Private Berlin (Private 5)

CHAPTER 23

AT TEN FIFTEEN, Mattie, Burkhart, Dr. Gabriel, and three Private forensics techs entered the slaughterhouse carrying equipment, including blue lights, cameras, thermal imaging systems, and a pressurized tank attached to a hose and nozzle.

Hauptkommissar Dietrich was already on site, waiting for them along with Inspector Sandra Weigel and a Kripo forensics team.

“We’ll assign you a piece of the floor and wall,” Dietrich told Gabriel, whom he eyed with open distrust after the hippie scientist removed his jacket to reveal a bright orange sweatshirt featuring Bob Marley’s image.

Gabriel smiled agreeably. “I’m calling this place eighty meters by forty.”

“Roughly,” the high commissar replied. “So?”

“So let’s reduce the space,” Private’s forensics expert replied. “Or at least let’s understand the full dimensions of what we’re dealing with.”

Dietrich looked at him suspiciously. “How?”

“Superpressurized luminol fog, my own invention,” Gabriel said as he retied his gray ponytail and tucked it up under a surgeon’s cap. Then he put on goggles, picked up the pressurized tank, and twisted the valve.

“Shut down the kliegs, please,” he called.

Dietrich nodded to his assistants. They killed the lights, leaving the place dim and shadowed. Rain pattered on the roof.

“Start recording,” Gabriel told two of his technicians who waited with video cameras mounted on tripods.

Private Berlin’s chief scientist aimed the spray wand toward the western end of the building, then squeezed a lever trigger. With a burst and hissing, a fine aerosol fog of luminol, hydrogen peroxide, and hydroxide salt shot from the wand, widened into a cloud that drifted into the rafters, crept down the walls, and settled on the floor.

“Sonofabitch,” Burkhart said.

Awed and horrified, Mattie nodded.

It was like looking at depictions of galaxies—tens of thousands of stars in clusters, splashes and pinpoints, a chemiluminescent, glowing-blue constellation of blood.

CHAPTER 24

THE CHEMICAL REACTION ended in less than thirty seconds. The blue glow died and the slaughterhouse returned to its ruined self. The sheer scope of the blood evidence revealed by Dr. Gabriel’s device stunned everyone into silence.

Except for Weigel, who whined, “It’s everywhere, High Commissar!”

Dietrich scowled at her. “As I said last evening, Weigel, this was a slaughterhouse. Luminol only gives us an indication of the presence of iron in blood hemoglobin. It says nothing about that blood’s source.”

Dr. Gabriel cut in. “In any case, we’ll have to microgrid the place, sample every three inches, say.”

Dietrich looked annoyed. He hesitated and then nodded with little certainty before saying, “I think six inches will do.”

Mattie closed her eyes, seeing the glowing-blue galaxy of blood traces in her mind, and noticing that one area seemed more saturated than others. She went to the video camera and replayed it just to be sure.

“What’s up?” Burkhart said.

Dietrich was off talking to one of his forensics men.

Mattie gestured to the glowing-blue pattern on the camera screen. “See where it’s more concentrated?”

Burkhart looked and nodded. “Over in that corner.”

They walked through the trash and filth to the corner and an iron sewer grate. They shined flashlights into a steel-lined well, seeing that at the bottom, some three feet down, there was a second grate of sorts where the metal had been perforated with pencil-sized holes.

“Why isn’t there stuff on the bottom down there?” Mattie asked.

Burkhart said, “I don’t follow.”