Page 1 of Making His Bones

Elektra

I was on the edge of the most amazing moment of my life.

At the same time, it was the most anticlimactic scene.

Because who should walk out the front door of the archery range, hands held high in surrender, but Ronald McDonald in living color.

The massed assembly of merchants, lookie-loos, and bikers on Bargain Boulevard let out a collective gasp.

“Kneecap!” the bikers cried, along with some of the merchants.

“I thought for sure it would be Slushy,” muttered more than one leather-clad thug.

“Stand down!” yelled Kneecap in a ladylike voice. “I’m unarmed!”

Who the hell is Kneecap? This gluey white portly fellow the agents led from the building definitely looked more like a Rufus Cole, his birth name, or even an Elmore Ruxton, the name he’d assumed when fleeing fifteen years ago after murdering his wife. But Kneecap?

This conundrum was detracting from the pleasure I took in watching my first live takedown of a criminal that I and I alone had caught, using nothing but science! It bothered me so much I took a few steps and asked a guy in a leather vest, “Who’s Kneecap?”

Kneecap must’ve been the guy in the frizzy fire engine red Afro waddling toward the unmarked sedan as agents cuffed him, but I just couldn’t resist asking. Maybe that’s why I hadn’t gone into an agency like the US Marshals or the FBI. Face to face, I was unable to remain secretive. As a forensic geneticist for a private company, I wore no uniform or badge, so my role in this apprehension should not be obvious to anyone. However, Pure and Easy was a small town and everyone seemed to know each other.

“I want all sharpshooters repositioned!” barked Special Agent Booker Maverick in my earpiece. Several men in doorways and roofs scrambled for better covering positions in case Rufus decided to make a break for it.

Rufus didn’t cut and run, but he did suddenly cry out some highly weird stuff. “Knoxie!” He seemed to be shrieking at the guy who’d called him Kneecap. “Tell them it’s the ghosts of my ancestors! It’s those motherfuckers from County Galway, those trained assassins who traveled in packs. It was in my blood and now my blood has come back to haunt me!”

What. The. Fuck.

The leather-vested guy next to me cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Kneecap! What the fuck are you talking about, you weirdo?”

Kneecap struggled with the agents trying to escort him to the government car. Like a man being led to the gas chamber, his twisted face was distorted like a crying babies. We had kept him under surveillance for six days to determine how he might react to being arrested, but no one had predicted this. “It’s those shady O’Sullivan’s and the Irish curse. Don’t ever spit into the fucking tube, I tell you!”

The agents had no free hand to hold Rufus’ head down as they mangled him into the back seat. He konked his frizzy head on the doorjamb so heavily that bikers and merchants around me hissed air in sympathy.

“What fucking tube?” Knoxie bellowed.

“What fucking tube?” shouted a few more bikers.

But it was too late. Rufus’ Ronald McDonald head bobbed frantically in the rear window, his mouth warped in a silent scream, as an agent thumped the roof of the car to indicate they could leave, if they could part the sea of lookie-loos.

I knew what fucking tube. I was the one who had analyzed the DNA originally and made the connection between the murder in Joliet, Illinois and Elmore Ruxton, AKA Kneecap of Pure and Easy, Arizona, a mild-mannered dweeb who ran The Hip Quiver archery range. For a motorcycle club.

Knoxie told me, “There’s no way that moron did anything wrong to warrant this giant scene.” He furiously googled something on his phone. “He’s way too half-witted.”

“Yeah,” said another fierce, flashing-eyed biker with so many patches on his vest he’d almost run out of room. THE BARE BONES MC, one prominent patch said. PREZ. “That douche-monster is incapable of doing anything other than tending bar and fixing arrows.”

“Look,” said Knoxie, showing his phone to the Prez. “The Irish curse.”

The Prez did a spit take on the phone’s screen before handing it around to other bikers. They each took a turn spitting coffee or beer onto the screen before guffawing and rocking back on their boot heels, holding their stomachs.

Booker Maverick came to me through the milling crowd. He didn’t want to compromise me in front of civilians, so he barely chucked me on the bicep and mouthed, “Good job.” He added in a low tone as he slipped me a nametag, “Come in the building in five.”

I was being allowed inside to collect corroborating DNA evidence because I’d cracked the case. Normally scientists working for private companies would have turned the case over completely to the FBI by now. I wouldn’t have even been allowed on site to watch the exciting, action-filled results of my work. That was the bummer about working in a lab. You put two and two together, and some other agency took it from there. But Special Agent Maverick seemed especially proud of my work. This wasn’t the first time I’d handed them a killer on a platter.

A sandy-haired guy wearing a vest declaring him a PROSPECT handed me the slimy phone. “The fucking penis curse,” he laughed.

I held the DNA of about ten potentially culpable bikers in my hand. I told the Prospect, “I doubt Irish penis size has anything to do with this guy’s arrest.”

“How do you know?” The Prospect laughed so hard tears glistened in his eyes. Damn, this was one handsome bunch. He had a sultry, growly voice you had to strain to hear in the surrounding hubbub of the street. “Look. Irish dicks are only bigger than Koreans or the Thai.”