Blood Quantum

Jeff Mariotte

Blood Quantum

A book in the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation series, 2010

Acknowledgments

My sincere gratitude goes out to all the hardworking people behind CSI, to Marya

This one's for Anita, who knows all about science.

1

It all happened so fast.

That was what people always said about this sort of thing, as if their minds couldn't quite keep up with the rocket-propelled pace of events. That wasn't how Drake McCa

He had been kicking back in his suite on the Cameron estate, watching some late-night TV with Kathleen Slides, the family's live-in housekeeper. They were friendly, nothing more complicated than that. Both were single, but he knew he wasn't her type. If he had a type, he had never figured out what it was, despite years of trial and error. And although he had dated fellow employees a couple of times, it always seemed to go bad. Someone made a mistake, and the whole situation ended up in Mrs. Cameron's lap, and she gave one of those stern lectures she was so good at, talking to the help as if they were wayward toddlers, and then fired one of them. So far, he had been lucky and had not been the primary target of her wrath, but last time it had been dose, and McCa

Kathleen was a petite blonde who wasn't hard on the eyes, they had some laughs together, and they both enjoyed watching celebrities plug their wares on the tube after Mrs. Cameron had dismissed them and the day's work was done. That was good enough for now. He didn't need romance, and he enjoyed her company, and she seemed comfortable in his. Safe all the way around.

McCa

He was reaching for his phone when the call came in.

"I see him," McCa

"Know him?" Lyle Armstrong asked.

"Never seen him before." The monitor showed a white male who looked homeless at best and maybe deranged on top of it. His clothes were filthy, pants with the knees blown out and the hems ragged from being walked on, a shirt that might once have been white underneath a corduroy blazer that looked as if it had been wrapped around a truck tire and driven on for a hundred miles of hard road. The guy could have been wearing the jacket at the time. His hair was long and wild, ditto his thick brown beard. McCa

"I'm in the control room. Want me to -"

McCa

He turned away from the monitor and nearly ran into Kathleen, who had come up behind him and was staring at the screen. "Who do you think that is?" she asked.

"No idea."

"But he came through the gate, right?"

The gate had still been swinging shut when the image first appeared on McCa

Because Kathleen had been over, McCa

"Be careful," she said.

"This is what I do," he reminded her. "Anyway, that guy's not going to be a problem. His kind never is. Probably just off his meds."

"Should I go to my room?"

"You can stay here if you want. I'll be back in a few. Let me know if Letterman says anything fu

With the.38 in his hand and his hand in the windbreaker pocket, he went out, locking the suite's front door behind him. He had a private entrance, off the back of the main house. A paved walkway led around the west side of the building, down along the te

When McCa

"That's far enough, pal," McCa

The guy snapped his head up and glared at McCa

The guy shouted something. McCa

"I said hold it right there," McCa

The guy took it in at a glance and spat out more unintelligible words, but he didn't stop or slow. He was stoned, drunk, mentally ill, or all three at once. McCa

"Freeze," McCa

The man kept coming. A wave of stench engulfed McCa

But this guy didn't clue in. He took another awkward step forward, then another. The smell of him closed around McCa

The guy said something else, his words so slurred that McCa

As promised, McCa