by Jen J. Danna
Leigh paused for a moment to take it all in again. “It’s a bedroom at the back of the house, probably the master from the size of it. The furniture in the room is draped with white sheeting—a double bed, a dresser, and a wardrobe on the far side of the room. The sheeting over the dresser is covered in spatter and there’s a hole in the wall to the left of it.”
“The bullet is lodged in the wall?”
“Looks like it.”
“Holt was shot right through the thorax. So it’s either JFK’s magic bullet again, or the bullet must have hit a rib or two on the way through. Is it intact?”
“I can’t tell from here and I’m not setting foot in this room and risk messing up evidence. The Crime Scene Services boys would kill me. But looking at the wall, it’s not a nice, neat little hole. It’s misshapen and ragged.”
“Like from a mushroomed bullet.”
“Exactly. Hold on a minute.” She dropped the phone from her ear to look at Riley. “You should call this in.”
Riley’s jaw sagged almost comically for a minute. “Me? But it’s your case.”
“And it’s your find. I don’t need the glory, just the results. Get Crime Scene Services on-site. We need answers.”
Riley grinned at her broadly. “Yes, sir!” He turned away, pulling his phone from his pocket and moving down the hallway to make his call.
She raised her phone again. “I’m back.”
“That was nice of you.” Matt’s voice was warm with pride.
She dropped her voice so Riley couldn’t hear. “I’ve learned a thing or two watching you with your students. He’s new, but he has good instincts. He’s a solid cop.”
“And he’ll get better with your mentoring. I told you he sees you for who you are, not who Morrison says you are. But back to the case. We have the bullet in the wall and spatter where we’d expect to find it. Anything else?”
“I can just see a bullet casing on the floor. Looks like it rolled across the floor and is half-hidden under the drape over the double bed. There’s also a blood stain on the wood floor, but it’s not as big as I thought it might be considering what Rowe said about the extent of the blood loss. Unless …” She crouched down in the doorway, peering into the room.
“Unless what?” Matt asked.
“Unless there was something else on the floor. I think there was a carpet here. If you look at the floor, the edges are slightly faded whereas the middle of the floor, where the sunlight would come through the window, is darker. It should actually be more faded than the edge of the room.”
“So there was a rug that soaked up some of the blood. But the body lay there long enough for the blood to seep through and stain the wood.”
Leigh pushed to her feet. “It’s also a handy way to transport a body. The house has an attached garage, but he likely didn’t want blood in his vehicle.”
“And there’s no garage at the Adytum Building, so he needed something to cover the body when he moved it. You know, it’s kind of odd the way this place isn’t cleaned up. He left the bullet, the casing, the spatter. All he removed was the body and maybe a carpet. Why not put more effort into hiding the kill site. Or even coming back later to clean it up?”
“Coming back to clean up could be a real risk if he was spotted by a neighbor.”
“Or maybe leaving a mess wasn’t a concern for him. Right now you have a scene that’s tied to the victim, but not necessarily the killer. Maybe the killer didn’t care about leaving blood spatter as long as he didn’t leave anything of himself behind.”
“That may be true, but he couldn’t have walked out covered in spatter himself.” Leigh’s gaze flicked to the door of the bathroom, just up the hallway.
“You need to check to see if he washed up somewhere.”
She strode down the hallway to stand in the bathroom door. “Already on that. Right next to the master is a big bathroom. And look at that … that might be handy for short-term storage.”
“What?”
“There’s a big claw-foot tub in the corner. I’ll make sure Crime Scene Services checks the sink and tub drains for blood. We want to know exactly what happened here. But for now, Riley and I need to pull out to avoid contaminating anything.” She dropped her voice. “You’re still okay for five-thirty tonight?”
“I’ll be there with bells on. Thanks for the update.”
Leigh slid her phone into her pocket and walked back up the hallway to meet Riley, who waited for her at the bedroom door.
“The Crime Scene Services boys are on their way,” he said. “They respectfully request we remove ourselves from the premises.”
“They told you to get the hell out, didn’t they?”
