PALOMAR LABORATORIES IN NORTH Hollywood occupied a sprawling single-story concrete-slab building with such small and widely spaced windows and with such a low and slightly pitched sheet-metal roof that it resembled a bunker in the storm.
The medical-lab division of Palomar analyzed blood samples, Pap smears, biopsies, and other organic materials. In their industrial division, they performed chemical analyses of every variety for both private-sector and government clients.
Each year, fans of the Face sent over a quarter of a million pieces of mail to him, mostly in care of his studio, which forwarded weekly batches of this correspondence to the publicity firm that responded to it in the star’s name. Among those letters were gifts, including more than a few homemade foods: cookies, cakes, fudge. Fewer than one in a thousand fans might be sufficiently deranged to send poisoned brownies, but Ethan nevertheless operated on the better-safe-than-sorry principle: All foodstuffs must be disposed of without sampling by anyone.
Occasionally, when a homemade treat from a fan arrived with a particularly suspicious letter, the edible goodie would not be at once [38] destroyed but would be passed along to Ethan for a closer look. If he suspected contamination, he brought the item here to Palomar to be analyzed.
When a total stranger could work up sufficient hatred to attempt to poison the Face, Ethan wanted to know that the bastard existed. He subsequently cooperated with authorities in the poisoner’s hometown to bring whatever criminal charges might be sustained in court.
Now, proceeding first to the public reception lounge, he signed a form authorizing them to draw his blood. Lacking a doctor’s order for tests, he paid cash for the analyses he required.
He requested a basic DNA profile. “And I want to know if any drugs are present in my body.”
“What drugs are you taking?” the receptionist asked.
“Nothing but aspirin. But I want you to test for every possible substance, in case I’ve been drugged without my knowledge.”
Perhaps in North Hollywood they were accustomed to encounters with full-blown paranoids. The receptionist didn’t roll her eyes, raise an eyebrow, or in any other way appear to be surprised to hear him suggest that he might be the victim of a wicked conspiracy.
The medical technician who drew his sample was a petite and lovely Vietnamese woman with an angel’s touch. He never felt the needle pierce the vein.
In another reception lounge provided for the delivery of samples unrelated to standard medical tests, he filled out a second form and paid another fee. This receptionist did give him an odd look when he explained what he wanted to have analyzed.
At a lab table, under harsh fluorescent lights, a technician who resembled Britney Spears used a thin but blunt steel blade to scrape the blood from under the fingernails of his right hand, onto a square of acid-free white paper. Ethan hadn’t trimmed his nails in over a week, so she retrieved a significant number of shavings, some of which still appeared to be gummy.
[39] His hand trembled throughout the process. She probably thought her beauty made him nervous.
The material from under his fingernails would first be tested to determine if it was indeed blood. Thereafter it would be conveyed to the medical-lab division to be typed and to have the DNA profile compared to the blood sample that the Vietnamese technician had drawn. Full toxicological results wouldn’t be ready until Wednesday afternoon.
Ethan didn’t understand how he could have his own blood under his fingernails when he had not, after all, been shot in the gut and the chest. Yet as migrating geese know south from north without the aid of a compass, he knew this blood was his.