Chapter 16

Located at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Quantico, Virginia, the FBI Laboratory provides a multitude of services to Bureau personnel and law enforcement partners around the globe. First organized in 1932, it is a full-service operation, with some 500 scientific experts and special agents working in a state-of-the-art facility. Among them are a unit chief who supervises forensic examiners, and biologists who comprise the DCU, or DNA Casework Unit.

Melanie Rogers was the current DCU chief. A biologist herself, she had worked for the FBI for eighteen years and, had anyone asked her, would have said she’d seen it all. Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) analysis is routinely used to link criminals to crime scenes and provide identification information that is even more exclusive than fingerprints. In one of the thousands of cases her unit was responsible for, a large number of blood samples had been submitted to the lab which had been collected at a major crime scene in New York City, in which four federal officers had been killed and dozens of others killed or injured.

In cases like this, a map can be created of the scene and then annotated as to where every sample was collected, providing a single visual aid that establishes where each person of interest was at some time during the incident. Imagine, for example, an incident in which there were five rapes committed within two hours of each other, in widely separated sections of a city. DNA evidence collected at each of the scenes, and which was identified as being from the same person, would link all five scenes. That seems obvious, until one realizes that, because of either circumstantial evidence or no other evidence at all, a person might only be suspected of having committed one rape that night, the other four perpetrators being unknown. With DNA evidence in hand, all five cases are then solved.

Of course that doesn’t mean all five cases are proved. But it’s a heck of an aid to investigators to know that suspect A was at all five locations that night.

In the case of The Bolshoi Blitz, the collection of blood from the scene was for three reasons. In the case of bodies recovered at the scene, the blood collected from the ground then confirmed that the body died there, rather than at some other location. Again, that might seem obvious, but there have been cases in which murder victims have been disposed of by making it look like they died in some place other than where they were killed. The other reason was for documentation purposes, in terms of making one of those maps mentioned previously. Having such a map can be very valuable in terms of visualizing the tactics of an assault. The third reason was because this kind of evidence collection had become standard operating procedure, a procedure that evolved from the arguments of slick defense attorneys that “Something was left undone. What else was left undone that would have exonerated my client?” It was expensive ... but had to be done.

Doug Francisco was a forensic examiner in the unit who had received blood samples from this incident, taken from inside a car that had suffered multiple bullet penetrations. This particular car was one that had been rented by the US Marshal Service and the purpose of his exam was to verify who the blood had come from. Doug had done his protocols on the unknown samples and was preparing to run them against known samples when he noticed something interesting. He decided to mention it to his boss before he finished the work.

She looked up from her desk work. She wore half glasses to read with, and looked over them at the intruder in her office.

“Hey, just thought I’d mention something,” said Doug.

Melanie waited. She wasn’t one for chit chat. Her work day, when you included the commute, was twelve hours long. And that was if she could get out of the office at a decent time.

“I’m working on part of that Russian hit thing we got assigned,” he said.

Melanie rolled her eyes, partly because he knew she had assigned him that work and partly because that case had generated over three hundred samples that had to be run. Those kinds of cases gave her nightmares. Doug went on.

“Well, I ran the unknown samples from inside and around one of the Marshal’s cars, and when I got the preliminary results back I noticed something funny. Two of the charts were too close. I thought something had been mishandled or something, but when I double checked the issues it turned out that two of the samples were from people with a close genetic relationship.”

Melanie asked, “How close?”

“Closer than cousins,” said Doug.

“So, what’s the problem?” she asked.

“The list to compare it to doesn’t have any similar names,” he said.

“Gender?” she asked.

“One male, one female,” said Doug.

“So a sister got married and her last name isn’t the same as her brother’s anymore,” said Melanie.

“Or a father and daughter,” said Doug.

“Whatever,” said Melanie. “Why do we care?”

“I just wanted to run it by you to see if we cared,” said Doug. “I only did an identification panel, not a relationship panel. Do I need to do a relationship panel?”

Melanie told him the same thing she’d told dozens of her people over the years.

“Put it in your preliminary report to the supervising agent. Let him decide if it matters.”

“Should I do the rest of the exam to nail down the relationship?”

“We have enough to do already,” said Melanie. “You’ve matched the samples to known submissions, right?”

“Not yet,” he said.

“Well, then do that. Once we know who they are, somebody can just ask them how they’re related. If anybody cares.”

“Got it,” said Doug.

He left her office and went back to work.

The next day Bob and Lacey slept late. Part of that might have been because of the alcohol they’d imbibed the night before, and the fact that they didn’t have to get up early to do anything. For Lacey, the reunion had been equal parts fun and unhappy memories. She didn’t want to leave, but she also wasn’t in a hurry to get together with her “old chums” early in the morning. Another part of that might have been because their lovemaking had extended into a three hour long session of passion at a slow boil, and both were drained when they finally fell limp beside each other.

They ordered room service for breakfast, brunch in all actuality, and then Lacey took Bob on a tour of the campus, showing him where she’d lived and some of the buildings she’d had classes in. They ate again around one-thirty and then it was time to get ready to go to the pool party.

Bob had never seen Lacey in her new one-piece swim suit. It was a somewhat lurid shade of purple, midway between being maroon and lavender, but it went with her hair and coloring beautifully. When she got it on, however, there was a problem. Her pubic bush was too lush, and a number of unruly hairs escaped the confines of the high rise suit.

“How could you not notice that when you tried it on at the store?” asked Bob.

“I had to leave my panties on when I tried it on,” she said. “I didn’t think about how it would be different without them.”

