Chaos in Death by J. D. Robb Page A

you’re not going to like it.” He played his spider fingers over his comp. “She’ll come out here.”
    “What about my skin?”
    “She goes first. And I want that scotch.”
    “Fine, fine, if you give me something I can use.”
    “Oh, I’ll give you something.”
    Harpo, all spiky red hair and tired eyes, walked out from her section into Berenski’s. “Yo,” she said to Eve and Peabody, then dropped onto a stool. “You tell her?” she asked Berenski.
    “I said you’d do it.”
    “Yeah, yeah, okay. So,” she said, swiveling to Eve. “On one hand this is totally iced. On the other, it’s majorly fucked.”
    “What is?”
    “The hair. I’m the goddess of hair and fiber, and if I can’t ID it, nobody can. And I can’t.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Sorry, I’ve been at this all night. I’m a little wired on Boost.” She gestured with the jumbo tube in her hand before she took a gulp.
    “Have you tried the new black cherry flavor?” Peabody asked her.
    “Yeah, but it’s got an aftertaste. I’m pretty well hooked on the Lemon Zest. It’s got a nice zing.”
    “I like Blue Lagoon. There’s something about drinking blue that feels energizing.”
    “Excuse me,” Eve said, brutally polite. “This talk of flavors and favorites is fascinating, but maybe we could take a moment to discuss—oh, I don’t know—evidence?”
    “Sure,” Harpo said as Peabody cleared her throat. “I got hair from your crime scene. ID’d some from each of your vics, no prob. Got some not theirs, but no roots. So no DNA for you on that, but I started a standard anal. You want to eliminate animal—like a rat, or a stray cat, whatever. And I could—I figured anyway—give you some basics. Synthetic, human, if it was treated, color, and like that. But I can’t, ‘cause it’s not.”
    “Not what, Harpo?”
    “It’s not synthetic. That’s solid. But it’s not exactly human and not exactly animal. It’s sort of both.”
    “It can’t be both.”
    “That’s right.” Harpo pointed a finger tipped with a metallic purple nail. “But it is.” She glanced at Berenski for permission, then used one of the comps to call up her file. “What you have here,” she said, tapping that bright nail to the image, “is human hair, and this”—she split the screen with a second image—“is ape.”
    “If you say so.”
    “Science says. See, on the human hair the cuticle scales overlap smoothly. On the ape hair, they’re rough—they, like, protrude. Get it?”
    “Okay, yeah. So?”
    “So this—” Harpo added another image. “Okay, this is from your crime scene. It clearly shows characteristics of both—rough and smooth—on one strand. What you got here, Dallas, is mutant hair. It’s like somebody mated a human with an ape, and here’s the hair of the result.”
    “Give me a break, Harpo.”
    “Science doesn’t lie. It screws up sometimes, but it doesn’t lie. I ran this through everything I’ve got and did the same with the other strands the sweepers sent me. Same result. About two this morning, I gave up and tagged my old man—”
    “Your—”
    “My father’s head of forensics at Quantico. Look, Dallas, it’s not like I go running to Daddy whenever I hit a snag. In fact, this is the first time ever because it’s way out of orbit, and he’s the best there is—anywhere.”
    “Okay, Harpo, okay. What was his take?”
    “He’s stumped, just like me. This sort of mutation shouldn’t be possible. But I’ve got hair—five samples—that says it is.”
    “So, you’re telling me I’m looking for an ape-man? Seriously?”
    “I don’t know what the hell you’re looking for, is what I’m telling you. Come on, Dickie, give her yours so she stops looking at me like they let me out of the ward too early.”
    Berenski folded his arms. “Harpo got what she got, and I got what I got. You got green skin.”
    “I know that, goddamn it.”
    “I mean green. Not makeup, not tinted. It’s green down