"The difficulty here," he went on, warming to his material, "was that we had overwriting – probably not deliberately obscuring the original text but simply the result of a man of limited means, making notes to himself on paper he had already used, perhaps years before, to make other notes to himself. The result is notes that might have meant something to him but only to him – to us, they simply look like confused scribbling. Again, oblique lighting, alternative light sources such as infrared or ultraviolet, and the use of filters helps, especially in those cases where the color of the layers of writing varies. If he wrote in blue ink over gray pencil, then viewing through a blue filter subtracts the blue, making the gray reasonably legible. Or as legible as this man's handwriting ever is.

"In the reverse case, pencil over ink, the pencil can be erased to reveal the ink below. That destroys the document's usefulness in court, although in this case, if the deceased wrote all of the documents himself and they're not all likely to become part of a court case – or any, since he's already dead – we can certainly do that in order to see what the underwriting says. Of course, your staff and I have made every attempt to preserve the integrity of the original documents. We've been busy photocopying those that are legible on their face and preserving the others in transparent plastic so that we're handling them no more than absolutely necessary."

"Of course," Catherine said. "The most important thing is to find any clues to his identity that they might contain, but we don't want the documents to be destroyed during analysis, if possible."

"Especially given what I had to live through to collect them," Greg added. He still felt as if he could smell the tent's interior, as if subatomic particles of it had become lodged in his nasal membranes. Which, no doubt, they had. More precisely, the chemicals causing the smell would have floated into his nose, binding with the cilia lining his nasal cavity, which would cause a nerve impulse to send the information through the olfactory cell, up the olfactory nerve fiber into the olfactory bulb, and from there to his brain. It would take a while before that all cycled out, but he didn't like thinking about tiny bits of the dead man's belongings living inside his head for any length of time. He turned his attention back to what the professor was saying.

"Yes, well, we try to be careful," Rambar said. "Then, of course, we move on to the more sophisticated techniques. Hyperspectral imaging can create true three-D images of the individual lines, allowing us to differentiate even same-colored inks or the identical ink written at different times. To examine charred documents, we stabilize them first with polyvinyl acetate, to make sure they don't flake apart in our hands – or forceps, more accurately – float them on a solution of glycerin, chloral hydrate. and alcohol, and photograph them. You'd be surprised at how much can show up if you just know the right way to look."

"I'm sure," Greg said.

"At any rate, it turns out that most of the notes are attempts to jog the writer's memory about various things or else written so that he won't forget something. Directions to a shelter or a church serving Thanksgiving meals. The day of the week he had a shower at the Y. 'Rainy today.' That sort of thing. Most of it trivial and not pointing in any obvious manner to the identity of the person who wrote them. You couldn't even go back and trace who got a free Thanksgiving dinner on such and such a date, because even on the rare occasions when he did note a specific date, he didn't write the year."

"So you're telling me that it's all useless to us?" Catherine asked.

"Nothing of the sort," Rambar said. "We've only really just started, as I said. We have a long way to go, but I wanted to tell you where we are so far, since I know there's a certain urgency. And there are a few things that are more intriguing than others, things that show up again and again."

"Such as?" Greg asked.

"Well, one of the things that struck me is a particular set of directions. Judging by the landmarks noted, they seem to lead from open desert into the city, at least to the city's edge. It's very detailed, although not necessarily the sort of thing one could follow now. 'Left at the gas station,' that sort of thing. What if there are two gas stations close to each other? It doesn't tell you which one. What if it's no longer a gas station? Without a date, you couldn't even go back and determine that there was a gas station in this location at this time."

"Then why do you bring it up?" Catherine asked.

"Because of what we've been able to examine so far, it's the one thing that has been repeated most often. And verbatim, or very nearly so. He wrote it down many, many times, on different pieces of paper, as if to keep it fresh in his mind. The phrasing changes only slightly, and the details are always the same."

"Maybe he was afraid he would lose, or had lost, the other papers," Greg suggested. "And wanted to make sure he had it in enough places that he couldn't lose them all."

"Certainly possible. The main thing is that these directions, for whatever reason, were vitally important to him. To lose them would have been tragic, in some way that I can't yet determine."

"We have to keep in mind, this guy had a bullet in his brain all this time," Catherine said. "That's bound to affect someone's habits and perceptions."

"True," Greg said.

Professor Rambar uncrossed his legs and put his hands on his knees. "I should get back to it," he said. "I'll let you know if we find anything else interesting."

"Thanks, Professor." Catherine watched him stand up and leave her office, then turned to Greg. "What do you make of it?"

"I don't know," Greg said. "I guess if we can determine where in the city those directions lead to, I could try to backtrack it. Find out what it was in the desert that was so important that he needed to keep the directions no matter what."

"It's already been a long shift, Greg. And Professor Rambar said they would be impossible to follow."

"Tell me about it. But he's a documents guy, not a CSI. He doesn't know how often we have to do the impossible. Anyway, we have to figure out who this guy is. And like you said, what if there's some connection between him and the disappearance of Daria Cameron? I'd be glad to take a crack at it, if it's okay with you."

Catherine smiled the way people did when addressing tiny children or the hopelessly confused small children. "You be my guest, Greg," she said. "Knock yourself out."

14

Rico Aguirre was driving Nick and Brass back to tribal police headquarters and checking out Calvin Tom's story on his handheld radio at the same time, when the voice from the other end said, "Hold on a minute, Richie."

"Okay," Aguirre said. Static took over the air waves. Aguirre kept driving one-handed, holding the radio in his right hand. Nick liked the man, but if he never had to get into a vehicle with him at the wheel again, that would be just fine.

A moment later, the voice came back over the radio. "Richie, there's been a shooting reported. Multiple shots fired, multiple victims. Can you head over to Meoqui Torres's house?"

"Yeah, I'm not too far from there. I got these LVPD guys in the car with me -"

"Ray mentioned that name," Nick whispered to Brass. "I think we should check this out."

"We'll tag along," Brass said.

"Other units are responding, too," the radio voice said. "You won't be alone for long."

"Okay, I'm on it," Aguirre said. He handed Brass the radio. He usually wore it on his belt, but Nick supposed that, for all his terrifying driving habits, he didn't intend to try to put it back there while he was behind the wheel. Probably, he usually just dropped it onto the passenger seat. Aguirre hit the lights and siren and started driving even faster. Desert whipped past the windows, and although the wheels gripped the road, when he took corners at speed, he slid over the shoulder and spat gravel and dust into the air.