Trace Evidence

by Elizabeth Becka

  Chapter 19

  EVELYN SIGHED WITH CONTENTMENT. She and a cup of coffee were tucked away in a corner of the main lab room with her beloved comparison microscope. An ancient Zeiss, it had two separate stages with one eyepiece, so that two slides could be viewed side by side or even superimposed. By turning her chair she could use the new Nikon stereomicroscope for quick screening work. She had a stack of tapings to look through, and no suicides or homicides waiting for her ministrations. That most rare of luxuries, uninterrupted time, stretched ahead of her.

  Of course she should have known better. She had just placed the first sheet of tapings under the stereomicroscope when Jason grew up at her elbow like a less-than-magical beanstalk.

  “Tony wants a progress report,” he told her.

  “Okay.” The only two responses acceptable to Tony were yes and okay. It didn’t matter if she fulfilled the request, particularly since he tended to forget 95 percent of them, just so long as he felt in control. It had taken Evelyn four years to learn this vital Trace Evidence Department survival technique.

  “He wants to know where you are with fibers.”

  “Okay.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Just looking at what I’ve got,” she said. Having to talk while working slowed her down, but teaching and training were part of her job. “These are the tapings from Lia Ripetti’s shirt,” she went on, explaining that she would examine the hairs and fibers and remove any of interest.

  “How do you know what’s of interest?”

  “Any hair that doesn’t look like hers, any animal hair, because she didn’t have a pet, any large fibers—like there’s a big green one here, and she didn’t have any green in her clothes, her apartment carpeting is beige, and her car interior is blue.”

  “What do you do then?”

  “I pull them off and mount them on a slide. If they’re synthetic, I’ll cut off a tiny bit first and run it through the FTIR—the Fourier transform infrared spectrometer—to confirm if it’s nylon or polyester or whatever.”

  “You’re not supposed to drink coffee in the lab,” he added, not pleasantly.

  “I know.” Against all lab standards, Tony couldn’t break the habit of moving around with a coffee cup permanently clutched in his fingers, and Evelyn would be damned before she’d follow a rule that the supervisor wouldn’t.

  Jason disappeared as effectively as he had arrived, and she turned her attention back to the green fiber. The trilobal shape, twenty-five micrometers wide, almost certainly derived from carpeting or upholstery. Under the microscope the three-lobed shape looked like a curving road with a tunnel running through the middle of it. She pulled it off the tape and cleaned the adhesive residue from the fiber with xylene, a powerful solvent that smelled good, yet produced insidious headaches.

  Fibers were much easier to work with than hairs. Hairs didn’t come in as many colors as fibers and could be compared only visually. Lawyers didn’t like them—too many ambiguities—and juries found hair testimony less than compelling. Just trying to get hair as long as Lia Ripetti’s mounted on a glass slide required an exercise in patience, and Evelyn felt relief when no human hairs other than Lia’s appeared on the tapings, making it all a moot point.

  There were, however, two black hairs with spade-shaped roots, short and easily identifiable as those of a dog, most likely a Doberman. The phone rang.

  “Mmm?”

  “Evelyn?” David asked.

  “Yeah. Sorry, a dog distracted me. Who has a dog, by the way?”

  A confused pause. “Beg pardon?”

  “A dog.”

  “Well,” he said, “I have one.”

  “A Doberman?”

  “No, a golden retriever. Uh, what’s—”

  “Good, you scared me there for a minute. I mean who among our suspects owns a dog, because I found black dog hairs on Lia’s shirt.”

  “Oh. I see. Unfortunately the only halfway decent suspect we have at the moment is Durling, and he has neither a dog nor a motive as far as I can tell.”

  “Mmm.” She transferred another fiber to a glass slide.

  “Anyway, I called to touch base with you—”

  “Touch base? You’ve been hanging around Riley too long.”

  “Tell me about it. What have you come up with?”

  “The dog.”

  “That’s it?”

  “What do you think?” Evelyn protested. “I have a Bat Computer or something? All the fibers in the world aren’t going to help until you bring me a suspect, anyway. There is one thing, for what it’s worth—I went over to Missing Persons to see if there are any other missing women in this city.”

