XO

“Lincoln,” he corrected absently, absorbing the chart.

Rhyme and Shean got to work. Dance had wondered if being a guest would temper Rhyme’s edge but, clearly, no. When he learned that there were two different places behind Edwin’s house where an intruder might have stood to spy, he asked which trace came from which area. The tags on the half dozen collection bags reported only: Trace evidence from behind E. Sharp’s house, Woodward Circle West.

“Well, we didn’t really differentiate them.”

From Rhyme: “Oh.” It was the same as a loud dressing-down. “Might want to think about that in the future.”

Rhyme had once told Dance, “Where you find the clue is critical, vital. A crime scene is like real estate. It’s all about location, location, location.”

On the other hand, Shean had satisfied Rhyme’s number-one requirement when it came to trace: isolating “unique” material that might have been shed by the perp. This was done by taking many samples from spots nearby: samplars, they were called. If certain materials differed from these indigenous ones they might have come from the perp.

Shean’s officers had collected hundreds of samplars at all the scenes for comparison.

“That was competent,” Rhyme said. One of his more enthusiastic compliments. He then said, “And now, the cigarette ash.”

Stanning asked, “We’d like to know if the samples of ash match.”

“Yes, well, they wouldn’t match, of course.” He turned to the young woman. “Matching is when two or more items are identical,” Rhyme muttered. “Very few things actually match. Friction ridge-fingerprints and footprints, of course. DNA and-going out on a limb-the lands and grooves on slugs and extractor marks on the brass. Tool marks under rare circumstances. But as for trace? I could make the argument about some substances matching by analyzing half-life but that’s on a nuclear level.”

He turned his wheelchair and faced Stanning. “Let’s say you find cocaine that’s been cut with eighteen percent baking soda and two percent baby powder, and you have another sample that’s cut with exactly the same substances in those proportions. They don’t match but they’re associated, and a jury can infer they came from the same source. Of course, in our case, it’s possible that somebody could smoke the same cigarette at two different locations, miles apart on different days. But the odds of that are rather low. Wouldn’t you say?”

“I would. Definitely.” Stanning looked as if she’d decided not to make any more comments.

“You get a lot of convictions when you testify, I’d imagine,” Shean offered.

“Nearly one hundred percent,” Rhyme said, with only a veneer of modesty. “Of course, if the odds aren’t good up front I recommend not going to trial. Though I’m not above bluffing somebody into a confession. Now, I need to run an inductively coupled plasma test.”

Shean said, “Mass spectrometry. Well, we can do that.”

“I’m so pleased.”

“But-well, just curious-why that, if you’re analyzing ash?”

“For the metals, of course,” Amelia Sachs pointed out.

The CSU head tapped his forehead. “Trace metals in cigarette ash. Brilliant. I never thought of that.”

Rhyme said absently, “It’s the most definitive way to determine the brand and origin of cigarettes when all you have is ash. I vastly prefer a fleck of tobacco itself too, because then you can factor in desiccation and other absorbed trace substances. That can pinpoint location of storage and time.” He added a caveat, “Up to a point.”

Shean prepared the sample and ran the test and a short time later they had their answer.

Looking over the computer screen, Rhyme offered, “Zinc 351.18, iron 2785.74 and chromium 5.59. No arsenic. Yep, that’s Marlboro.”

“You know that?” Harutyun asked.

A shrug-one of the few gestures the criminalist was capable of-and one that he used with some frequency.

He announced, “I’ll say it’s likely that the same person was at both scenes. But remember, Person A could have been at the first site, smoking a Marlboro. Person B could have bummed one off him and set up the trap at the Mountain View Motel. Not likely but it could be. How long for the DNA?”

“Another few days.”

A grimace. “But it’s not any better in New York, of course. I don’t think you’ll find any, though. Your perp is smart. He probably lit it by blowing on the tip, not holding it in his lips. So, does this Edwin Sharp smoke?”

“He used to,” Dance said. “Still may sometimes but we don’t know.”

They couldn’t draw any conclusions from the boot print-really just the toe. Sachs studied the electrostatic print. “Agree that it’s probably a cowboy boot. Pretty common in New York a few years ago-line dancing was all the rage.” She added that Rhyme had compiled a footwear database but the electrostatic image was too fuzzy to give them a brand name.

“All right, the fishing line… nothing there, I’m afraid. ‘Generic’ is a word I dislike very much. Let’s look at the shell casings.”

Shean reiterated that he thought the gun at both the Blanton shooting and the Sheri Towne attack was probably the same.

“You can say ‘match,’” Rhyme said. “Won’t bite you, in this context. But where did the gun come from? Stolen from one of your officers, you were saying?”

“Possibly-Gabriel Fuentes. He’s been suspended.”

“I heard.”

“I wish we could tell. It might help incriminate Sharp. He was near Gabe’s car when the gun was stolen. But we don’t know for sure.”

“No? Let me have the close-ups of the extractor marks and scratches,” Rhyme said. “And the ones of the lands and grooves on the slugs.”

Shean placed them on a table for Rhyme to examine. “But we don’t have known samples from Gabe’s Glock. I asked him and-”

“I know you don’t.”

“Oh, right, otherwise we would have identified the gun.”

“Exactly.” Rhyme’s brow furrowed as he examined the pictures. “Sachs?”

Dance recalled that though they were both romantic and professional partners, they tended to refer to each other by their last names. Which she found rather charming.

Sachs studied the pictures too. Apparently she knew exactly what he was interested in. “I’d say four thousand.”

“Good,” Rhyme announced. Then: “I need the serial number of Fuentes’s gun.”

A fast computer search revealed it. Rhyme glanced at the number. “Okay, the gun was made four years ago by our talented friends in Austria. Call this Fuentes and ask him when he got it and how often he fired it.”

Harutyun made this call. He jotted notes and looked up. “You need anything else from Gabriel, Lincoln?”

“No. Not now. Maybe later. Don’t let him wander too far from his mobile.”

The answer was that he’d bought the weapon new-three years ago-and took it to the range twice a month or so. He would typically fire fifty rounds.

Rhyme gazed into the air over the local officers. “Fifty rounds, every two weeks, for three years means it’s been fired about thirty-nine hundred times. From the pictures of the shells and the slugs, Sachs estimated they came from a gun that had been fired about four thousand times. Good eye.” He glanced at her.

Sachs explained to the others, “The distension of the brass, cracks around the neck and the spread of the lands and grooves are typical of a gun fired with that frequency.”

Shean was nodding as if memorizing this. “So it is Gabe’s weapon.”

“Most likely,” Sachs said.

Rhyme called, “Microscope! Charlie, I need a ’scope.”

“Well, the scanning electron-”

“No, no, no. Obviously that’s not what I need. We’re not at the molecular level. Optics, optics!”