Four Walls

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  "Mr. DelVecchio? I'm Detective Angell, this is Detective Bonasera."

  "Pleased to meet ya." DelVecchio was holding a sheaf of papers in his hands, which he plunked down on the table before he sat down. "Here's your murderer. Find this guy, you find who killed Maria."

  Stella picked up the papers. They were all letters addressed to Maria, but unsigned. All were printed on a laser or ink-jet printer of some sort. "Who sent these?"

  "Hell if I know. That's why I brought them to you people."

  Angell muttered, "Knew this was too good to be true."

  "Look, all I know is, it was someone at Belluso's."

  "How do you know that?" Stella asked.

  "'Cause that's what Maria told me. She said it was no big deal, but I knew this guy was nutsy-cuckoo, y'know?" He slapped one meaty hand on the table. "I kept trying to get her to quit that damn place, but would she listen? That girl had a mind of her own, y'know?"

  "Yeah, I hate when that happens," Angell said dryly. "When did the letters start coming?"

  "I'm not sure. I only found out about them a couple weeks ago, and she wouldn't tell me when it started, but I figure at least six months. She's been at Belluso's eight months, so it couldn't have been more than that."

  Stella started reading one of the letters aloud. "'Dear Maria. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways that I could love you. Number one-'"

  "Do you have to read that out loud?" DelVecchio asked plaintively.

  Flipping to the next one, Stella said, "He misquotes Shakespeare on the next one, too." She started riffling through them. "Ooh, he does a haiku here-and the next one's got a detailed description of what he wants to do to her in the bakery bathroom."

  "It's disgusting!" DelVecchio cried.

  "Can we keep these?" Stella asked.

  DelVecchio recoiled. "I sure as hell don't want them."

  "Do you have any guesses who it might be?"

  "How the hell should I know? I mean, sure, there were lots of guys who went in there, and Maria's a hottie, y'know? If she wasn't already my girl, I'd have been hitting on her too. But I didn't know none of those guys. I don't like those kinds of places-too froofy. Gimme a Starbucks any day of the week."

  "So noted. While you're here, Mr. DelVecchio," Stella said, "we're going to need some blood and DNA-if you don't mind."

  DelVecchio shrugged. "Why should I mind? You do that, you can eliminate me as a suspect, right?"

  Relieved, Stella took out her kit. DelVecchio had struck her as the type who would give her a hard time about it just on general principles. "Exactly."

  "If it makes it easier to find Maria's killer, I'll give you my left arm."

  Angell asked DelVecchio a few more general questions while Stella took his blood and swabbed his cheek. Then he left.

  After he was gone, Stella thwapped the letters into a neat pile and said, "I'm gonna take these letters to the lab to see if we can trace the provenance of the printer that made it."

  "Good luck."

  She snorted. "We're gonna need it. Handwriting you can trace. Even typewriters would sometimes have something distinctive about different models-especially the old manuals, they went off-kilter when you looked at them funny. But printers? They're mass produced. There might be DNA on the more recent ones, though."

  "Let's hope so," Angell said.

  11

  FINGERPRINTS WERE FIRST USED as a tool for identification purposes in criminal investigations in the nineteenth century. The first known instance of fingerprints being discussed was in an anatomy text published in Breslau in 1823. It wasn't until the later part of the century that people started applying them to criminalistics-though the idea didn't take at first. Sheldon Hawkes remembered the first time he'd read with surprise that Dr. Henry Faulds-who'd published a paper on prints in 1880 in Nature-offered the notion of using fingerprints to identify criminals to the Metropolitan Police in London. They refused, dismissing the entire notion as fanciful.

  Hawkes often wondered if the people who rejected the notion realized their mistake. It was like the person who wanted to close the U.S. Patent Office in the early part of the twentieth century because he thought everything that could be invented had been invented, or the people in the 1940s who saw television as a passing fad, or the people in the 1970s who couldn't imagine what possible use people would ever have for a computer in their homes.

  The definitive work on the subject was Finger Prints, a book published in 1892 by Sir Francis Galton, which included all ten of Galton's own fingerprints as an illustration on the title page.

