Harris found it difficult to look at her. Terrified eyes bulging out, mouth open and body bloated, rigor mortis had already set in. Less than twenty-four hours ago, she was probably a shapely and attractive young woman, making ends meet in the only way she knew how.
Harris had no doubt that forensics, in conjunction with the coroner’s report, would match the DNA with sperm samples taken from the other defenceless victims. Their profession often made it difficult to isolate one specific sample, and for the most part, that was dependent on how many customers they had served in a particular day. The largest sample was almost always that from the client responsible for their ultimate demise.
As much as Harris hated this work, he was very diligent with his investigations. There was also heartfelt sorrow for these poor women. Nobody chose this profession, he reminded himself.
Besides that of the dead prostitutes, there was no other record of the DNA on any police database, either local or country-wide. Harris had no authorised access to the databanks of the FBI, CIA or NSA, but wondered if they’d even keep such information. To the best of his knowledge, they restricted themselves to eavesdropping into local and global communications. All in the interests of national security, he mused with cynicism.
A person could be identified by their fingerprints, retinas, or shape of their ears. Any one of these was unique to every individual on the planet. Unfortunately, Harris didn’t have any of those options available. Giving further thought to that, however, he also realised fingerprints and ears could be altered by surgery and retinas by laser. Legally, these were no longer considered conclusive evidence. Yet DNA was, and based on today’s sciences, each person’s classification was considered distinct and absolute.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Detective Harris looked at the DNA classification again. The strings of hyphenated letters and numbers meant nothing to him. He had some research to do. After three hours sifting through voluminous data, Harris gained an understanding of what these convoluted characters signified and what made them unique.
DNA◦– Deoxyribonucleic Acid
Unique Seven-Criterion Classification:
(1) Number of base pairs per turn
(2) Coiling pattern
(3) Location
(4) Structure
(5) Nucleotide sequences
(6) Coding and Non-coding DNA
(7) Number of strands
Although Harris didn’t comprehend what any of the criterion suggested, he now realised that there was a distinct format. It was possible that some police database references were entered without the hyphen, or that hyphens were replaced by spaces. Similar to online purchases, some sites required the entry of a credit card number to include the spaces, others didn’t.
Back onto the police databases, he tried the search again with various format combinations. The results presented nothing other than what he already had.
Obviously, he couldn’t just enter the DNA classification into a web-based search engine. This wasn’t like typing in an address and getting the exact location on a map. Who then, other than the police files, would keep records of DNA sampled from sperm?
Harris had an idea. It was a one-in-a-million chance, but he had completely run out of options. What the hell, he thought. He had nothing to lose.
Fifteen miles south-west of Baltimore, Joseph Müller, behind closed doors of his Fort Meade office, was evaluating the annual performance reviews for his senior management. These were what determined merit increases, if any. Certainly, on what had transpired in the last few days, Yvonne Baird wouldn’t be getting a damned penny extra. In fact, he was seriously considering dropping her salary grade by one level. That was now largely dependent on how much money he could squeeze out the salaries budget for himself. Each year, the allocated funds appeared to be getting less. Well, no matter, he thought, starting with the usual twelve percent for himself, and seeing what was left over. It was ridiculous that last year, some of his department were getting up to two percent. He reduced these all down to half a percent for this year.
That still left him over budget, so he dropped Yvonne’s salary grade by two levels. Momentarily redirecting his thoughts, he wondered why she wasn’t answering his calls. Her voicemail was now full and why the hell was she was travelling all over the country? He had been monitoring her phone’s location closely. And taking a two-week leave of absence without his approval! Did these people honestly think that they could do what they wanted, and when?
His salary budget was still over the limit. He reviewed the staff compliment and found a solution. They certainly didn’t need that many code-breakers. He would have three of them laid off, with minimum severance, and the remaining two would just have to carry the additional workload.
Good. The allocated limit was now in his favour. There was even some money left over which he granted to himself, giving him an additional one point and raising his personal increase to thirteen percent.
Joseph Müller was pleased◦– creative accounting at its finest. Subconsciously, his left hand was already toying with himself under the desk.
Miguel was silently horrified with all of Angelo Cevallos’s merciless killings but said nothing and carried out his duties. What Angelo did was his concern. It was just his way. But why kill Bonita, a lowly household maid? She was telling him what happened to the two girls staying at the mansion. He callously shot her for telling him what he didn’t want to hear. That was just plain ruthlessness.
Miguel also didn’t understand why it was necessary to put the five diggers and two remaining sweepers to their death. They were simply doing as ordered; finding Kubacki’s operation. What possible threat could they have posed? The strange objects in the cavern bothered most of them, and being superstitious, wouldn’t utter a word about those things to anyone. They had no idea at all what they were looking at. In fact, Miguel was at a loss himself.
Now Miguel was under orders to bring back that outlandish floating car. He urged Angelo to come with, Miguel being somewhat superstitious himself of things he didn’t understand. Although Miguel had taken numerous photos, he was adamant that there were many more things that Angelo needed to see; things that simply couldn’t be explained. Angelo reluctantly agreed, and they left in Miguel’s truck an hour after breakfast.
Already annoyed with the heat and uncomfortable ride, Angelo now couldn’t believe what he was looking at. There was no more operation, just a huge hole in the ground and the remains of a funnel-shaped pit.
“This is the right place, Mr. Cevallos,” Miguel assured him, nervously.
“Yet, there’s nothing here,” Angelo responded, heatedly. “What am I supposed to deliver to my investor, a fucking hole in the ground?”
Angelo had already taken Abdallah Bin Al-Said to task for not delivering OPEC’s promised one billion dollars surety. He’d been told that the transfer had been rejected. Absurd, Angelo thought. Al-Said was obviously playing games with him. He now desperately wanted that money to make up for the huge weekend losses at his gambling halls. He was certainly not going to lose out on the remaining nineteen billion either.