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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Old Drew Id" data-source="post: 1020634" data-attributes="member: 12175">Session 3 (5/21/2003) Secrets and IngredientsSession 3 (5/21/2003) Secrets and IngredientsThe empty parking garage was as quiet as a grave, and Willie’s footsteps echoed vulnerably as he walked towards the idling car. He kept his hands in his pockets: his left hand on his gun, and his right hand on his radio. He keyed the transmit button as he walked, and locked it into place. Whatever happened, he wanted Taylor to be able to hear it. Bolling lowered his window, but did not get out of his car, remove his mirrored sunglasses, or stop the engine. He had led them through several circles of downtown traffic, down a handful of alleys, and finally through a service entrance to this hospital parking garage, evidently to shake off any pursuit, though neither Willie or Taylor had spotted any sign of anyone following them.“I don’t have long, Mr. Lamar.” His voice was so devoid of emotion, it was almost metallic. Willie grimaced, “So, you know my name? Fine, you want to tell me what’s going on?”“Been having many dreams lately, Mr. Lamar? Dreams of coins? Dreams of medallions?”“Fine. Two for two, %$#hole. Yeah, I’ve had some dreams, and I read your stupid book, too.”“Good, so you’ve found the secret library then? That is good.” Bolling nodded, but otherwise gave no sign he was even interested in the conversation.“Okay, I asked you nice.” Willie felt his temperature rising. “Now I’m asking again. Want to tell me what this is all about? Why is somebody messing up places where they got money from your boss?”“Don’t assume that things are always as they seem. Scorse is not my boss, Mr. Lamar.”“Oh that’s right. He wasn’t good enough to get into your coin society, was he? Want to tell me something about that?”     Bolling drew in a breath to answer, then stopped himself and reconsidered. After a moment, he answered, “I want you to imagine something for a moment, Mr. Lamar. Imagine you are in charge of protecting something. You know that if too much attention is paid to what you are doing, then someone might come after this thing you are protecting, or they might come after you. Now, how would you go about ensuring that too much attention was never paid to you?”Willie squinted and tried to make sense of what Bolling was saying. He hoped that Taylor was hearing all of this. “I’ll tell you, Mr. Lamar. You set up a charismatic decoy. Someone to draw attention.”“So…Scorse is just…what? A front man?”Bolling ignored the question and continued with his story. “The decoy allowed others to work behind the scenes, unnoticed and unhindered. Now imagine that this decoy was, while useful, still expensive to maintain. And then one day, fairly recently, we were done. And the decoy was no longer needed. So my employers are letting him fall.”“Okay…what the f#%$ are you talking about? So you don’t care what happens to Scorse anymore? And what do you mean, you’re done? Done with what?”Bolling put the car into gear, and began to raise the window. “Send my greetings to the rest of the class of 1924, Mr. Lamar.”Before Willie could react, Bolling hit the gas and the car sped down and out of the parking deck. . . . The odor of formaldehyde and natural gas was intense, but Crystal was long since used to it. A lot of students had a tougher time of it, probably from a mixture of the odor of the lab and the stifling heat. The air conditioning was never on in the university labs on the weekends, and it could get sticky pretty quickly when you turned on a few burners and let them run. Fortunately, that was what Crystal had been planning on when she came in. The labs were deserted, and she had free run of the equipment for the majority of the day.She finally looked up when the machine beeped. Really, the machine did most of the work for her. Crystal had slipped the sample from the janitor’s rag into the feed stream of the capillary gas chromatography machine, pushed a few buttons, and then just waited for the resulting chromatogram. After that, there would be some chemistry to figure out, but really, it was child’s play. She even had time to study while the machine worked. The chromatogram finally came through and she sighed heavily. There were a huge number of peaks on the graph, and a lot of it was organic. She cracked her knuckles, took out the mud sample from her backpack, and set up the machine again for a run at that sample. She now had an hour at least while that ran, so she could look up some numbers on this first chart. Time passed and she made a lot of progress on the chart. This was what she liked about chemistry, and why she had at one point even considered it as a career. She had fed the “black goo” into the machine, and it had split the sample into all of its constituent substances. After that, it had produced a graph showing the little peaks for each substance, and then she just had to match the peaks up with the info from her book, and presto, Crystal could say what the substance was. The list was more or less finished, and the results were more than a little frightening. Crystal took another sample of the goo and put it under a microscope to confirm a couple of findings, and sure enough, it was just what it looked like. She needed to call the others and tell them what this was.But first, the chromatography machine beeped again, and the mud sample graph was ready. Crystal breathed a heavy sigh again, but this time in relief. At least the mud was not complicated. It was just normal mud, with a bunch of trace minerals in it. This was easy, and was what she was supposed to be an expert at handling. She compared the chart to her geology reference. The trace minerals in the mud were like a fingerprint. The specific mix of minerals in soil varied from place to place, and if you knew the right combination of minerals, you could tell were a particular soil sample came from. Her geology reference listed the chemical makeup of the soil for almost every populated area in the state. Following her finger down a long list of numbers, Crystal found it. An exact match.The mud came from the shores of Lake Martin. Interesting, but not necessarily enlightening. Lake Martin was a place where rich people had lake houses, maybe an hour outside of town. Nothing Crystal could make of that right now. And besides, the first sample was way more interesting than that. Crystal took out her cell phone and called Brother Cooper. . . .Brother Guyzell Cooper pulled his truck over across the street from the homeless shelter. He was a few minutes early but he was sure they could use the extra help. Then his cell phone had rung, and he was suddenly being accosted with a list of chemical names and all sorts of scientific terms. “Okay, now slow down, Crystal. Now tell me again. Gimme the list of what you got in that…uh…sample, in English if ya don’t mind.”Crystal began her list again, and Brother Cooper felt his stomach getting queasy. Insect material, probably a centipede. Walnuts. Stomach lining, not human, maybe from a cow or goat. Sugar. Human blood. Eggs. Chocolate.</blockquote>

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