  Another pause. “Really,” David said, his voice surprisingly unenthusiastic. “Me, too. I spent most of the other night in Records.”

  “Why didn’t you just ask Susannah?”

  “Because I . . . never mind. So what did you find?”

  “I came up with three who fit the profile of our victims, what vague mess of a profile we have so far.”

  “Really.”

  “Three: Sabian, Johnson, Danilov. How about you?”

  She heard a sound suspiciously like a manila folder skidding across a desk. “So much for impressing you with my investigative abilities.”

  “Who am I that I need to be impressed?” she asked simply.

  Another pause. It seemed that David Milaski could not assemble his thoughts. The answer hit her suddenly and shattered her cozy innocence: The man was interested in her. This produced an instant flush of pleasure, followed by a rush of panic. The thought of dating again terrified her. Having to dress up and make conversation with a total stranger? She shuddered.

  Of course, he wasn’t a total stranger . . .

  “Okay,” he said suddenly, interrupting her mental chaos. If he had romance on his mind, his voice hid it well and sounded downright cold. She must have been wrong. “The theory isn’t panning out anyway. I talked to Sabian’s husband last night.” He gave her a quick summary of the visit. “So I came up with zip.”

  “Not necessarily. Maybe we’re just not seeing the pattern. What about the other two?”

  “What do you think?” he countered.

  “Nothing in the reports jumps out. But we should talk to them.”

  “I know,” he sighed. “Riley thinks I’m going way out on a tangent when we have two big cases already in front of us.”

  “Remind him that we could have three if we don’t figure out how this guy is picking his victims. Let’s split them up. I’ll take Johnson, you take Danilov.”

  “No!” The yelp startled her. “Investigating is my job. You don’t need to be walking up to people in the parts of town you don’t find in the real estate section, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do. But Thalia Johnson’s mother works at the West Side Market, and I need something for dinner and some decent cheese. It may not be detailed in my job description, but forensic specialists are investigators. Let me try to explain away my failure to follow up on a piece of evidence by saying I’m not an investigator and believe me, I’ll be disabused of that notion double-quick by Tony and the scientific community. Look, I’m not trying to steal your thunder. You can take credit.”

  “It’s not that, for God’s sake,” he snapped. “It just wouldn’t do much for my self-image to get somebody else killed.”

  “How many are you up to?” she joked, and in the long silence that followed she figured out it hadn’t been a joke at all.

  “Never mind,” he said, and hung up.

  After staring at the phone for a minute or two, she tried to push it out of her mind. After all, she’d been warned that he had a past. That didn’t make it her problem or her responsibility. No reason to give it the slightest thought. Even if he was attractive. Even if he was attracted to her.

  The last thing she needed in her life was someone else to turn her ability to love back on her like a fillet knife, and cut and cut until she bled out. Especially
some rogue cop, married to his job and just looking for a little sex on the side. Oh, yeah, like she wanted to get into that situation.

  Whatever. She went back to her fibers.

  Working on a glass slide with a disposable scalpel, she cut off the end of the fiber, using a small metal roller to smash it into a flat strip. From there she transferred the strip to a round, transparent slide, or window, made of potassium bromide. She rolled the strip again until it finally decided to stop sticking to the roller and stick to the window instead, and put the window into the FTIR’s beam of infrared light.

  The computer monitor showed the spectrum of the fiber, obviously a Nylon 6,6, but she ran it through the library of spectra just to be sure. Then she printed the results, being sure to note the assigned number of this particular green fiber, which would now be stored mounted on a slide with the same number. The fiber now became a refined, precisely packaged, and analyzed piece of evidence, one that might prove to be the final weight that convicted a murderer or might prove to be nothing at all. It could have come from Lia’s place of work—she’d have to remember to ask David to get her a sample from the construction office—it might be from Durling’s apartment—ditto mental note—it might be from Lia’s friend’s house or a cab or a total stranger’s carpet, one that had tumbled in the apartment building’s washing machine just before Lia used it. If you weren’t comfortable with uncertainty, she reminded herself, don’t become a fiber expert.

