Free Out at Night by Susan Arnout Smith Page A

Grace knew she’d never get right. Knew that all a woman like Beth had to do was take one look at her to know that, too.
    “This is the lecture Bartholomew crashed?’ A faint tinge of condescension colored Beth’s question.
    Grace swallowed her irritation. “Pretty much. Little simpler this time, but yeah.”
    Zsloski harrumphed into his hand.
    “What do you think Bartholomew was trying to tell you?” Beth clicked her sterling silver pen and readied it.
    “The only time I met Professor Bartholomew, he was lunging at me with a protest sign and spouting sound bites from the Bill Ayers playbook.”
    Her uncle nodded. “At the time of his death, he was a full-tenured professor at Riverside University, teaching a popular undergraduate-level course called ‘Silent Voices.’ It was about the ones history forgets—the ones on the bottom. He was arrested at Grace’s lecture by a Palm Desert cop in a roomful of forensic biologists.”
    The sheriff investigator patted the pocket of his tan shirt. He had penetrating mahogany-colored eyes the same color as his skin and wore his hair close to the scalp. His brass ID bar read T. THANTOS. “So he wanted to get arrested.”
    “Looks that way,” Pete said. “He got press, if that was the plan.”
    In her mind, Grace saw the Desert Sun article taped to Bartholomew’s wall.
    Thantos pulled a Mars bar out of his pocket and unwrapped it. “DNA testing for race would definitely have pushed Bartholomew’s buttons. From what we’ve got so far, he was all about how human dignity was compromised by putting racial groups in boxes.”
    “Bartholomew could have been trying to tell us we’re looking for a racist,” Grace offered. “But if the doer was using racial percentages somehow, the question is why? What’s the point? Why would those be flagged?”
    Zsloski shifted his bulk in his chair. “It doesn’t have to be a racist. Could be somebody in law enforcement. Based on what you said. I mean, we’re the guys who use this stuff, right?”
    “Or some genealogist with a grudge,” Beth suggested.
    “Or it’s possible the suspect had a genetic anomaly shared by only a small subgroup.” Grace shut down her computer. “Any idea yet what kind of crazy Bartholomew was?”
    Her uncle shook his head. “We’re doing cross-checks with every face on that wall. Dividing the photos into subgroups—class, gender, race. Whatever it is, it’s not in either his university file or medical chart, so right now we’re shooting in the dark.”
    The group was already starting to gather notepads and pens and tuck them away. Grace looked down the table. “Any more questions?”
    Agent Beth Loganis flipped open her cell phone and checked for messages.
    Grace felt a slow burn. “Good, because I’ve got some. What in the hell is going on here?”
    Faces looked up. The noise stilled.
    “Two fields torched and somebody’s died. What is this?”
    She stared at her uncle. He stared back, dark eyes inscrutable in a face creased and grooved and furrowed, as if everything he’d seen in his job had chiseled out a piece of him. Another couple years and he’d be left with nothing but a skull.
    “I’ve flown over three thousand miles through the night and driven in from San Diego. I think I deserve to know.”
    Her uncle grew still. She could feel him weighing what to say.
    “You understand this is information that you are not to share outside this room.”
    She couldn’t believe he’d actually said that. “Or you’ll have to kill me, right?”
    “We’ve had lots of experience. There won’t be seepage.”
    She narrowed her eyes. He stared back blandly.
    “Fine. All right. I get it. I’m not going to say anything.”
    “We’ve gotten word from FIG, Field Intelligence Group, out of Norwalk. They did a threat assessment on the convention. My SSA and the OCC’s involved, and when FIG passed along—”
    Acronyms made her testy. “Okay, so your boss in Riverside and the operational