"And how about you, Sam?" Nic asked the task force's representative from the post office. "What have you been able to find out about the postmark?"
When Sam Quinn spoke, his voice cracked a little. He flushed. It was clear that this meeting was one of the more exciting things that had ever happened to him. "There's been some water damage to the postmark, but it appears to have originated in the New York zip code where the publisher is located. The postage is made up of three stamps that have been canceled as part of a continuous design with the postmark. Oddly enough, the cancellation stamp is also known to collectors as 'the killer.-- His chuckle sounded forced.
No one else smiled.
"That means the gas grenade could have been mailed in New York, possibly from the publisher's mailing room. Or someone could have intercepted the package from the publisher, removed the original contents, and replaced them. The publisher uses a variety of different stamps and envelopes, so they can't tell us if this was one of theirs or not. The publisher tells us they are definitely not mailing out copies of Talk Radio--it wasn't even published by them, and the book is more than a decade old--but it looks like they might have a harder time figuring out if they did do some kind of recent mailing to Fate."
"How about the mailing label, Jun?" Leif asked Jun Sakimato, their resident paper specialist. "Did it come from a color printer?"
The public wasn't generally aware, but most color laser printers did more than just print party invites and color-coded bar charts. They also secretly encoded the printer's serial number and manufacturing code on every document they produced. The millimeter-size yellow dots appeared about every inch on the page, nestled within the printed words. While originally put in place to catch counterfeiters, the hidden markings had also helped Jun crack a kidnapping case earlier in the year.
Jun lifted one shoulder. "No such luck. Just a black-and-white printer. But I'm not certain the label actually originated from the publisher. It could have been dummied up. The edges are a little blurry. It could just be from fading or handling or exposure to the elements. Or it could be a fake. It wouldn't be hard to scan in their logo."
It seemed like one dead end after another. Were they looking at terrorism? Nic wondered. Her stomach felt like she was standing on the edge of a cliff and looking down at jagged rocks below. First Seattle, then Portland--when would it end? Or was this the beginning of the end?
She shook off such grim thoughts. This had to be different from the terrorist attack up north. In fact, it already was different. In Seattle the killers had targeted an office building, not individuals. In Portland, Fate had clearly been the target, as evidenced by his name on the mailing label. In Seattle the killer, a still unidentified Middle Eastern man, had been so clumsy that he had died with his victims. But Fate's killer could have been a thousand miles away when his victim took his final, fatal breath. In Seattle, there had been no warning. But Jim Fate had received threats so unsettling that he had asked for help. Help that she and Allison had been too late to give.
On Nic's hip, her phone buzzed. She looked at the display. Tony Sardella.
She said, "Excuse me," and then got up and walked into a corner of the room. She might as well have put it on speaker--she could hear the table go dead silent behind her. "Yes?"
"Nicole. We've got the results of the initial EMIT screen." "And?"
"Negative on sarin."
"So if it wasn't sarin, what was it?" She could feel the attention behind her sharpen.
"That I don't know. Most likely, some kind of opiate. I've ordered blood tests to try to quantify and qualitate which one was in play. Could be morphine. Could be something else. But for now, all I can tell you is that whatever caused Fate's death, it wasn't sarin. It's too bad the paramedics shot him up with the wrong antidote. If they had given him Narcan before he was too dead to revive, they might have saved him."
"How long will it take to pin down exactly what it was?"
"These tests take time." Tony sighed, and Nic heard his exhaustion. "Even if we move it to the head of the line, it's still going to take a week or two. Maybe more. You can't speed up a chemical reaction."
"Keep me posted," Nic said. After hanging up, she turned to the alert faces and told them the news. She saw the relief in the circle of listeners. One of the guys from headquarters was already gathering his briefcase and jacket.
"John will want to hold a press conference right away," Leif said.
"Let people know that Jim Fate seems to have been the only target and that this wasn't sarin, and that it was more than likely not terrorism."
John Drood, the special agent in charge, had less than six months to go until he bumped up against the FBI's rule that forced agents to retire at fifty-seven. He was having trouble even contemplating letting go. A press conference would be right up his alley, allowing him to stand in the spotlight once more as he reassured Portlanders that there was no reason for worry.
But, Nic wondered, was that really true?