Across the water are the lights of Mount Pleasant, and the lights of James Island and Charleston. Southwest is Folly Beach. Tomorrow will be warm and cloudy, and by late afternoon, the tide will be low. The boat scrapes over oyster shells as he drags it onto the beach.
Chapter 15
Inside the forensic photography lab, early the next morning. It is Wednesday now.
Scarpetta sets up what she might need, the science this time simple. From cabinets and drawers she retrieves ceramic bowls, paper, and foam cups, paper towels, sterile swabs, envelopes, modeling clay, distilled water, a bottle of gun blue (a selenium dioxide solution that turns metal surfaces a dark blue/black), a bottle of RTX (ruthenium tetroxide), tubes of superglue, and a small aluminum pan. She attaches a macro lens and a remote shutter release to a digital camera mounted on a copy stand, and covers a countertop with thick brown paper.
Although she has a choice of which concoctions to use so latent prints will show themselves on nonporous surfaces, such as metal, the standard fare is fuming. No magic, just chemistry. Superglue is composed almost entirely of cyanoacrylate, an acrylic resin that reacts to the amino acids, glucose, sodium, lactic acid, and other chemicals exuded from skin pores. When superglue vapors come in contact with a latent print (not visible to the unaided eye), a chemical reaction forms a new composite — one hopes, a very durable and visible white ridge detail.
Scarpetta ponders her approach. DNA swabbing, but not in this lab, and it shouldn’t be done first and doesn’t need to be first because neither RTX nor superglue destroys DNA. Superglue, she decides, and she removes the revolver from its paper bag and writes down the serial number. She opens the empty cylinder and plugs both ends of the barrel with wads of paper towel. From another bag, she retrieves the six.38 special live rounds, setting them upright inside a fuming chamber, which is nothing more than a heat source inside a glass tank. From a wire anchored across the length of it, she suspends the revolver by its trigger guard. She places a cup of warm water inside for humidity, squeezes superglue into a small aluminum pan, and covers the fuming chamber with a lid. She turns on an exhaust fan.
Another pair of fresh gloves, and she picks up the plastic bag with the gold coin necklace inside. The gold chain is a very likely source of DNA, and she bags that separately and labels it. The coin is a possible source of DNA but also of fingerprints, and she holds it lightly by its edges and looks at it through a lens as she hears the biometric lock of the lab’s front door. Then Lucy walks in. Scarpetta can feel her mood.
“I wish we had a program that does photo recognition,” Scarpetta says, because she knows when not to ask questions about how Lucy is feeling and why.
“We do,” Lucy says, avoiding her eyes. “But you have to have something to compare it with. Very few police departments have searchable databases of mug shots, and those that do? Doesn’t matter. Nothing’s integrated. Whoever this asshole is, we’ll probably have to ID him some other way. And I don’t necessarily mean the asshole on the chopper who supposedly showed up in your alley.”
“Then who do you mean?”
“I mean whoever was wearing the necklace and had the gun. And I mean you don’t know it wasn’t Bull.”
“That wouldn’t make any sense.”
“Sure as hell would if he wanted to seem like a hero. Or hide something else he’s up to. You don’t know who had the gun or necklace, because you never saw whoever lost them.”
“Unless the evidence indicates otherwise,” Scarpetta says, “I’ll take him at his word and feel grateful that he put himself in harm’s way to protect me.”
“Believe what you want.”
Scarpetta looks at Lucy’s face. “I believe something’s wrong.”
“I’m just pointing out that the alleged altercation between him and whoever this guy on a chopper is wasn’t witnessed. That’s all.”
Scarpetta checks her watch. She walks over to the fuming chamber. “Five minutes. That should do it.” She removes the lid to bring the process to a halt. “We need to run the serial number of the revolver.”
Lucy moves close, looks inside the glass tank. She puts on gloves, reaches inside, and detaches the wire and retrieves the revolver. “Ridge detail. A little. Here on the barrel.” She turns the gun this way and that, sets it down on the paper-covered countertop. She reaches back inside the tank and plucks out the cartridges. “A few partials. I think there’s enough minutiae.” She sets them down, too.
“I’ll photograph them, and perhaps you can scan in the photos so we can get the characteristics and have them run on IAFIS.”
Scarpetta picks up the phone, calls the fingerprints lab, explains what they’re doing.
“I’ll work with them first to save time,” Lucy says, and she isn’t friendly. “Lose the color channels so the white’s inverted to black and get them run ASAP.”
“Something’s the matter. I guess you’ll tell me when you’re ready.”
Lucy doesn’t listen. Angrily, “Garbage in, garbage out.”
Her favorite point to make when she’s cynical. A print is scanned into IAFIS, and the computer doesn’t know if it’s looking at a rock or a fish. The automated system doesn’t think. It knows nothing. It overlays the characteristics of one print on top of the matching characteristics of another print, meaning if characteristics are missing or obscured or haven’t been correctly encoded by a competent forensic examiner, there’s a good chance a search will come to nothing. IAFIS isn’t the problem. People are. Same is true of DNA. The results are only as good as what’s collected and how it’s processed and by whom.
“You know how rare it is when prints are even rolled properly?” Lucy rants on. Her tone bites. “You get some Deputy Bubba in a jail taking all these ten-print cards, still doing centuries-old shitty ink-and-roll, and they’re all dumped into IAFIS and are crap, when they wouldn’t be if we were using biometric optical live scanning. But no jail’s got money. No money for anything in this fucking country.”
Scarpetta leaves the gold coin inside its transparent plastic envelope and looks at it under a lens. “You want to tell me why you’re in such an awful mood?” She’s afraid of the answer.
“Where’s the serial number so I can enter the gun into NCIC?”
“That piece of paper over there on the counter. Have you been talking to Rose?”
Lucy gets it, sits before a computer terminal. Keys start clicking. “Called to check on her. She said you need checking on.”
“A U.S. one-dollar piece,” Scarpetta says of the magnified coin so she doesn’t have to say anything else. “Eighteen seventy-three.” And she notices something she’s never seen before in unprocessed evidence.
Lucy says, “I’d like to test-fire this in the water tank and run ballistics on it through NIBIN.”
The National Integrated Ballistic Identification Network.
“See if the revolver’s been used in any other crime,” Lucy says. “Although you’re not considering what happened a crime yet and don’t want to involve the police.”
“As I’ve explained”—Scarpetta doesn’t want to sound defensive—“Bull struggled with him and knocked the gun out of his hands.” She studies the coin, adjusting the magnification. “I can’t prove the man in question on the chopper was there to harm me. He never trespassed, just tried.”
“So Bull says.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think this coin has already been superglued for prints.” Through the lens, Scarpetta examines what looks like pale white ridge detail on front and back.
“What do you mean, if you didn’t know better? You don’t know better. You don’t know anything about it or where it’s been or anything except Bull found it behind your house. Who lost it’s another story.”
“Sure looks like a polymer residue. Like superglue. I don’t understand,” Scarpetta says, carrying the plastic- protected coin to the copy stand. “A lot of things I don’t understand.” She glances up at Lucy. “I guess when you’re ready to talk to me, you will.” She takes off her gloves, puts on new ones and a face mask.
“Sounds like all we need to do is photograph them. No gun blue or RTX.” Lucy refers to the ridge detail on the coin.
“At most, maybe black powder. But I suspect we won’t need even that.” Scarpetta adjusts the camera