  Hawkes had actually found a leather-bound copy of the book in the Strand one day last year and bought it for Mac as a combination Christmas and belated thank-you present for moving him over to fieldwork. It had been two years, and Hawkes had no regrets about leaving the morgue. Besides, he knew the place was safe in Peyton Driscoll's hands.

  For one thing, it meant he got to play with fingerprints. Although Hawkes had wanted to be a doctor since he was a kid, he'd always had an interest in forensic science, going back to when he read Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain, one of the first works of fiction to make use of the nascent field of dactyloscopy.

  From a forensic perspective, the good thing about fingerprints was that they were everywhere. The same papers that first postulated the uniqueness of fingerprints in the nineteenth century also pointed out the uniqueness of palm-, toe-, and soleprints. All of those extremities secreted oils from the eccrine glands that were often left behind on things touched by that particular body part in the pattern of the dermal papillae (ridges) that made up the prints.

  But people touched things with their fingers considerably more often than they did their palms or any part of their feet, so fingers became the focal point.

  The bad thing about fingerprints was that while they were everywhere, they were often incomplete. Criminals weren't always considerate enough to leave perfect impressions of their entire finger whenever they touched something at a crime scene.

  And sometimes they touched things that had already been touched repeatedly by others. Case in point: the weights in the yard from RHCF.

  The actual method for making latent prints visible hadn't changed overmuch since Galton's day: you used powder of some kind. In the old days, you'd cover the surface with the powder, then gently blow it away. What remained behind had adhered to the eccrine gland secretions, which were left in the pattern of the fingerprint.

  At least in theory. Sometimes those prints were smudged, particularly when several people in succession had touched the thing and left plenty of sweat on it. That sweat also tended to make regular powders clump, messing up the latent print. For that reason, Hawkes went with contrasting powder, which he applied gently with a magnetic brush. One of the advantages of his years as a surgeon was that it made it easier for him to keep his hand steady while applying the magnetic powder. Danny had been particularly cranky when Hawkes got the hang of it after only a few hours-it had taken Danny months to get it right.

  Hawkes had taken the doughnut weight that appeared to have been used to kill Malik Washburne, as well as the barbell and the other doughnut weights on it. The latter were really for comparison purposes, to see if he could figure out who had been using the weights besides the vic.

  After taking photos of the powdered weights, Hawkes used acetate stickers to pull up anything that even resembled a fingerprint. The porous nature of the metal in the weights was such that the stickers might not work, so he had the photos as backup. As he pulled each print, he placed the sticker on his flatbed 1000-DPI scanner. The slowness of the scan was offset by the small size of the image being scanned, so it took about an hour for Hawkes to get everything that looked even vaguely like a print onto the lab computer's mainframe.

  Unfortunately, some of the prints were very vague indeed. The vast majority of them were too smudged and/or incomplete to get enough of an arch, loop, or whorl to even attempt a match.

  The only place where he
got anything solid was on the barbell itself-unsurprising, since that had to be gripped tightly in order to be used properly.

  Ursitti had provided a list of the forty-five inmates who were in the weight yard at the time of Washburne's death, and since they were all obviously in the penal system, their prints were conveniently on file. Another issue with fingerprints was the sheer volume of prints to compare them to, a number that grew larger every day, particularly in this post-9/11, security-conscious world. While having a larger field of people to compare to increased the chance of a match, it also increased the time it took to do comparison scans.

  Luckily, Hawkes had a good starting point. If the prints weren't a match for any of the forty-five in question, then he'd expand the search to the inmates and employees of RHCF. If that didn't match-well, then they had a mystery on their hands, and he'd expand the search further.

  While he waited for the search to run its course, he called up the digital photos of the crime scene, selecting the ones he'd taken of Washburne's head wound with the ruler next to it. He got up, double-checked the size of the doughnut weight, then called up the photo of the weight and resized it so its image was proportional to that of the picture of Washburne. Using the mouse, he cut out the weight from one photo and then dragged it over to the wound.

  The weight fit perfectly in the wound. (Instinctively, he kept thinking of the weight as the murder weapon, but his years as an ME had taught him never to make assumptions until the cause of death was determined, and Dr. Driscoll hadn't done the autopsy yet.)

