EXIT:
Bugs
4:16 P.M.
Bob George—Ghost Keeper—was head of RFISS. "Ree-fiss" to the Mounties, the Regional Forensic Identification Support Service provides state-of-the-art backup to cops in the field. A full-blooded Plains Cree from Duck Lake, Saskatchewan, the Staff Sergeant was a hefty man with black hair, bronze skin, and wide cheekbones. Proud of his native heritage, Ghost Keeper usually wore faded Levis and a denim shirt alive with Cree designs, the pattern sewn by his mother who lived on the reserve. Today, however, George was sporting a Brioni suit, looking natty, fresh from giving evidence in court.
"Hmmmm," he said, examining the lice through a microscope at the Lab. "Ugly critters, aren't they? Especially the jaws."
The emphasis in police work has changed from acquiring personal evidence to gleaning physical traces. The days of Sherlock Holmes solving crimes through a triumph of logic are relics of the past, as outdated as plodding Jack Webb seeking "Just the facts, ma'am." The magnifying glass gave way to fingerprint lasers used in conjunction with cyano-acrylate and vacuum metal deposits, to scanning electron microscopes that magnify particles hundreds of thousands of times, to gas chromatographs and mass spectrometers that separate complex compounds into their components, to DNA analysis which uses genetic markers to finger a suspect from a single drop of blood. Now with anthropologists, entomologists, botanists, and blood pattern physicists on call, scientists often outnumber cops around the corpse. George was the member who marshalled such expertise.
"Sandra Wong," he said to Craven. "She's who you want."
Burnaby, British Columbia
5:15 P.M.
The reek of rotting beef liver hung heavy in the air of the narrow corridor linking a dozen closet-sized labs. Inside each environmentally controlled room, wooden shelves were lined with jars full of maggots writhing in sawdust, cockroaches clambering over wads of paper towel, and miniscule Hies savoring the leaves of potted plants. Each red door of the Insectary had a wire-mesh window for monitoring bug activity within. Craven waited outside the murder lab, the only door with a padlock and blacked-out window.
Forensic entomology is the study of insects that invade a rotting corpse. The goal is to determine how much time has elapsed since death. Different species of insects are lured by different stages of decomposition. By knowing the succession of bugs that colonize a corpse—metallic green blowflies and house flies land first, followed by fleshflies, larder beetles, cheese skippers, et cetera—and the life span of each carnivorous wave, entomologists calculate back to when the person died. Maggots, which spawn and develop in wounds and body orifices, follow a set cycle of growth. Gathering larvae from the corpse and raising them in labs enables entomologists to narrow the time of death almost to the day.
Wearing a face mask to protect her from the bugs and sickening-sweet smell, Dr. Sandra Wong exited from the blacked-out lab and locked its door. She was a tiny Asian woman as tall as Craven's waist, sheathed in a white turtle-neck printed with a cartoon. Antennate male and female bugs walked across her chest, over the caption "Skip the foreplay? We only mate once and then die, and you want to skip the foreplay?" Her hands and that part of her face not covered by the mask were welted red by myriad insect bites. While she and Nick conversed in the hall she scratched them constantly, and soon the Mountie was scratching, too.
"Mind if I ask," Nick said, "how bugs became your passion?"
Wong removed the face mask, revealing a buoyant smile. "My father gave my brother a magnifying glass to pique an interest in science. My brother would sit on the front stoop concentrating the sun's rays through the glass, chasing ants with the beam until they exploded in puffs of smoke. The truth is I'm atoning for his sins."
"There must be more," Nick said, grinning in
Bugs
4:16 P.M.
Bob George—Ghost Keeper—was head of RFISS. "Ree-fiss" to the Mounties, the Regional Forensic Identification Support Service provides state-of-the-art backup to cops in the field. A full-blooded Plains Cree from Duck Lake, Saskatchewan, the Staff Sergeant was a hefty man with black hair, bronze skin, and wide cheekbones. Proud of his native heritage, Ghost Keeper usually wore faded Levis and a denim shirt alive with Cree designs, the pattern sewn by his mother who lived on the reserve. Today, however, George was sporting a Brioni suit, looking natty, fresh from giving evidence in court.
"Hmmmm," he said, examining the lice through a microscope at the Lab. "Ugly critters, aren't they? Especially the jaws."
The emphasis in police work has changed from acquiring personal evidence to gleaning physical traces. The days of Sherlock Holmes solving crimes through a triumph of logic are relics of the past, as outdated as plodding Jack Webb seeking "Just the facts, ma'am." The magnifying glass gave way to fingerprint lasers used in conjunction with cyano-acrylate and vacuum metal deposits, to scanning electron microscopes that magnify particles hundreds of thousands of times, to gas chromatographs and mass spectrometers that separate complex compounds into their components, to DNA analysis which uses genetic markers to finger a suspect from a single drop of blood. Now with anthropologists, entomologists, botanists, and blood pattern physicists on call, scientists often outnumber cops around the corpse. George was the member who marshalled such expertise.
"Sandra Wong," he said to Craven. "She's who you want."
Burnaby, British Columbia
5:15 P.M.
The reek of rotting beef liver hung heavy in the air of the narrow corridor linking a dozen closet-sized labs. Inside each environmentally controlled room, wooden shelves were lined with jars full of maggots writhing in sawdust, cockroaches clambering over wads of paper towel, and miniscule Hies savoring the leaves of potted plants. Each red door of the Insectary had a wire-mesh window for monitoring bug activity within. Craven waited outside the murder lab, the only door with a padlock and blacked-out window.
Forensic entomology is the study of insects that invade a rotting corpse. The goal is to determine how much time has elapsed since death. Different species of insects are lured by different stages of decomposition. By knowing the succession of bugs that colonize a corpse—metallic green blowflies and house flies land first, followed by fleshflies, larder beetles, cheese skippers, et cetera—and the life span of each carnivorous wave, entomologists calculate back to when the person died. Maggots, which spawn and develop in wounds and body orifices, follow a set cycle of growth. Gathering larvae from the corpse and raising them in labs enables entomologists to narrow the time of death almost to the day.
Wearing a face mask to protect her from the bugs and sickening-sweet smell, Dr. Sandra Wong exited from the blacked-out lab and locked its door. She was a tiny Asian woman as tall as Craven's waist, sheathed in a white turtle-neck printed with a cartoon. Antennate male and female bugs walked across her chest, over the caption "Skip the foreplay? We only mate once and then die, and you want to skip the foreplay?" Her hands and that part of her face not covered by the mask were welted red by myriad insect bites. While she and Nick conversed in the hall she scratched them constantly, and soon the Mountie was scratching, too.
"Mind if I ask," Nick said, "how bugs became your passion?"
Wong removed the face mask, revealing a buoyant smile. "My father gave my brother a magnifying glass to pique an interest in science. My brother would sit on the front stoop concentrating the sun's rays through the glass, chasing ants with the beam until they exploded in puffs of smoke. The truth is I'm atoning for his sins."
"There must be more," Nick said, grinning in
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