Parallel Lies Read Online Free PDF Page B

Priest he said, “At which point they sent you, I suppose.”
    “I suppose.” Nell Priest clearly didn’t want everything on the table. Tyler understood corporate paranoia, but she wasn’t helping her case with Banner any by playing coy. She struck him as being new to this. There was protocol to follow; the evidence collection was Banner’s show, the investigation Tyler’s, like it or not.
    “So why’d no one call us?” Banner injected.
    “We called you,” Priest informed him.
    “But if I’ve got my timing right, not until they already had you on a plane,” he said to Priest, “and you on your way out here, too,” he said to Tyler. Banner asked, “What’s with that?”
    She answered, “If corporate took their time notifying you, it wasn’t my doing. My guess is it was nothing more than a mix-up, thinking that Mr. Madders here had already done it.”
    “No one told me to do nothing!” Madders complained.
    “You see?” Priest fired off, “a mix-up.”
    Tyler wasn’t buying it, and neither was Banner. “Corporate,” Tyler quoted her. “Is that the railroad or the security company? Or are they all the same?”
    “Separate entities,” she replied. She apologized and said, “I was referring to the parent company—the railroad, as you called it. They’re top-heavy with decision makers. Everything requires a meeting, a committee. It doesn’t surprise me if they were a little slow.”
    Still, it didn’t compute for Tyler. The police should have been called immediately. He wrote it off to Railroad Killer paranoia: “corporate” had wanted one of their own—Ms. Priest—on the ground and running before the police got too far out in front. And then another thought occurred to him: who the hell had called NTSB, for they clearly had been given a head start as well?
    “Anyone here want what we got so far?” inquired the leadtechnician, a sharp-nosed man with beady eyes, small and frail in appearance, even bundled in winter clothing.
    “With you,” Tyler said, hoping to quiet things between Priest and Banner, who also looked on with interest.
    “First, you need to know the difference between the various kinds of wounds we deal with.” His tone was definite, almost impatient—the person at the cocktail party who’s the expert on everything. “We have cutting wounds, stabbing wounds, and blunt force injuries that include lacerations and chopping wounds. You might think these would all bleed the same, but they don’t. To offer any kind of accuracy, I need a look at whoever did this dance, but if we lose this weather, we lose this evidence—it’s gonna melt—so bear with me while I make a few educated guesses.”
    No one objected.
    “Give us the abridged version, Doc,” Banner complained, feeling the cold. “God damn witch’s tit out here.”
    Tyler reached out and shook the hand of the forensics technician, having not been formally introduced. The man’s name was Greistein. He didn’t seem to feel the weather.
    “To determine the events, we follow flow pattern. We categorize blood evidence into three groups: low-velocity impact, medium, and high. At almost any scene like this we have splashed, projected, and cast-off blood.” Greistein pointed to the portable lights. “Fluorescent, because we want as little heat in here as possible. All of us standing in here, breathing—we want to make it quick. We’re incredibly lucky to have this cold because it literally froze our crime scene, like taking a picture only minutes after the assault.” Tyler noted the dozens of numbered flags attached to pins stuck into various bloodstains. More white flags than yellow. Only a dozen or so pink flags, which was where Greistein pointed first.
    “We’re guessing chili, not regurgitated but thrown from a can or pan.” He allowed everyone to think on this. “Twoindividuals,” he stated. “One sitting—we’ll call him Low Man. Another we’ll call Mooch, because maybe he wanted some of that