He soon found an easygoing and friendly 'evidence technician' who appeared not to have been warned to watch out for a trouble-making British cop, and was quite willing to talk. 'The Buick? It'll take us at least a week. From what I can tell so far, half of New York seems to have driven that car and used it for sex and smoking. My guess is that it was owned by a syndicate of students.'
'You've done some preliminary work, then?'
'Had to look inside, remove most of the litter for examination.'
'What does it amount to?'
'The litter? Cigarette packets and butts, candy wrappers, sandwich wrappers, tissues, condom packets, gasoline receipts, Alka-Seltzers, chewing gum, ballpoints, parking tickets, panty-liners, take-out containers-want me to go on?'
'Quite a heap, I should think,' Diamond commented. 'Or have you bagged it up already?'
'Give me a break, man. Four cars were brought in last night.'
'May I take a look at this collection? I am assigned to the case.'
'You're welcome.'
He was led to the back of the garage, through an office into a large room where the items he'd just heard listed were displayed on a long trestle table. The impression he'd first gained, of good-natured inefficiency, was given a sharp corrective. Every piece was already labeled and assigned a number, with the position where it was found in the car duly noted.
The Buick's interior hadn't been cleared of rubbish since February at least, judging by the date of a gasoline receipt Someone had collected a stack and clipped them together. It would be the devil's own job to try and identify something discarded by Mrs. Tanaka's killer.
'You checked the boot, I suppose?'
'Which boot was that?' his informant asked.
He could do without differences in the language adding to his problem. 'The storage place at the rear of the car.'
'The trunk. Yeah. We checked.'
'Just that I didn't see any mention of the boot on these labels. Now I understand why.'
'Right.'
He bent over to look at the ballpoint pens. 'I suppose you can tell if these were used recently. It's okay, I'm not going to touch.'
'How would we know that?'
'If a ballpoint hasn't been used for some time, it gets dry. When you write with it, you have to run the point over a surface for a moment to get some ink.'
His friend the evidence technician received this statement of the obvious more solemnly than it deserved. 'That may be true, but I know of no test that would tell you how long it is since a pen was used. It would depend on certain variables, such as the temperature where it was stored. Jesus, man, we can't even tell with accuracy how long the body has been left someplace, so I don't see us succeeding with ballpoints.'
'No, but if the pen delivers the ink straightaway, the chances are it was used not long ago.' He was sounding like Sherlock Holmes, except that this wasn't impressing anyone, least of all himself. Better say no more about ballpoints. 'May I examine the receipts?'
'Sure. Just hold them by the clip and use this probe to separate them.'
'I can't imagine the killer stopped at a gas station anyway,' Diamond commented, picking up the sheaf of receipts. 'It's unlikely any of these would carry his prints.'
'We can check the date, no problem,' said the technician.
'I'm not looking for a date,' Diamond told him. He was acting mainly on impulse now, as he turned the receipts over and used the wooden probe to flick through the blank squares of paper. The pens had suggested a possibility, a long shot.
'You think there might be something written on the backs of those receipts?' the technician asked.
'Have you checked already?'
'Haven't had time. Why would anyone do that?'
'The little girl-the one who was kidnapped-was a dab hand at drawing.'
'And you figure that could give you a clue?'
'It might,' said Diamond. 'Unfortunately,' he added, replacing the receipts on the table, 'none of these are marked.'
He picked up the parking slips and inspected them in the same way. Naomi had not used them for drawing either. He clicked his tongue in exasperation.
'Seen enough?'
'Am I holding you up?'
'It's okay.'
'Then I'd like to sift through the rest of this stuff. If you want to get back to your work, I can promise I won't leave my prints on anything.'
'That's okay by me.'
It was nice to be trusted.
The chance of finding anything significant was remote, but even sorting through a collection of rubbish was better than doing nothing at all. Using two probes like chopsticks, he examined the items systematically, looking for signs of recent use. There was a roll of peppermints, and it occurred to him that Naomi might have been offered one to pacify her, but the mint that was visible was so dusty that it must have been unwrapped months ago.
With his thoughts still on the possibility that Naomi might have been offered something edible to stop her from protesting, he turned to the take-out containers-a stack of six of different shapes from various fast-food places. Odors of sweet and sour-sweet
There were two containers apparently of fairly recent origin, so he extracted them from the stack. These weren't polystyrene like the others, but were boxes made from thin white card. Judged by the grease-stained, sugary interiors, they had probably contained doughnuts.
He turned one over to look at the underside. It would have made a good surface for drawing. However, it was blank. Why was he so reluctant to drop this supposition that Naomi had left a drawing-a drawing, moreover, that provided information? He had a sense of being driven by some force akin to telepathy, as if the child were willing him to find what she had left. This wasn't entirely illogical, for occasionally in his life he'd experienced premonitions that had been fulfilled, such as the certainty that he would meet a particular old friend in a strange town.
So when he picked up the second box and saw pen marks on the underside of the lid, his pulse may have quickened, but he did not punch the air with his fist or shout, 'Eureka!'
He explained with great patience to Sergeant Stein at the station house how Naomi liked to make drawings, probably to compensate for the noncommunication enforced by her muteness.
'And you think this is her work?'.said Stein.
'Not this precisely. It's a copy I made of the drawing on the food container. I left the box down at the workshop with all the other things found in the car. The ink matched one of the ballpoints found on the floor beside the front passenger seat. There's no way of proving Naomi did the drawing, but I could tell from the state of the box that it hadn't been lying in the car for long. I think the killer may have stopped at some point to feed her, or she may simply have found the box in the car and used it for the sketch.'
'You call that a sketch?' said Stein. 'Don't get me wrong, but it looks more like a doodle to me. What is it?'
'I'm not certain myself yet,' Diamond admitted. 'The original is about twice the size, or a little more,' he added, placing his notebook open on the desk.
Stein said after a pause, 'You really think this represents something?'
'If Naomi did it, yes. She has an individual way of looking at things, but her drawing is pretty accurate.'
'Is it a map?'
'I suppose it could be.'
