Free Rogue Oracle by Alayna Williams Page B

and followed Harry out the door before Veriss could protest.
    “Jesus Christ,” Harry muttered. “Where do they find those guys?”
    “Does he know about the marauding librarians?”
    “Not yet. But I hope one of them steals that fucking projector.”
    Tara smirked. She was certain Veriss meant well, but she knew from experience that Harry had little respect for esoteric methods until they produced results. She suspected that applied to differential equations as much as it applied to Tarot cards.
    The forensics department was a partitioned-off corner of the former archive. Steel curtains and fume hoods kept the chemicals away from the rest of the unit, but the concrete floors were still the same. When Tara had been an agent, they’d had to send most of their evidence out to the DOJ labs. She was impressed that Special Projects now had their own gas spectrometer and electron telescopes, perched on stainless steel counters. In the back, she heard the muffled report of guns, suggesting that they’d acquired their own ballistics tank, too. Swanky.
    “Agent Li, Dr. Sheridan.” Anderson, the tech Tara recognized from Lena’s house, greeted them. “I’ve got bad news.”
    Harry passed his hands over his eyes. “Please tell me that no one fucked up the evidence.”
    “I can’t say that, sir. As you know, the evidence was compromised by the time we got there …”
    “Just show me what you’ve got.”
    Anderson flipped over pages in her clipboard. “The stain that Dr. Sheridan found was indeed blood. Blood pattern analysis indicates that it’s a drip stain. Based on the positioning, our best guess is that it dripped from the victim’s mouth. Problem is, we can’t identify it.”
    “It’s not Lena Ivanova’s blood?”
    “It is. And it isn’t,” Anderson said. “We did find her DNA in the blood. But we also found three other sets of DNA. One unknown. One matched Carl Starkweather. And the other matched Carrie Kirkman.”
    “How the hell is that possible?” Harry’s brow wrinkled. “Did a group of ex-spooks show up to kidnap Lena?”
    “Without cross-contamination, it’s not really possible. I’m sorry—”
    “Wait a minute.” Tara shook her head. Her mind rifled through the possibilities. Had Carl shown up and convinced Lena to come away with him after a night of passion? It didn’t quite ring true to her, but she couldn’t say why. “The blood cells in the sample. Can you tell how fresh they are? Have they degraded?”
    Anderson nodded. “We did perform an HPLC analysis on the blood. It’s all the same age. We don’t think it’s a case of a stain of one type of blood drying on another stain.” She blew out her breath in frustration. “It’s bizarre. An extraction from one part of the slide shows one set of DNA, and another set in another part of the slide. That just doesn’t occur in nature, except in chimeras.”
    Tara thought of the Pythia’s warning: Beware the Chimera .
    Harry blinked. “What do mythological beasts have to do with this?”
    “In mythology, the chimera was a combination of a lion, a goat, and a snake,” Tara said. “But, in genetics, a chimera has two or more sets of DNA.”
    “But that’s exceptionally rare,” said Anderson. “In humans, a chimera occurs when one fraternal twin fuses with another in utero. In that case, the subject may have, say, a liver with one set of DNA, and skin with another.”
    “We know that Lena, Carl, and Carrie weren’t chimeras,” Harry said. “Their CIA physicals would have shown that, right?”
    “Maybe, maybe not.” Anderson’s mouth twisted in thought. “Most chimeras have no idea. And it’s extremely statistically improbable. But we could find out. Carl had children, and we might be able to trace DNA abnormalities through them. Lena also left traces of her DNA around … hairbrushes, old blood tests for CIA. We might not be able to say with one hundred percent authority, but we could get close to finding out if one