“Yes,” I said, surprised and impressed. “How did you know that?”
“I’ve been through this already with the FBI. I gave them a comb and a hat.”
“Oh, great—never mind, then,” I said. “They’ve already got something to compare to this.”
She glanced at Skidder, then at me again, suddenly looking wary. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, since they’ve already got the hat and the comb, all we need to take them is the skull fragment.”
She stared at me. “We can’t take this to the FBI,” she said.
“But . . . we have to. It’s their case.”
“But the FBI has told everyone Richard faked his death,” she protested. “They’ve told everyone he’s still alive, somewhere in hiding. This piece of skull would prove them wrong. I don’t think they will admit their mistake.”
“Come on,” I said. “They won’t ignore clear proof that he’s dead. Teeth are one thing; teeth can be pulled—Richard’s teeth were pulled. But you can’t just pull out a piece of skull and walk away. If the DNA matches, they’ll believe it.”
“I don’t trust them,” she said. “I think they’re more interested in protecting their image than in finding the truth.”
Suddenly I had an idea—an idea that I was shocked to hear myself suggesting. “What about that obnoxious Fox News reporter, Mike Malloy?” Carmelita and Skidder shot glances at each other. “What?” I said. “Look, I don’t like him either—he’s pushy as hell—but he’s actually done the best job of covering this. Seems like he’d love another big scoop. The latest twist in the world’s most twisted case.”
Carmelita shook her head. “Mike Malloy is dead,” she said.
I stared at her, then at Skidder. He nodded. “Found dead in his bed yesterday,” he said. “A leather strap around his neck and the bedpost.”
“He hanged himself?”
The deputy grimaced. “Not on purpose. There was a bunch of porn in the bed. Looks like an accidental autoerotic asphyxiation.” As I struggled to take this in, he went on, “Supposedly it increases the intensity of orgasm if there’s less oxygen in the brain. So some people—kinky people . . .” He trailed off awkwardly.
“I get it, I get it,” I said. Suddenly a thought struck me. “What if it was staged? What if he’d kept poking around, looking for the story behind the story? What if he’d managed to track down his source—whoever it was that knew about the teeth? What if he’d found out that it really was Richard in the wreckage—that the whole thing was an elaborate double fake? Malloy might have looked like a threat.”
Carmelita was nodding excitedly. “I think you’re right,” she said. “Maybe he figured out who the killer was.”
Skidder cleared his throat. “That could be true,” he said. “But meanwhile, we’ve got to do something with this piece of skull. I have an idea. Carmelita, I understand your concerns about the FBI. But what we’ve just found is a game changer. I propose a compromise. I’m not in uniform today, but I am a law enforcement officer. How ’bout if I take custody of this piece of evidence? I can transfer it—or a piece of it—to a forensic lab that’s not part of the FBI. And I can transfer custody of the rest of it to Prescott, if the outside lab confirms that it’s Richard.”
“When the outside lab confirms that it’s Richard,” said Carmelita grimly.
One of the consolation prizes of being an aging professor is that you teach a lot of students over the years—students who go on to become doctors and lawyers and research geneticists. One of my former students had ended up running a genetics lab at UCLA Medical Center, in Los Angeles. It took just five minutes on my cell phone—high on Otay Mountain, I got a great signal—to ask if he could do a DNA analysis, comparing a bit of scalp tissue with a sample from a comb or a cap. “Piece of cake,” he said. “Can you overnight it?”
“I might be able to do better than that,” I said. I turned to Skidder. “Any chance you could fly this up to UCLA Medical Center?”
“Sure thing,” he said. “I know that helipad like the back of my hand.” I relayed this information to my student, who was suitably impressed with the speed, and assured me he’d be waiting, and could be at the helipad within five minutes’ notice.
After thanking him and hanging up, I asked Skidder how soon he might be able to make the handoff.