached into one of the nearby drawers and brought out a pair of boots made of dark gray leather with a rough, grainy texture.
"Here's an example. Got this pair out of a shipment going to West Germany," Margaret Kuo said, unaware that Henry Lightstone, standing right beside her, was staring down at the boots as though seeing a ghost for the second time.
"Cera- what?" Ed Rhodes started to ask, but Henry Lightstone already knew the answer.