  He'd saved the images at various stages and now appended all those images to his report, quickly typing in the results.

  Shortly after he finished that task, the computer finished its comparison of the fingerprints. Hawkes had recovered seven decent prints from the barbell and one from the doughnut weight. Two of the barbell prints belonged to Malik Washburne.

  The one on the doughnut weight and the other five on the barbell belonged to Jorge Melendez. Alt-Tabbing to another window, Hawkes called up Melendez's sheet from the database. He was doing time for possession with intent to sell.

  Pulling his Treo out of his pocket and removing his plastic-frame glasses, Hawkes called Mac.

  Then he hung up after the first ring, remembering that Mac's own phone was still sitting in the arsenal at RHCF.

  Putting his glasses back on, he Alt-Tabbed his desktop computer over to an Internet browser and accessed the phone directory on the NYPD's intranet. It didn't take him long to find RHCF's number, and he called that, asking for Captain Russell.

  "Captain Russell can't come to the phone right now," he was told.

  "This is Dr. Sheldon Hawkes of the New York Crime Lab. I actually need to speak to Detective Mac Taylor or Detective Don Flack. They're both on-site interviewing witnesses in the incident you guys had today."

  "Can I have your badge number, please?"

  Hawkes gave it.

  "Hold, please."

  Adam popped his head into the lab and saw that Hawkes was on the phone. "I'll come back," he whispered.

  Hawkes removed the Treo from his ear, put it on speaker, and set it down on the table. "S'okay, I'm on hold. What is it?"

  "I ran that dried blood first, like you asked." Adam said. "It wasn't Washburne's, and it wasn't Barker's."

  Hawkes nodded in acknowledgment. It made sense to run those two comparisons first, especially given how much of Barker's blood had splattered all over the yard.

  "It's AB negative." Adam held out a sheet of paper. "I sent it to DNA, but in the meantime, I checked it against the other forty-three guys in the yard, and only three people had that blood type."

  Hawkes took the paper from Adam and saw the three names on the list: HAKIM EL-JABBAR, JORGE MELENDEZ, TYRONE STANLEY.

  "Sheldon?" That was Mac's voice on speakerphone.

  "Yeah, Mac, it's me. Listen, have you talked to an inmate named Jorge Melendez yet?"

  "Not yet-but he's on the list. Why?"

  "Melendez's prints, along with Washburne's, are on the barbell Washburne was using, and Melendez's was the only usable print on the weight that cut Washburne's head open."

  "All right, thanks. And write this number down." Mac read out a phone number with a 718 area code. "I already gave it to Danny when he called. Call that number directly if you need to reach me or Flack."

  Hawkes made a note of it. "Got it. What did Danny tell you?"

  "Plenty of clear prints on the toothbrush, and they all belonged to Jack Mulroney."

  "So we've got one dunker, at least." Dunkers, or slam-dunks, were the cases that law enforcement lived for: where the perp confessed, the evidence all agreed with the confession, and the case could be put down with a minimum of fuss and effort.

  "Yeah," Mac said. "Let me know what else you find."

  After Mac hung up, Hawkes picked up the Treo and entered the new number in his contact list. Looking up at Adam, he said, "Let me know when that DNA comes in."

  "Will do. Oh, yeah, I also ID'd that fiber you found on the vic's shoulder."

  Hawkes Smirked. "Let me guess-comes from prison dickies, right?"

  "Yes and no. You see, I am smarter than the average bear, and I determined that the thread you found specifically is a thread used to sew the seams on the pants of New York State Department of Corrections convict uniforms-and only the pants. They use a different kind of thread for the shirt seams."

  At that Hawkes frowned. "How did a thread from a pair of pants get on our guy's shoulder?"

  Smiling beneath his beard, Adam said, "That, my friend, is your problem."

  "A problem for later. Right now, I'm gonna go bug Peyton."

  "I'm sure she'll love that," Adam said dryly.

  Grinning, Hawkes removed his glasses, dropped them in his white lab coat pocket, and headed downstairs to the morgue.

