Free The Brain Vault (Stephanie Chalice Thrillers Book 3) by Lawrence Kelter

market. With his eyes closed, he paused with his nose almost touching the skull, sniffing hard like a dog trying to extract a scent. In the next instant, he was on his feet, eager and rejuvenated, rushing back to his car.

Eleven
     
    A n Oxford Inca Energy 400 Spectroscope running IMQUANT software would normally be the last thing you’d expect to find in someone’s home. Nonetheless, there sat Damien Zugg, surrounded by the tens of thousands of small bits he had collected over the years. Forensic pathology: no one living knew more about it. Only the dead were capable of revealing more secrets.
    Bordering the basement, metal shelves were lined with boxes filled with the many specimens Zugg had collected over the term of his professional and intellectual career. Each box was clearly labeled and dated. They were of varying sizes, all except for the thirty-inch corrugated boxes stacked under the basement window; each of those contained some two hundred-six bones, roughly the number of bones found in a human skeleton. These were samples he had prepared and catalogued on his own, with hands he could once depend on, with eyes that once saw true. This skull, this pure white skull, it tore at him. He could sense a connection that had been intangible to all else.
    The computer screen before him registered in both graphical and digital output, elemental composition—he had found the smallest traces of a substance running horizontally across the temporal bone, barely enough for assay. It had been undetectable in ordinary daylight, but had irradiated under infrared. Data began to fill the screen.
    A number counter began to run across the center of the computer screen. When it was done, Zugg would know the specific gravity of the substance.
    Zugg glanced at the clock in the lower left corner of the computer screen. It read 7:15 p.m. He closed his eyes and rested, face in hand. It had been days since he’d enjoyed a sound night’s sleep. His conscious mind was beginning to drift. He glanced at the clock again. It now read 7:40 p.m. Where did the time go? He was blanking out more and more often, succumbing to weariness, losing little bits of the day, unable to account for the missing time.
    He removed his baseball cap. Time for the seventh inning scratch , he mused. It had become a part of him, adorning his head at all times, except when he attempted to sleep. The brim was causing irritation where it touched his surgical scar, and his itchy scalp was driving him to the point of distraction. He scratched his shaved head carefully. His scalp prickled constantly, but Zugg had a strong resolve; not wanting to initiate infection, he rarely succumbed to the annoyance.
    The counter was now running quickly. He saw that it had finally stopped at 407,979, and then he clicked a tab at the side of the screen. The chemical composition was already there, C 25 H 30 ClN 3.
    Zugg allowed his head to fall limply to the side, his expression, a cross between revelation and disappointment. The scientists at the FBI’s forensic lab were capable of identifying the most obscure amounts of almost any substance. What he had found was one of the most common materials used in modern day forensics. The question running through his mind was, had it gotten there by accident? Had someone been clumsy in the lab? Good sense told him that there was no other explanation for gentian violet to be on this otherwise sterile skull, but this was what made Zugg the scientist he was. Somewhere, deep in the recesses of his cancer-riddled brain, a neuron fired telling him not to ignore the clue. 
    He reached for the phone and dialed Ambler.

Twelve
     
    A delaide Tucker rarely strayed from the nurse’s station in the middle of the night, except to make necessary rounds. The evening had been quiet and her supervisor was on her meal break for the next thirty minutes. It was time to shut her eyes and take a catnap. It was the only way for her to keep going. No matter how she tried,