Part Three: The Marks
The tomato was a good tomato, visually.
It was the deep red of a tomato that has been grown in a garden rather than in a commercial greenhouse — the color of something that has had time, that has been given sun and water and the specific patience of someone tending a plant they care about. It was firm. It smelled like a tomato should smell.
Reyes turned it in his hand.
He turned it slowly, the way he turned things when he was looking carefully and not looking for anything specific, which is different from looking casually and different from looking for something specific. He was looking at the whole surface.
He found them on the back, near the stem end.
Two small marks. Each perhaps two millimeters across. Not the marks of insect damage — those have a different character, a rougher edge, the look of something chewed or pierced from outside by something uncontrolled. These marks were circular and precise and very slightly puckered at the edges in the way that puncture marks are when the surface has had time to begin closing over the wound.
He looked at the tomato for a moment.
He picked up another. Found the marks — same location, same character.
He picked up a third.
He stood up.
He looked at the woman.
Her face was doing something that faces do when a person has been maintaining an expression and the effort of maintaining it has exceeded the available resource. It was not quite collapse — she was not someone who collapsed easily — but it was the face of someone whose performance has reached its limit.
“Arrest her,” Reyes said.
Webb said: “What?”
“Now,” Reyes said.
