a trace of dried blood on what she estimates is almost half of a crown from what she believes is a front tooth. “We have any way of knowing if Lydia Webster has been to the dentist lately?”
“I can check it out. There’s not that many dentists on the island. So unless she went elsewhere, it shouldn’t be hard to track down.”
“It would have to be recent, very recent,” Scarpetta says. “I don’t care how much you neglect your hygiene, you don’t ignore a broken crown, especially on a front tooth.”
“Could be his,” Lucy says.
“That would be even better,” Scarpetta says. “We need a small paper envelope.”
“I’ll get it,” Lucy says.
“I don’t see anything. If it broke in here, I don’t see the rest of it. I guess it could still be attached to the tooth. I broke a crown once and part of it was still stuck to the little nub that’s left of my tooth.” Becky looks past Scarpetta, at the copper tub. “Talk about the biggest false-positive on the planet,” she adds. “This will be a new one for the books. One of the few times I need to use luminal, and the damn tub and sink are copper. Well, we can forget it.”
“I don’t use luminol anymore,” Scarpetta says, as if the oxidizing agent is a disloyal friend.
Until recently, it was a forensic staple and she never questioned using it to find blood no longer visible. If blood had been washed away or even painted over, the way to know was to mix up a spray bottle of luminol and see what fluoresced. The problems have always been many. Like a dog that wags its tail at all the neighbors, luminol is excited by more than the hemoglobin in blood and is, unfortunately, quite responsive to a number of things: paint, varnish, Drano, bleach, dandelions, thistle, creeping myrtle, corn. And, of course, copper.
Lucy retrieves a small container of Hemastix for a presumptive test, looking for any residue of what may be scrubbed-away blood. The presumptive test says blood might be there, and Scarpetta opens the box of Bluestar Magnum and removes a brown glass bottle and a foil pack, and a spray bottle.
“Stronger, longer-lasting, don’t have to use it in total darkness,” she explains to Becky. “No sodium perborate tetrahydrate, so it’s nontoxic. Can use it on copper because the reaction will be a different intensity, a different color spectrum, and will have a different duration than blood.”
She has yet to see blood inside the master bathroom. Despite what Madelisa claimed, the most intense white light revealed not the slightest stain. But this is no longer surprising. By all indications so far, after she fled from the house, the killer meticulously cleaned up after himself. Scarpetta selects the finest setting on the spray bottle’s nozzle and pours in four ounces of sterile water. To this she adds two tablets. She gently stirs with a pipette for several minutes, then opens the brown glass bottle and pours in a sodium hydroxide solution.
She begins to spray, and spots and streaks and shapes and spatters luminesce bright cobalt blue all over the room. Becky takes photographs. A little later, when Scarpetta has finished cleaning up after herself and is repacking her crime scene case, her cell phone rings. It’s the fingerprint examiner from Lucy’s labs.
“You’re not going to believe this,” he says.
“Don’t ever start a conversation like that with me unless you mean it.” Scarpetta isn’t joking.
“The print on the gold coin.” He’s excited, talking fast. “We got a hit — the unidentified little boy who was found last week. The kid from Hilton Head.”
“Are you sure? You can’t be sure. It makes no sense.”
“May not make sense, but there’s no doubt about it.”
“Don’t say that, either, unless you mean it. My first reaction is there’s an error,” Scarpetta says.
“There’s not. I pulled his ten-print card from the prints Marino took in the morgue. I visually verified it. Unquestionably, the ridge detail from the partial on the coin matches the unidentified kid’s right thumbprint. There’s no mistake.”
“A fingerprint on a coin that’s been fumed with glue? I don’t see how.”
“Believe me, I’m with you. We all know the fingerprints of prepubescent kids don’t last long enough to fume. They’re mostly water. Just sweat instead of the oils, amino acids, and all the rest that comes with puberty. I’ve never superglued a kid’s prints and don’t think you could. But this print is from a kid, and that kid is the one in your morgue.”
“Maybe that’s not how it happened,” Scarpetta says. “Maybe the coin was never fumed.”
“Had to be. There’s ridge detail in what sure looks like superglue, the same as if it had been fumed.”
“Maybe he had glue on his finger and touched the coin,” she says. “And left his print that way.”
Chapter 18
Nine p.m. A hard rain slaps the street in front of Marino’s fishing shack.
Lucy is soaking wet as she turns on a wireless receiver mini-disc recorder disguised as an iPod. In exactly six minutes, Scarpetta will call Marino. Right now, he is arguing with Shandy, their every word picked up by the multidirectional mike embedded in his computer’s thumb drive.
His heavy footsteps, the refrigerator door opening, the swish of a can popped open, probably a beer.
Shandy’s angry voice sounds in Lucy’s earpiece. “…Don’t lie to me. I’m warning you. All of a sudden? All of a sudden you decide you don’t want a committed relationship? And by the way, who said I’m committed to you? The only fucking thing that ought to be committed is you — to a fucking mental hospital. Maybe the Big Chief’s fiance can give you a discount on a room up there.”
He’s told her about Scarpetta’s engagement to Benton. Shandy’s hitting Marino where it hurts, meaning she knows where it hurts. Lucy wonders how much she’s used that against him, taunted him about it.
“You don’t own me. You don’t get to have me until it don’t suit you anymore, so maybe I’m getting rid of you first,” he yells. “You’re bad for me. Making me get on that hormone shit — it’s a damn wonder I hadn’t had a stroke or something. After barely more than a week. What happens in a month, huh? You picked out a fucking cemetery? Or maybe I’ll end up in the fucking penitentiary because I lose my mind and do something.”
“Maybe you already did something.”
“Go to hell.”
“Why would I be committed to an old, fat fuck like you, who can’t even get it up without
“Cut it out, Shandy. I’ve had it with you putting me down, you hear me? If I’m such a nothing, why are you here? I need some space, time to think. Everything’s so fucked up right now. Work’s turned to shit. I’m smoking, not going to the gym, drinking too much, doped up. Everything’s gone to hell, and all you do is get me in worse and worse trouble.”
His cell phone rings. He doesn’t answer. It rings and rings.
“Answer it!” Lucy says out loud in the heavy, steady rain.
“Yeah.” his voice sounds in her earpiece.
Lucy can’t hear Scarpetta’s side of the conversation but knows what’s being said. She’s telling Marino there were no hits in NIBIN or IAFIS for the serial number of the Colt.38 and any prints or partial prints recovered from the gun and the cartridges that Bull found in her alleyway.
“What about him?” Marino asks.
He means Bull. Scarpetta can’t answer that. Bull’s prints wouldn’t be in IAFIS, because he’s never been convicted of a crime, and his being arrested several weeks ago doesn’t count. If the Colt is his but isn’t stolen or wasn’t used in a crime and then ended up back on the street, it wouldn’t be in NIBIN. She’s already told Bull it would be helpful if he were printed for exclusionary purposes, but he’s not gotten around to it. She can’t remind him again because she can’t get hold of him, and both she and Lucy have tried several times since they left Lydia Webster’s house. Bull’s mother says he went out in his boat to pick oysters. Why he would do that in this weather is baffling.
“Uh-huh, uh-huh.” Marino’s voice fills Lucy’s ear, and he is walking around again, obviously careful what he says in front of Shandy.
Scarpetta will also tell Marino about the partial print on the gold coin. Maybe that’s what she’s relaying to him