“Just shave things a bit down there. Problem solved,” he said.

“I didn’t even start shaving my arm pits and legs until I got to college,” she moaned. “I’ll cut myself to ribbons.”

“Never fear,” he said, striking a pose. “I will help you.”

“Will you really?”

“I’ve done a lot of shaving,” he said. “I’m good at it.”

“Have you shaved women ... there?” she asked.

“It’s no different than shaving my neck,” he said. “Don’t you worry your pretty head.”

Which is how she ended up lying on the bed sideways, with her knees at the edge of the mattress and her lower legs hanging, while he sat on a chair between her spread thighs with his own razor and shaving cream. He had little trouble reducing her bush to a landing strip. When he was finished, though, and had cleaned her off with a washcloth, he couldn’t resist leaning in to see if eating her pussy felt any different. He didn’t tell her he’d eaten a few bald or sculpted pussies before.

Then, while she lay there, limp, after having an orgasm, he stood and pushed his pants down to reveal a very nice erection, which he slid into her, holding himself on his straight arms and extended legs, as if he were doing some kind of inclined pushups. In this position almost the only thing touching her was his penis, which he sawed in and out of her just long enough to pull the spunk from his balls and deposit it into her vagina.

A little later Bob was sitting in the same chair he’d shaved her in, with her new suit in his hands, as he tried to figure out how to remove the built in modesty panels in the breast cups.

“What are you doing?” she asked, finally sitting up.

“Trying to make it so you can see your nipples.”

“You’re a satyr!” she groaned. “Stop that! You can see them when we come back and change.”

“Can’t blame a guy for wanting all the other men to be jealous of him,” said Bob, grinning.

“The other men know I have a boyfriend, but they don’t know it’s you,” she reminded him. She frowned. “Wait. I think I screwed up. I told them I had a boyfriend. But I also hinted that I was having an affair with one of my bodyguards. What if they think you’re two different men?”

“That will just play into their fantasies that now you’re a free-wheeling, sexual woman. They’ll imagine that gives them a chance, too. How’s that working out for you?” he asked. “Do you like the attention?”

“I think you know,” she said.

“Well, you went through all those years of nobody paying attention to you,” he said. His inference was clear.

“I wasn’t missing much,” she said. “Not if Gerald Simpson is anything to go by.”

“True,” he agreed. “But you’d never have known that if you didn’t go through this, now.”

“I was quite happy with you being the only man in my life,” she said. “Now those men probably think I’m a slut.”

“You’re not a slut,” he said, firmly.

“Easy for you to say,” she grumbled.

“What they think doesn’t matter,” said Bob. “What I think matters, and what you think matters, but what they think is of no consequence.”

“I don’t want to think about it. Get ready,” she said, taking her suit from his hands and stepping into it. He watched appreciatively as she wiggled it into place. “Don’t wear a shirt. I want all the women to be jealous of me,” she said.

He shook his head.

“You have a twisted affinity for my scars,” he said. “Other women will likely think they’re horrible.”

“Have all the other women in your life thought they were horrible?” she asked.

“It’s different when you’re on active duty,” he said. “Women have expectations about soldiers, and scars fit those expectations.”

“Does it bother you when I touch them?” she asked, curiously.

“No. I don’t understand your fascination with them, but it doesn’t bother me.”

“I think of each of them as a time when you put your life on the line for someone,” she said. “I understand what that means. You’ve put your life on the line for me.”

“Which is why I don’t think all those other women will react the same way you do,” he said. “If it was up to me, I’d wear that shirt.”

“No,” she said. “You had those scars before you met me, at least most of them, and when you got them, it was on behalf of all of us. I want them to see how much you’ve suffered for their sake.”

“Okay,” he said. “But I don’t think they’ll look at it that way. What about your scars?” he asked.

“Mine?”

“You can see them too,” he said.

He walked up and traced a finger around the exit wound on her back.

“I didn’t think of that,” she said.

“I pointed that out to Babs at the mixer,” he said. “She was under the impression you just got a flesh wound.”

“You never told me you talked to her.”

“She tried to pick me up,” he said.

“That bitch!”

“She went away unhappy,” he said.

“Good.”

“Don’t waste any energy being unhappy about her. You’ve got a better job, more status, and ... me!” He grinned.

“Old habits die hard,” she said.

“Your assumptions about men were old habits,” he said, grinning slyly.

“Those were assaulted by a professional soldier who took me prisoner and brainwashed me,” she said, quite firmly.

“I was well trained,” he said, with false humility. “Which is why I’m sure I can find a way to remove the pads that are hiding those luscious nipples of yours from the world.”

“You just want to torture all those other men,” she accused.

“Like I said ... I was well trained.”

The pool party was an unmitigated success, if “success” was defined as Lacey being besieged by males and Babs, in her bikini, being basically ignored. If it was defined as women and even some men staring at the evidence of Bob’s war wounds, and asking him how this or that one was caused, then that happened as well.

Not a lot of swimming got done. Most of the men had on a swim suit that belonged on a much younger man who was in much better physical condition, but the damage was mitigated by most of them also wearing a shirt to cover their flab. With the women, it was about half and half. Some wore suits that would have looked really good had they been twenty pounds lighter. Some had surrendered to age and poor eating habits by switching to a one piece. In either case, all they did was make Lacey look better. Her suit was modest, but her body was in much better condition than those of her law school sisters. Most of that was due to a basically Spartan lifestyle, though getting to and from work also involved a lot of walking when she chose to leave her car in its parking stall.