  Hawkes had succeeded Peyton Driscoll as the chief medical examiner when she left the job to take a teaching position at Columbia University. In the interview she had conducted with Hawkes before he took over, she'd said, in that clipped British tone of hers, that she needed "a spot of mundanity." When Peyton finally returned, a year after Hawkes moved to the field, Peyton claimed to have decided that teaching was too "routine." Hawkes had asked her what happened to the spot of mundanity, and Peyton had replied, "I got it out with some detergent, and I'm back in the saddle."

  As he approached the morgue, Hawkes saw the perfectly coiffed silver hair of Deputy Inspector Gerrard opening the door ahead of him.

  With a due sense of anticipation and dread, Hawkes jogged to catch up to him. "Inspector."

  Turning around, Gerrard said, "Dr. Hawkes. I'm guessing we're both here for the same reason."

  Gerrard had already been the one to bring them this case, and now he was checking on the ME personally. Hawkes saw no way in which that could be construed as a good thing. He squared his shoulders and followed Gerrard into the morgue.

  "Dr. Driscoll," Gerrard said in what he probably thought was an amiable tone, "what can you tell me about Malik Washburne?"

  Peyton looked up, and her face went sour. "Inspector. At the moment, I can't tell you much, as I haven't started the autopsy yet."

  "Well, whatever you do find, trace-wise, put a rush on it, and use my name. This case gets top priority."

  "It does?"

  Gerrard glared at Hawkes with penetrating eyes. "Yes, Doctor, it does. What possible problem could you have with that?"

  Gerrard's defensiveness might be understandable given his recent sparring with Mac, but that didn't mean Hawkes had to like it. "I was just surprised, that's all. I wouldn't think two deaths in custody would get this kind of heat."

  "Well, it does, and for two reasons. For one thing, Washburne was a member. He did wrong, but he was doing his time like a good soldier, and he deserved better than what he got."

  Hawkes couldn't argue with that.

  "Not to mention, RHCF hasn't had a DIC in twenty years, and now they got two in one d
ay. Albany's nervous."

  Peyton smiled insincerely. "And it's budget time, so naturally you wish to stay on Albany's good side."

  "Staying on Albany's good side gets you geeks all your fancy toys, Doc," Gerrard said. "Speaking of which, what do those toys say about Washburne?"

  "Not much so far," Peyton said, "again, by virtue of my not having begun the autopsy yet. However, I can say this much: the vast majority of the blood that we found on his body wasn't his. I sent it for DNA analysis."

  "Did you type it?" Hawkes asked.

  Peyton nodded. "O-positive."

  Hawkes rubbed his chin with his right hand. "That's Barker's type, so it's probably spatter from his wound. I'll double-check the pattern of the O-positive blood on him with his position and Barker's."

  Gerrard folded his arms over his coffee-stained tie. "How much of the blood was Washburne's own?"

  "Just what I found near the head wound."

  "That doesn't make sense," Gerrard said. "Head wounds gush like a sonofabitch."

  Hawkes regarded Gerrard. "Right."

  "Don't give me that look, Hawkes-I have been a cop for a bunch of years now. I picked up a thing or two."

  "Well, I've sent blood to the lab for tox," Peyton said, "and I'll check stomach contents and the rest. As soon as I have something, I'll let both of you know. However, I won't have anything with you two standing here playing mother hen."

  Having always hated it when people kibbitzed over his own autopsies, Hawkes put up both hands and backed away from the table. "Sorry. I'll get out of your way."

  "I'll ride herd on the lab," Gerrard said, following Hawkes toward the exit. "Get those results."

  "Thank you, Inspector," Peyton said as she grabbed her scalpel.

  As he left with Gerrard, Hawkes said, "Thanks for the help."

  "I figure you guys need all the help you can get," Gerrard said with an obnoxious grin. "Besides, Sinclair wants this one, too. He and Washburne rode a blue-and-white together back in the day."

  Brigham Sinclair was the chief of detectives and the other person who had raked Mac over the coals during the whole Dobson mess. It probably killed him to know that he had to rely on Mac to solve this case. But Hawkes knew better than to say anything. His usual solution to office politics was to keep his head down and duck the shrapnel.