Riley grinned. “Yeah, pretty much. Subtle, aren’t they?”
“Never in a million years. Come on, let’s go.”
Leigh looked back one more time into the room, taking in again all the signs of a brutal death.
Only in her job would this be considered progress.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: REAL MCCOY
* * *
Real McCoy: a corruption of an 1856 Scottish phrase meaning “the genuine article.” William McCoy was a sailor who loved boats; he became a bootlegger after his freight business fell on hard times. A designer of luxury speedboats before Prohibition, McCoy turned to running unadulterated and uncut Irish and Canadian whiskeys and rye between Nassau, Bimini, and the East Coast of the U.S. after passage of the Eighteenth Amendment. He was arrested in late 1923 and offered as a defense, “I have no tale of woe to tell you. I was outside the three-mile limit, selling whiskey, and good whiskey, to anyone and everyone who wanted to buy.” Convicted, he spent nine months in a New Jersey jail before retiring to Florida a rich man.
Friday, 5:47 p.m.
Abbott Residence
Salem, Massachusetts
“Sorry to bring you all the way out here.”
The petite redhead glanced up quickly at Leigh and then logged into the laptop already open on the kitchen table. “It’s only an hour’s drive from Sudbury. And while it would have been easier to show you this in my own office at the SIS, it’s not a big deal to do here. I understand wanting to keep this under the radar right now, what with it being another trooper’s case and all.” She pulled her long hair back into a thick rope, twisting it into a loose bun and securing it with an elastic band pulled from one wrist.
“If we’re going to start shaking things up on a case considered closed decades ago, sending a potentially innocent man to jail for all that time, we need to make sure we’re beyond certain. I don’t want any murmurs getting out that we’re even looking until it’s already a done deal.”
Leigh’s doorbell rang, followed by the sound of her front door opening and Matt’s voice echoing down the hall.
“Come on back. We’re in the kitchen.”
Matt appeared in the doorway, unzipping and shrugging out of his leather jacket. “Sorry I’m late. My meeting ran long. Who starts a meeting at three o’clock on a Friday?”
“Someone who doesn’t have a life and who doesn’t want anybody who does starting the weekend early.” Leigh waited while he hung his jacket on the back of a kitchen chair before making the introductions. “Matt, this is Claire Hargrove. She’s one of our forensic experts at the state crime lab. Claire, my partner on this case, Dr. Matt Lowell. He’s a forensic anthropologist with Boston University.”
“I remember you from the Bradford case,” Claire said, holding out her hand. “Pulling a burial ground out of thin air from only one bone. Nice work.”
“Thanks,” Matt said. “And thanks for looking into this so quickly. I was sure we wouldn’t get anything back on this until next week at the earliest.”
“Once Leigh explained the situation, I thought it deserved some time right away.”
“Exactly.” Leigh pulled out a chair and sat down on one side of Claire. “Okay, what have you got?”
“I know you understand what I’m talking about.” Claire pinned her cl
ear blue gaze on Leigh before turning to Matt. “But what do you know about fingerprinting?”
“Mostly what I’ve gathered from watching crime shows on TV.” Matt took the chair to Claire’s left. “I don’t usually deal with fingerprint evidence because my clients tend to not have skin. Unless we’re dealing with mummification, and then there’s this trick I can do with fabric softener that would knock your socks off.”
“I’m familiar with that trick. And it works surprisingly well. But beyond that, when it comes to actual fingerprint matching, do you know how it works?”
“Only the bare basics.”
“Okay, let me give you a quick overview so my explanation makes sense. As you no doubt know, everyone’s fingerprints are unique. They’re a by-product of the fetal development process, so not even identical twins sharing the same DNA will have identical prints. The skin on your fingers, toes, palms, and the soles of your feet is different from the rest of your epidermis. The raised ridges in those areas amplify the sensation of touch going to the sensory neurons, and the ridged surface improves grip. Those raised ridges have very unique patterns and they give us identifiable fingerprints. Note I didn’t say ‘identical’ fingerprints, because there is no such thing. Like all other skin, ridge skin is flexible, which means no two fingerprints are ever exactly the same. If I took your prints right now, and then fingerprinted you again ten minutes from now, they wouldn’t be identical. Which is why fingerprint experts are required.”
