Chapter 14
21.
 Based on the lab result and Linsey's excitement, her boss gave the printout a quick scan and called a meeting of the Ready Team. At any time, there were at least three to five representatives in the office from among the several dozen on the task force.
The boss was Louise Trost, Chief Special Agent on site and Federal regional anti-terrorism coordinator for the San Diego part of Southern California. She and Leslie got along fine. Louise was a heavyset Afro-American woman with a singer's thick, mellifluous voice. Looking older than her years, she seemed to Linsey almost grandmotherly. Louise had a patient chuckle and a way of slowing things down so they could be looked at from all points of view. She could also be biting with those who crossed her, or disagreed with her without having the facts to back up their argument. Linsey found her a good person to work for—smart, nurturing, get stuff done.
"Linsey dear, I do have one little reservation. Why would enemies of the United States use mushroom bombs? Don't get me wrong, there is something dreadfully anomalous here, but I would think they'd attack us with some sort of gas, or pour something in our water supply."
"I know," Linsey said, starting to sweat under the collar. "Maybe I reacted a bit too quickly."
"No, you did just fine," Louise purred. "We do need to find out why there is human DNA in a mushroom found under a dock where a guard disappeared. Be cool, child, we'll sort this out."
Mrs. Louise Trost, MBA Harvard School of Business, was 38, the daughter of an Afro-American Air Force General and a Caucasian German woman of Turkish and German descent.
The former Louise Berry spoke several languages fluently, and by age 14, when her father retired to Spokane, Washington, she had lived in six different countries and visited at least two dozen. When Louise began high school as a socially shy but precocious learner, the adjustment to U.S. life was the hardest she had ever made. Because of her features—light skin, blue eyes, tightly curly black Afro hair, full nose and lips—she was the subject of a fair amount of prejudicial heckling from her mostly White school mates. That she was chubby made things all the more difficult. She had been trained to believe in herself, and never lost faith in her wider goals. She sang in choir at the Resurrection Episcopal Church, and took first place in Debate Society. Always a bit heavy, and with a history of childhood asthma, she shied away from sports. She ended her high school days as Class Valedictorian, and her proud parents sent her packing for a successful four years as a Business major at Yale University, followed by graduate school at Harvard. After years in private industry, she'd switched to police and forensic work, and raced up the management track at Homeland Security.
Louise Berry had been married 18 years to Frederick Trost, a Black airline pilot stationed in San Diego with Pacific Airlines and its successors. The couple had met while Louise, as a 20 year old business school summer interne with a large corporation in Virginia, had met the young Naval aviator who had just finished Annapolis and was stationed at Norfolk Naval Air Station. They'd married three years later, in her first year of grad school. the couple had two boys and a girl, all in high school now, and lived on the slopes of Mount Soledad with splendid views of the Pacific Ocean from high up. The kids had attended Muirlands Middle School and now La Jolla High School, and all were honor students.
In recent years, Louise had begun taking an interest in Yoga and Tai Ch'i, and had lost twenty pounds from a still generous frame. Because of her lifelong shyness, which sometimes manifested itself in an appearance of seeming closed or unfriendly, when she really felt vulnerable and defensive, she had also joined Toastmasters and was just learning how to tell jokes. Public speaking was a real terror for her, and she still felt like crying even as she stammered out a good clean joke.
Two detectives filed into the room—a tall, skinny man with slick black hair representing SDPD, and a petite blonde with a boyish figure and pink face—as well as an FBI agent.
Louise put the issue on the table, adding "There is no question something is wrong. We need to figure out if this is our problem or someone else's."
"Someone else like who?" the FBI agent asked. He was a macho Japanese-American with a blue-black buzz cut and highly toned karate build. His off the shelf beige suit sort of floated on his sinewy body. He peeled an orange as he sat in on the meeting with one leg pulled under him and the other casually stretched over a pile of books under the table.
The smell of orange peel oil filled the room, making Linsey thirsty. Funny how that worked. She was beginning to wonder if she'd jumped the gun.
