His lovingly restored World War II courier bike with sidecar was in the garage under Sci’s apartment building. He kick-started the motor and floored it up the ramp onto Hauser, then took Sixth all the way to Private’s offices in downtown LA.

Flashing his ID at security, he took the elevator to the basement level, where his lab was located.

Justine was already waiting for him.

“This is about schoolgirl number twelve?” he asked, unlocking his door, immediately switching on music-the theme from Sweeney Todd.

“Yes,” Justine said. “And it’s enough to turn your stomach. Well, maybe not yours.”

Sci gave her a jokey fanged-monster face. Then he escorted Justine through the negative-pressure chamber into the lab, his “playground.”

Accredited by the International Organization for Standardization, Sci’s multimillion-dollar lab was the heart of Private’s operations, as well as a profit center. It was used by several West Coast law enforcement agencies, since it was better equipped and faster than anything at the LAPD or the FBI.

Sci’s crew of twelve technicians worked in several areas of forensic science: analysis, serology, forensic identification, and print and latent-print identification. Sci’s latest pride and joy was the new holographic-manipulation technology that he used to tease apart cells with a microlaser under a high-powered microscope.

His people had been the first to test real-time use of a satellite, a method called teleforensics. Using a tiny camera, Private’s investigators could bounce streaming images from a crime scene straight back to the lab, saving time and resources, preventing scene contamination.

Justine followed Sci across the vast underground space to his hub of an office and personal control center. Horror movie posters adorned the walls: Shaun of the Dead, Carrie, Hostel, Zombieland.