The Stones Cry Out (22 page)

"I want to go home," I said.

===============

Inside the house, I gathered my clothes and left a note for his sisters while DeMott waited in the foyer.

He walked me to my car.

"Forget what I said. Whatever you need, I'm here for you."

I tossed my dirty clothes in the backseat, realizing I could have changed into the clothes back there. How stupid of me. I slammed the door. "Tell Jillian I’ll have these clothes cleaned and returned to her. I appreciate your help tonight. I don't know what would have—"

He lifted his hand, the same way he’d told his sisters to stop. "You don’t need to say anything about it. Ever."

I climbed into the car and drove away. Listening to that fine gravel strike the undercarriage, I stared at my rearview mirror. The light from the house fell on his back, outlining his shape. Standing on Weyanoke's manicured lawn, he looked like a statue. One hand raised.

And he held it there until my car was out of my sight.

Later that morning, when I pulled into Washington, the gilded dome of the U.S. Capitol was blazing like a flame. I parked under Bureau headquarters and rode the elevator to the third floor, counting off the hours.

I had snuck into the carriage house close to 3 a.m. Took another shower, dressed in my own clothes, and drove to the Richmond office. At 4 a.m. the office was empty except for some security staff and two grouchy junior agents who pulled night telephone surveillance. I typed out request forms, made copies for Allene in Evidence Control, then climbed back in the K-Car. Holding a fresh cup of coffee, I headed north, eventually merging with the capitol's commuter traffic doing its usual morning crawl.

The elevator opened. I blinked. At some point, I had to sleep. My eyes stung. My skin itched. And as I walked down the hall to the mineralogy lab, the fluorescent lighting seemed to vibrate.

Eric looked up from his desk. "Raleigh -- what -- are you doing here?"

I slid the boxed evidence toward him, followed by the written explanation. He read through the information on the James River soil and the paper trash.

"My other set of Ks.” My voice was hoarse with insomnia. “I need comparisons done. Now.”

He was still looking down at the forms, waiting. When he turned toward me, he moved slowly, as if preparing himself for what he would see. "Raleigh, what's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"I can deal with some scratches on your face. But you look—"

"The case is an expedite. I need to close it by today."

He waited a moment. Then nodded. Making an agreement with somebody who was out of their mind, beyond reason. "I have a long lineup today," he said, still speaking slowly. "I’ll get to this. Just not right away."

"Fine. I'll start the wash." The room was spinning like a top, but I managed to sign the evidence control and chain of command sheets. Notifying whoever might check later that the same agent who collected the evidence performed the preliminary lab tests. Eric watched my every move.

"Quit it,” I said. “I still have tech status in here."

He nodded.

I deposited each of the soil samples into separate glass cylinders and lowered them into an ultrasonic bath. I added a low-sud detergent from a squirt bottle, and for several seconds my mind struggled to remember the name of the soap. It seemed important, for some reason. As if remembering meant I was still sane. I hit the switch on the machine. The ultrasonic waves pulsed through the water. Calgon. That was it. I remembered saying it for the tough cases. "Calgon, take me away." Waiting for the sound waves to knock loose debris from the mineral surfaces.

I listened to the hum, then walked over to my old desk and sat down. My face burned. Leaning forward, I laid my head on my arms and closed my eyes.

===============

"Raleigh, it's dry."

It was a split second. One moment. It felt blissful. That dreamy sensation. It felt like I was rising through water, coming to surface from deep sleep.

But as soon as I opened my eyes, the good feeling vanished. It was replaced by panic.

"How long was I out?"

"Two hours," Eric said. "The samples are dry."

The soil samples were separated and placed under a heat lamp. Each petri dish was marked. And beside them were more samples. The South Anna soil. The roof soil.

“You did all that?" I said.

"No, I hired elves. You want the good news first?"

“What.”

"The colors are very similar."

It sounded elementary, too simple for hard science, but color identification was a crucial part of forensic mineralogy. Cleared of debris, a mineral could show its true colors. Yellow or red, green, blue, purple. Each hue was standardized on what was known as the Munsell Color Chart.

I stood and carried the samples to the north window, which offered the most natural light. Both of the river soils matched the roof soil. They were a taupe green with gray undertones. I could see minute specks of the brassy pyrite.

“Try the scope," Eric said.

He had two slides prepared. I slipped each under the stereoscope and set the magnification on 10X. Peering through the lens, I saw a three-dimensional picture. It highlighted all the differences in grain size, down to the micron. The grains in the South Anna soil were much larger than those in the roof soil. I slid that one away and replaced it with the James River sample. On size, a dead ringer. And at ten times magnification, I could see pyrite's perpendicular crystal structure. It looked like tumbling brass cubes, their sides striated with parallel ridges.

Eric had opened the mineralogy manual, paging through it with his palsied fingers. "The James River sample matches the roof soil with color, texture, and size. So the next question is, what about that pyrite? Plain ferrous sulfide? Or FeS2? Or even some other version?"

"You’re over analyzing. I've got pyrite in the roof soil, pyrite in the James River soil. Same size grains. That's enough."

"You've been out of the lab too long. You're forgetting how deceitful the sulfides are. So let me remind you before a defense attorney hires an independent geologist to tell the jury, 'Ladies and gentlemen, the common name for pyrite is fool's gold, and that's exactly what the FBI has here, fool's gold.'"

I stared down at my left hand. I had taken off the bandage, and now picked at the wound.

Eric closed the manual, not even bothering to read it to me. "You want results, I get that. But you haven't nailed this K. You don’t even have X-rays.”

When x-rayed, the radiation diffracted through the mineral, producing a precise angle of bent light. Each crystal structure produced its own distinct pattern which could be measured and quantified. But X-ray diffraction required time and skill. I was in no shape to run it this morning. And Eric had no time. Or interest.