"Well, if the guard was murdered, it's the Harbor Police. If terrorists murdered him, it's us. You read the memo. Now if the DNA in the mushroom turns out to be his, then maybe it's a case for some Federal Agency we haven't heard of yet."
"X-Files," the blonde cop snickered.
"Twilight Zone," the tall, skinny detective said. Linsey expected he'd start mimicking the TZ theme, but he didn't.
Louise said: "I've taken the liberty of contacting a mycology expert at UCSD. Mycology is the study of fungi. The University of California's San Diego campus has many wonderful little departments and subdepartments, and that's one of them. They actually have someone on staff or on call at UCSD Medical Center in Hillcrest, and I'm expecting a call back any moment."
"We have to try really hard," the blonde said, "not to take on the police work of other departments. This sounds like a case the Harbor Police should work first."
"Maybe," Louise said, "and that's where we got Linsey Simon from. She's working the case and has alerted us there may be a biological bomb angle here. Please understand, I don't believe in the notion of letting a hot case bounce around among various entities and departments until someone somewhere decides to take possession. You know, unless there is a chance of political glory somehow, they are all going to say no. Meanwhile, some crime scene languishes or some perp gets away. The policy here is to be proactive rather than push-away. It may get us in to trouble now and then, but hopefully we'll be first out of the box on that one real case that involves blowing up half of San Diego, or poisoning a lot of people."
"Better safe than sorry." The FBI guy sucked an orange slice.
"Hello?" said the conference call speaker on the desk.
"We hear you," said Louise.
"This is Professor Sean Nolan. I'm a senior scientist at UCSD Biology specializing in Mycology, and a consultant to UCSD Medical Center. How can I help you?"
Louise introduced herself and the others at the table and told him the problem: "We have a situation that looks to our laymanly eyes like a great anomaly. A man has disappeared, and a huge man-size mushroom not native to this area has been found. It turns out from the preliminary lab report that this is an unknown species and, I repeat and, it has human DNA inside. Our principal investigator, Lieutenant Linsey Simon of the Harbor Police, seems to feel it's worth looking at a terrorist connection. My question is: does the DNA match that of the missing guard? Can you help us?"
"Ummm…well, if I had a sample of the missing guard's DNA—a pristine swab from the in his cheek, or some blood—I could start our lab working on that. What does that buy you?"
Louise said: "Well, if the DNA is that of the missing guard, then this huge mushroom must have eaten him."
Amid silence, Linsey heard shocked breaths.
Louise continued calmly: "I'm of the inductive school of reasoning. We investigate just the facts. Do I need to spell it out? We have a huge growth, it has human DNA, we're missing a guy, is the DNA his? If it is, we have a major hubbub. If it's just some random chatter, some fragments that look like human DNA but aren't, then we write it off as an anomaly. We need you to look at the DNA in the mushroom."
"In a mushroom?" the professor echoed incredulously. "Okay, well, send us the mushroom and the DNA, and we'll check it out. Get us missing man's DNA—a stool sample, blood, whatever you can manage."
Louise said drily: "We'll see what we can do. Since he's missing, we can't ask him for a cheek swab." She muted the speaker phone and pointed to the SDPD detective. She mouthed: "Get to the guard's hotel room with a forensic team, stat." She put Professor Nolan back on for thanks and goodbyes.
Linsey had a picture of some cheap hotel downtown where the missing guard had lived. "Hey, do guard companies routinely get DNA samples? They do have the guards fingerprinted."
Louise snapped her fingers. "Thanks, Linsey. We'll hit that asap also." After the others had filed out of the meeting room, Louise and Linsey were alone. "Linsey, you jumped the gun."
"I know." Linsey felt mortified. What a fool!
Louise spoke, unruffled. "Child, we are swimming in a pool of sharks. Think about what you say and do."
Linsey felt mauve and purple and burgundy shades of mortification cross her cheeks.
Louise said: "Don't feel bad. We've all inked that square."
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Copyright © 2014 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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