  Evelyn went on, repeating the process for a pink-red polyester fiber, a series of black cotton fibers, and a turquoise acrylic crimped fiber that most likely came from a fluffy sweater. She sighed again, and not with contentment. The coffee had cooled, her neck felt as old and stiff as a dinosaur skeleton, the xylene had invaded her head, and she no longer felt that fibers were fun.

  Chapter 20

  EVELYN LEFT WORK EARLY, nearly rear-ending a black Lincoln Continental stopped in the drive as she tried to exit the parking lot. Tinted windows kept her from seeing the driver, only the sleeve of his expensive suit resting in the window as he conversed with her own personal albatross, Jason. She tapped her horn, surprised to see a guilty look cross the kid’s face rather than the glare she expected.

  She drove Angel to her doctor, who put a Steri-Strip over a popped staple and pronounced her quite healthy. He also recommended that she take a few more days off from school and normal activities. This did not please Angel. After being cooped up for two days at home, she would not have been pleased by a lottery jackpot. Her emotions had fully recovered and returned to bitch mode.

  No sooner had they arrived at home than Rick and Terrie entered. Rick went so far as to inquire as to his daughter’s health and Angel allowed Terrie into the sanctuary of her room to help her dress. They were taking the poor girl out to dinner, Rick said.

  At times like these Evelyn found it helpful to remember her long-ago martial arts training. Breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth. It might be the only thing she did remember from martial arts training, but it did the trick. She gave no indication of her true feelings when she inquired why Rick felt it wise for a teenager to go out on the town only three days after major surgery.

  “She called me and said she’s bored. I thought it might cheer her up.”

  “She already popped one stitch. She really needs to rest.”

  Rick shrugged. “We’re just taking her out to dinner. She wants to go.”

  She’s a child. It’s not her job to safeguard her health, it’s ours. How do you expect a sixteen-year-old to know how long a recuperation period is required for an appendectomy? “She’s not even supposed to have dinner. She’s supposed to be on clear liquids and some light carbohydrates.”

  Rick snorted. “She’s not going to get better on that.”

  Evelyn bit her lip. Literally. She had the standard two choices: risk Angel’s ire by putting her foot down, pushing Rick into a shouting match that she would most likely lose anyway, or sit back and let her child do something that might harm her.

  There were many times when being a parent truly sucked.

  She decided she could not stop them—the calendar dictated custody and the doctor hadn’t forbidden regular food or activity. As long as Angel didn’t attempt a gymnastic routine, it probably wouldn’t kill her. But Evelyn couldn’t shake the guilt of risking her daughter’s health simply to take the easy way out.

  Terrie and Angel trooped back through the kitchen. The activity had flushed Angel’s face and gave her a temporary look of health. She toted a large backpack.

  “Packing a suitcase for dinner?” Evelyn inquired.

  “It’s for the weekend. It’s Dad’s weekend.” All three of them stared at Evelyn as if she had lost her mind.

  She hadn’t, but her temper threatened to explode and it would be best if she could be alone. “Fine. Have a nice time. Please don’t do anything strenuous and get a lot of rest. In bed, rest.”

  “Okay,” Angel said with a show of patience, exiting through the garage. “See you later.”

  “And keep drinking fluids!” Evelyn pleaded to the back of her daughter’s head.

  “Don’t worry.” Terrie smiled at Evelyn with what seemed, if Evelyn thought about it objectively, genuine sympathy. “She’ll be fine.”

  Then the door closed and the house became silent.

  “I’d almost prefer Nurse Neal,” Evelyn said to herself.

  Riley had gone home on the stroke of five, insisting that nothing more could be done on the case that day. They had interviewed and reinterviewed, it seemed, every single person who had ever met or even been in the presence of Destiny Pierson, and gotten nowhere. The older detective eagerly hurried home to a house that two ex-wives had abandoned. David figured he had a date.