"What about the acrylamide?" I asked, hopefully.

He pointed to the heat lamp, limping over to the counter. "The polymers are pressed flat."

"Foot pressure?"

"Doubtful. Looks to me like something done as part of the manufacturing process. The acrylamide was flat before it went into the soil, or the shoe treads. And watch this."

His hands quivered as he squeezed an eyedropper, adding distilled water to the petri dishes. The water created dark puddles. But suddenly the sample from the detective's shoe absorbed the water. It began expanding at an almost exponential rate. The soil sample from Hamal Holmes's shoe also expanded, though less dramatically. Nothing happened with the James River sample. The puddle was inert.

My mind was still foggy but coming through the morass was the sense that this demonstration was the gentle letdown. If I was asleep two hours, Eric had plenty of time to run these tests. He already knew the answer. This walk-through was for my benefit. To convince me.

"How much acrylamide are we talking about?" I asked.

"The acrylamide in the South Anna River is enough to launch an environmentalist hissy fit. Somewhere around one thousandth of one percent. But the sample from the detective's shoes is off the scale. There’s enough acrylamide to cause permanent damage to the human nervous system."

“But no acrylamide in the James River sample?"

He set the petri dish on the counter.

"Be straight with me, Eric."

"No, none.”

I sank into the chair. It felt like the wind was knocked out of me.

“Look at the bright side,” he said. “The soil in their shoes matches. Same mineral profile. Highly distinct. The detective just had much more acrylamide."

I nodded.

"The key here," Eric continued, trying to lift my spirits, "is to focus on the pressed acrylamide. Thin. Absorbs a massive amount of water. All you have to do is figure out where that came from and you've got your location." He waited. "What's the matter?"

"I don’t have that kind of time." I pushed myself up. I was trying to be brave but my heart was plummeting.

Time ran out.

And Phaup won.

===============

My cell phone started ringing as I walked out of FBI headquarters. Caller ID was blank, meaning FBI.

Phaup, probably.

I dropped the phone in my purse and crossed E Street to Starbucks. More coffee. Then I walked to the corner. The Lady Jay Wig store was still here. Still sandwiched between a ninety-nine-cent dry cleaner and a Korean bakery. I stepped inside, triggering the electric eye. Lady Jay herself was behind the counter. She looked up, adjusting a brown wig under a red pillbox hat.

"You probably don't remember me," I said.

"Sure I do." She pointed the wig comb in her hand, aiming it at the Bureau building across the street. "You're the science girl. I ain't seen you in years. Where you been?"

I told her about my move to Richmond. “To be near my mom.”

"She still wearing my hats?"

I nodded. Every so often I would bring home a different hat. My father's face would light up when my mother tried them on. "Anything new?” I asked.

But she pointed the wig comb at my face. My cheekbone. "Man do that to you?"

I reached up, touching the bruise. The skin felt tender.

“I got something.” She moved down the counter and picked up a green felt hat. Placing it on my head, she tugged down the black veil. Not my style. Or my mother's.

“What about that one?” I pointed to a pale straw number with a floppy brim.

Lady Jay positioned it on my head. The brim undulated like a stingray as she tilted it, just so. Trying to conceal the bruise.

"I'll take it," I said.

She rang up the purchase and gave me a big box for the hat. Then she tapped her own cheekbone.

“Don’t let no man treat you like that,” she said. "Ain’t no man in this world worth that kind of suffering."

Driving south toward Richmond, it looked like the humidity was leaching blue from the sky. Just south of Fredericksburg, I picked up Route 1 south and listened to my AM radio intermittently play a Country-Western station. Between bursts of static I told myself that yesterday was just another day. A bad day. But so what. No need to think about it anymore. It was gone, let it go. Move on.

And forget what DeMott said.

But when I finally turned onto Monument Avenue, the country station suddenly came in clear as cow bells, and the song that was playing told the honest truth: my mind had a mind of its own.

I parked on Allen Street and walked down the cobblestone alley behind the house. When I opened the back gate, the hinges squeaked. Suddenly my mind flashed to last night. The van doors creaking open. And once again that foul stench seemed to fill the air.

I stood on the patio, looking through the window to the kitchen. My mother sat at the pine table, writing. Scribbling those strange acrostics. Torrents of non sequiturs. Standing there, I watched her carefully line up the letters. Breaking a code that didn’t exist. My heart felt heavy as lead, and I stood so still that Madame continued to slumber under the table. All I wanted right now was to fall into my mother's arms. Cry. Tell her what happened to me last night. Hear her lilting voice. She could tell me the bad men were gone. Gone, gone away. And they would never come back.

I reached out, turning the handle. Madame barked.

"Raleigh Ann!" She flipped over the tablet, pulling off the reading glasses. "Wally said you were out of town. I wasn’t expecting you."

I closed the door. Madame's tail wagged, thumping against my leg. "I was out of town. And I brought you a souvenir." I held up the hat.

"Oh my lands. Isn't it lovely!"

I placed it on her head. The wide brim framed her elegant face and flopped with languid ease to her shoulders. She turned to gaze at her reflection in the glass. Tilting her head this way and that.

"It's simply perfect," she declared. "I’ll wear it on my next trip to the camp."

It was said that the universe came down to atomic structures. In my more lucid moments I could almost see protons and electrons and neutrons as God's divine building blocks, holding life in perfect order. Rocks, plants, animals, people. Cellular structures haloed by a power invisible to the naked eye. But that structure was only half the equation. Nature exerted its own influence, sometimes altering the underlying architecture. Left alone, quartz atoms would form perfect hexagonal crystals. But trapped within some metamorphic vein, compressed by weight and pressure, that same quartz showed up as an indistinct mass, conforming itself to the shape around it.