“Or an automated system.”
“The automated system spits out a likely candidate, but the final comparison is still done by human eyes. The algorithms are good, but not as good as us.”
“But if two sets of prints in controlled circumstances aren’t identical, then the whole process must be pretty subjective when it comes to actual case evidence.” Matt sat back in his chair, his face taking on the I’m a scientist, convince me expression Leigh had seen many times before.
“It might seem so, but given the correct training, it’s less subjective than you think. Still, subjective assessments can be a real problem. Give the same prints to different techs and sometimes you do get different answers.”
“Would that explain what happened to Cabrera if the prints don’t match?” Matt asked.
Claire grinned. “Now you’re getting ahead of me.”
Leigh couldn’t help the small laugh that escaped at Matt’s snort of impatience. When he pinned her with a narrowed glare, she returned a sly grin.
Claire glanced from one to the other, her brows slanting together in confusion. “Did I just miss something?”
“I’m just enjoying being on the side of the discussion that knows what’s going on for once. Usually it’s Matt lecturing me and I’m the one wanting to jump to the end result.” Leigh waved her hand at Claire. “Go on, explain it all to him.” She relaxed back in her chair, a flutter of impatience in her own chest, but she tamped it down, content to wait an extra ten minutes for her answer. It was worth it just to watch Matt squirm with frustration.
“You asked for it, you got it.” Claire turned back to Matt. “Fingerprints themselves can be patent prints—ones visible with the naked eye, usually from a transfer of a substance like ink or blood—or latent prints—prints that are invisible until a tech uses an electronic, chemical, or physical process to visualize them. Most latent prints are organic impressions—sweat from ridge skin, as well as oils from the forehead and cheeks, since people often tend to touch their face.” She gave Matt a pointed look. He colored and stopped rubbing his jaw where his chin was propped on his hand.
She pulled his hand free, pushing open his fingers, eyeing the light sheen on his fingertips. “Exactly like that. Leigh, have you got a butcher knife I can borrow?” Matt’s wrist jerked in Claire’s hand and she laughed, her pale eyes dancing with humor. “Don’t worry, your fingers are safe. I’m just trying to make a point.”
Leigh rose from the table, selected a wide-bladed, shiny knife from her knife block, and handed it to Claire. Flipping Matt’s hand palm down, Claire pressed his fingers against the flat of the blade. She then angled the blade back and forth under the light, revealing the perfect impressions left by his fingertips.
“So basically, the print is an organic slurry of amino acids and fats with some inorganic compounds mixed in.” Matt rubbed his hand on his jeans as if self-conscious of the oils there. “How long is it stable?”
“Prints from adults can last for weeks or even months on a nonporous surface. Prints from children have a different chemical composition and a much shorter half-life, sometimes lasting only a day or two. Now, as you can see on the knife, we have several lovely prints because I made sure we did. But that’s very rarely how it works in real life. Often there are only partial prints, or there’s smudging and smearing, or overlapping. Sometimes there’s a mixture of prints from different people on the same surface and you have to tease out which print belongs to which person. And there are factors that affect the quality of the print—pressure of the ridge skin against the surface and whether it slips, surface composition and friction, flexibility of the skin, the material being transferred, and the development technique.”
“I’m beginning to get an idea of how complicated it is,” Matt said.
“And that’s only the print itself. When it comes to examining a fingerprint, there are levels of details we look at. The first level is what you can see with the naked eye—the ridges themselves, and the arches, loops, and whorls.”
“That I’m familiar with,” Matt said.
“Most people are because that’s about as detailed as the crime shows go. But within those forms is the second level of detail—ridge pattern deviations, called minutiae, seen at up to ten times magnification. Where the ridge ends, when it splits in two at a bifurcation, where the ridge makes a U-turn in a loop or whorl, that kind of thing. There is a third level at still greater powers of magnification that takes into account pore forms, size, and relative position. When we’re running an analysis we go through each level and try to match between prints. If level one checks out, you move to level two and maybe then to level three. The first time something doesn’t match, that print is excluded.”
