Ground Zero by Kevin J. Anderson

Author:Kevin J. Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061981838
Publisher: HarperCollins

TWENTY

FBI Headquarters, Washington, D.C.

Tuesday, 3:10 P.M.

After so much time on the road, Scully found it comforting to be working in her own lab for a change, even on as gruesome a subject as this.

She basked in the solitude and familiar surroundings. She knew where all her equipment was located. She knew whom to call for help or a technical consultation. She knew specialists whose skills she respected in case she needed an unbiased person to verify what she found.

The FBI crime lab was the most sophisticated facility of its type in the world. It was filled with an oddball assortment of experts in the forensic sciences whose unusual interests or skills had proven time and again to be the keys to solving bizarre and subtle cases: a woman genetically predisposed to detect the bitter-almond odor of cyanide that many people could not smell, a man whose interest in tropical fish had led him to identify a mysterious poison as a common aquarium algicide after all other methods of analysis had failed, another man who specialized in identifying the type of photo-copying machine that had made a particular copy.

In their numerous X-Files cases, Scully and Mulder had stretched the capabilities and imagination of the FBI crime lab more often than most other field agents.

The labyrinth of labs lay on an interconnecting grid supposedly designed to facilitate cooperation between separate units, each with its own jurisdiction and expertise: Chemistry/Toxicology, DNA Analysis, Firearms and Toolmarks, Hairs and Fibers, Explosives, Special Photography, Video Enhancement, Polygraph, Latent Fingerprints, Materials Analysis, and other more esoteric specialties. After her years with the Bureau, Scully still didn’t understand the actual organization of the units. But she did know where to find what she needed.

Scully entered the main lab of Berlina Lu Kwok, in the receiving area for the Biological Analysis Unit, where specimens were given their first cursory inspection before being subjected to other, more specific analysis routines. When she stepped through the door, the stench that assailed Scully’s nostrils was far worse than usual, and the heavyset Asian lab director was in a foul mood.

“Agent Scully!” Lu Kwok said, her sharp voice slicing through the air, as if Scully were somehow to blame for the smell. “Is it too much to ask? Don’t we have clear-cut and regularly posted procedures for submittal of samples? Isn’t it as easy to do it the right way as to do it the wrong way?”

Scully clutched a packaged sample of the black residue Mulder had retrieved from Nancy Scheck’s backyard pool; she shifted it to her side in embarrassment. “I thought I’d fill out the forms in person—”

But the lab director was determined to finish her lecture, sniffing the sour air with disgust. “The FBI has every right to expect that local law-enforcement officials will make some sort of attempt to follow simple procedures, isn’t that correct? It helps us all out, doesn’t it?”

She waved an old memo in her hand, squeezing the edge with fingers powerful enough to snap wooden boards.

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