  David, on the other hand, felt no hurry to get home to an apartment that no one had had a chance to abandon. The high school girl who lived next door would take Harry out when she got home, so he didn’t have to worry about the effect of working late on his dog’s bladder. With no other clues to follow, he decided to check on the second of his three missing women. Blair Danilov had lived right on his way home. She had been an attractive, athletic girl with long, light brown hair who had disappeared Friday, August 31.

  Blair’s apartment building had been built with inexpensive style and had seen better days. The stained carpeting in the lobby smelled of last spring’s mildew. The small doorman’s desk apparently hadn’t been used for a decade or so and a plastic tree listed in the corner. The elevator groaned and creaked. He took the stairs.

  The door of apartment 373 opened to show a small woman in Birkenstocks with a woven hemp bracelet and cropped blond hair. Except for the hair, she looked enough like the file photo of Blair Danilov to be the sister, Bonnie, who had filed the report.

  “Miss Danilov?”

  She scowled at him, putting her whole body into it. “Have you found her?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Blair. Have you found her?”

  “No.” David felt no desire to prolong what had to be agony every time the phone rang or a stranger approached. He had learned from his experience with Roberto Sabian. “I’m sorry, there isn’t any news. I’m just—”

  “Then what are you doing here?” Arms crossed, weight balanced, she stood in the doorway and issued no invitations.

  “I’m from the police department.”

  “Duh.”

  “How did you know that?” he asked curiously.

  “Duh.” She ran a hand through the spiky hair. “You’re wearing a corduroy blazer. No one but cops and college professors would wear something so lame, and if there’s one thing I can recognize faster than a cop, it’s a college professor. What are you doing here if you haven’t found Blair?”

  David stifled a sigh, determined to make allowances for the woman’s pain. “I’m going over some missing person cases, trying to find out if there is anything the victims had in common. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”
/>
  “I mind you jerks asking stupid questions, coming out here every so often just to poke my wounds open again and then going off and not doing a damn thing—yes, I mind. Go ahead, ask.”

  “May I come in?”

  “No, you may not. I don’t let strange men into my apartment.”

  “I have a badge.”

  “I don’t care if you have a letter from the pope. Go ahead and ask if you want, and make it quick so I can eat dinner, run a few miles, and then lie in bed awake wondering what the hell happened to my little sister.” Her eyes were small and black and filled with despair, and hatred for anyone who couldn’t relieve that despair. David felt too sorry for her to get angry. He didn’t have the energy anyway.

  “Blair worked as a graphic artist for a greeting card company, right?”

  From the look on her face she worked to stifle another duh.

  “Did she have a boyfriend?”

  “Grant Porter. Otherwise known as Jerkface. He was grooming her.”

  “Grooming her?”

  “For marriage, I suppose. He told her how to wear her hair, arrange her clothes, talk to her boss. Et cetera. I guess he wanted her to be smarter, prettier, and make more money before he’d consent to take her on.”

  “Did he get angry at her?”

  “No, anger wouldn’t be New Age. If you think he killed her, you’re way off. He couldn’t kill a cockroach—obviously, if you’ve seen his apartment. If you think she scooted out of town to get away from him, I wish I could agree.”

  “Really?”

  “It beats the alternative.”

  David waited.

  “That she’s dead,” Bonnie said impatiently, defiantly mentioning the unmentionable. “Blair either ran away from Jerkface or she’s dead. There’s no other explanation. You’re talking about the most stable, nine-to-five, hardworking, sweet, did-everything-for-everybody person ever. If she worked late, she’d call me and Grant. There’s no way she’d just take off.”

  “Before she disappeared—”

  “Let me make this short for you.” Bonnie held up a hand and shifted her weight from foot to foot. She made him think of an aerobics instructor with a glacier-size case of PMS. “She did not report any stalkers, threats, or weird guys. She had no arguments with me, Jerkface, or anybody at work. She was healthy as a horse, no seizures, blackouts, or breakdowns. She didn’t pawn anything or zero out her checking account. Her car remained in the garage until the leasing company repossessed it because I couldn’t make the payments. She didn’t take any trips. I’ve been through all this with the Missing Persons guys and it would save us all a lot of time if you’d just read their reports before reinventing the wheel. You’re in the same department, aren’t you?”