“Okay, that makes sense. Can we get into these specific prints now?”
Claire held up a finger to slow Matt down, grinning when his lips flattened into an impatient line. “Almost. You need to understand one more thing before we start. In the seventies, comparisons were done a little differently than we do them today. Back then, the accepted method of fingerprint matching was to find a certain number of comparison points. For instance, any print matching twelve or more comparison points was considered to be a positive ID in Massachusetts. But if it only had eleven points, too bad, so sad, the print is now borderline. You might get it through court with the help of a second expert’s opinion, but it was doubtful. Also, some countries had different standards. One country could convict and send someone to the death chamber on twelve points, but next door, they required sixteen points, so you were a free man.”
Matt winced. “Sounds messy. And random.”
“It was. But since the late nineties, we’ve done things a little differently. Now we not only look at the quantity of the comparison points, but we also look at the qualitative aspect. For instance, some ridge formations are comparatively rare. Matching a rare formation carries more weight than matching a run-of-the-mill arch. And sometimes what isn’t in the print is more important than what is. So we do a holistic assessment taking into account the number of minutiae and the qualitative aspect of those minutiae.
“Now, let’s get into these prints themselves.” Claire turned to her laptop and brought up a series of black-on-white fingerprints. “In this case we have two sets of prints, one from the scene and one from the gun. This is the set from the scene. It was on the wall at the door frame from the kitchen to the hall where the body was found. This was photographed right on the wall after being dusted. Back then, the techs would
have probably been using aluminum powder. Anyway, the kitchen was likely wiped down because it’s basically devoid of prints, even ones we’d expect to find from Mr. and Mrs. Kain. I think the killer was trying to hide his own movements because pretty much the whole kitchen was wiped down. It’s not like he remembered leaning against the countertop so he only took care of that area. No, it’s the whole thing. Thorough in the extreme.”
“Except for this part of the door frame?” Leigh leaned in to study the prints. Three smears spread across the screen, ending in small partial prints.
“Right. The killer was thorough, but was apparently rattled enough to miss these. I’ve looked at the scene photos. From where the body was found, I think the killer shot Mrs. Kain in the hall and then pulled back to stand in the doorway, probably to watch her die. I’m assuming he’s right-handed and holding the gun in his right hand, so he reaches out to steady himself with the left on the wall beside the doorway. See how the print slides for an inch or so, smearing along the wall? Then all we’re left with near the doorway are smudgy partials.”
“Too smudgy?” Matt asked.
“Not for me.” There wasn’t a hint of boastfulness in Claire’s voice. She opened a new window with several partial prints. “These are prints from the gun. The gun would have been dusted and then the prints lifted off because they’d be hard to visualize on a dark surface.”
“They’re from the grip of the gun?”
“No, there wasn’t anything clear there. A lot of smudges and smears that almost make me think the killer held the gun at some point while wearing a glove. He didn’t actually wipe it down—it’s not clean enough for that—but he managed to smear any secretions and oils so there aren’t any discernible prints. But at some point, possibly while cleaning or loading the gun, he grasped the barrel. And that gave me everything I needed because I got prints that matched the wall—the index, middle, and ring fingers from the print positions. Comparing two unknown samples is harder than comparing a ten-print card to an unknown print, but I’m confident they match. Why I’m confident is because they both show a somewhat unusual formation—a peripheral double bifurcation.” She pointed to one of the partials, tapping a short, blood-red nail near the edge of the print. “You see this here? See how the ridge splits into two and then almost immediately splits into two again so it almost looks like a tree branch? That’s what I’m talking about. Combine that with the other features, even though they’re only partials and not in particularly good shape, and they match.” She brought up a new window showing the detailed image of a ten-print fingerprint card, and then swiveled in her seat to face Leigh. “But here’s where it gets interesting. They don’t match Santino Cabrera’s prints. For instance, that bifurcation should be right about here.” Her index finger circled the edge of the left middle finger print. “It’s not.”