“This is worse than I expected,” she said, her voice muffled behind the respirator.
Evan nodded and swallowed hard.
Her phone rang, and she reached inside the suit to grab it. “It’s Gerald Philips.”
“Agent Dawson,” she answered and held the phone close to Evan. “I have Agent Bowers with me, and you’re on speaker.”
“I’ve got the DNA results from the container’s interior,” Philips said. “Based on the disbursement of the samples recovered, I still think we’re looking at two men, though we were able to definitively locate five DNA profiles. No match in CODIS for any of them.”
Not finding names linked to the DNA in the FBI’s DNA database was a huge setback but not a surprise to Evan. Not with the terrorists living in another country.
Kiley narrowed her eyes. “So we struck out.”
“Yes and no,” Philips said. “We may not be able to give you an identity from these profiles, but we can give you an approximate age for the two most likely suspects. One is thirty-three, the other twenty-eight.”
“And that’s it,” Evan snapped as he looked at the disaster in front of him that these two men may have perpetrated.
“No,” Philips said calmly, despite Evan’s outburst. “My supervisor said I should pull out all stops for this investigation, and I have a friend with access to technology that could give youan electronic sketch of your suspects. So with your permission, I’ll send DNA samples to her to get the sketches generated.”
“We’ve never used this technology,” Kiley said.
Evan moved closer to the phone. “I’ve never even heard of it.”
“The process is called phenotyping,” Philips explained. “Basically, DNA can now be used to provide physical characteristics that are compiled in a composite sketch. There have been great results in locating suspects this way.”
“If it works that well, why isn’t your lab using it?” Evan asked.
“There are still too many variables to make it an exact science, and it can’t be used in court. Plus it’s costly.”
“How costly?” Kiley asked.
“Depends on the DNA sample,” Philips replied. “But it could range from fifteen hundred dollars up to seven thousand.”
“Whoa.” Evan gaped at Kiley.
She didn’t react at all, but when it came to budgets her team had deep pockets—even more so on this investigation.
“I can’t approve five profiles,” she said. “But go ahead with the two most likely ones.”
“There’s something else you should know.” Philips’s tone deepened. “We confirmed the substance in the jar is indeed white phosphorus.”
Kiley sighed, her mask muffling the sound. “Anything else?”
“No. That’s it for now.”
“Thanks for the update. Get me those sketches the moment you have them.” She ended the call and fired a quick look around the scene. “You think they used white phosphorus here?”
Evan shook his head. “It would still be burning, and we’d see evidence of it all around us. To be safe, though, we should inform the agent in charge so he can warn forensics to be on the lookout for it.”
“We’ll do that first.” She took off, winding through workers toward a large FBI truck parked near the inner perimeter.
Inside, four people sat at consoles, headsets and mics perched on their heads. A well-built agent wearing navy tactical pants and matching polo shirt embroidered with the FBI logo stood behind them, his fingers plunged into ebony black hair. He turned to look at Kiley and Evan, and the weight of the tragedy lingered in his brilliant blue eyes as his hand fell to his side.
Kiley lifted her respirator and offered her hand. “Special Agent Kiley Dawson, and this is ICE Agent Evan Bowers.”
“Special Agent Pierce Quinn.” He shook her hand and nodded at Evan.
Evan returned his nod with one of his own, lowered his respirator, and got out his phone to take notes.
