The Face of Death

'How was that so easy?' Barry asks.

'The magic word was 'necessary,' ' Callie says. 'Johnny won't tolerate wasted motion on his crime scene. But if something is needed from his team to clear a case, he'll work them for days.' She gives us a wry smile. 'I speak from experience.'

The diary is black, of course. Smooth black leather and small. It's not masculine or feminine. It's functional.

Blushing Dan the Photographer Man is here, camera ready.

'What we want is an image of each page, in sequence, large enough to be printed out on letter-sized paper and read.'

Dan nods. 'You want to photocopy the diary with the camera.'

'Exactly right,' Callie says.

Dan blushes, again. He coughs. This proximity to Callie seems to be overwhelming him. 'No--uh--problem,' he manages to stammer out. 'I have a spare one gigabyte memory card I can use and let you take with you.'

'All we need then, is someone to prop it open.' She holds up her hands, showing the surgical gloves she's already slipped on. 'That would be me.'

Dan calms down once he's back and safe behind his camera lens. Barry and I watch as he shoots. The room is quiet, punctuated by the sound of the camera firing and by Dan murmuring for Callie to turn the pages when needed.

I glimpse Sarah's handwriting and at last see a hint of femininity. It's precise without being prissy. A smooth, exacting cursive, written in-- surprise--black ink.

There's a lot of it. Page after page after page. I find myself wondering what a girl who surrounds herself with the color black writes about. I find myself wondering if I want to know.

This is a lifelong battle for me: the struggle to 'unknow' things. I am aware of the beauty of life, when it exists. But I'm also never un- aware of how terrible life can become, or how monstrous. Happiness, in my estimate, would be an easier state to achieve if I didn't have to reconcile these opposing forces, if I never had to ask the question:

'How can I be happy when I know, right now, at this very moment, that someone else is experiencing something terrible?'

I remember flying into Los Angeles at night with Matt and Alexa. We were coming home from a vacation. Alexa had the window seat and as we'd come down through the clouds, she'd gasped.

'Look, Mommy!'

I'd leaned over and looked through the window. I'd seen Los Angeles below, outlined in a sea of lights that stretched from horizon to horizon.

'Isn't it pretty?' Alexa had exclaimed.

I'd smiled. 'It sure is, honey.'

It had been pretty. But it was also terrifying. I knew right then, at that very moment, that sharks were swimming down there in that sea of lights. I knew that as Alexa smiled and goggled, women were getting raped down there, children were being molested, someone was screaming as they died too soon.

My dad once told me, 'Given a choice, the average man would rather smile than hear the truth.'

I had found that to be true, in victims, and in myself. It was all just wishful thinking, that hope of 'unknowing.' I would read the diary and I'd let that black cursive writing take me wherever it wanted to take me, and then I'd know whatever it wanted me to know.

The sound of the camera fills the room, startling me each time it goes off, like gunfire.

It's not quite nine o'clock when I head downstairs. John Simmons sees Barry and me and motions us over. He's holding a digital camera in his hand.

'I thought you'd be pleased to know,' he says, 'that we were able to lift a set of latent footprints from the tile. Very clean.'

'That's great,' I reply.

'Too bad there's no database to run it against,' Barry remarks.

'Even so, the prints are noteworthy.'

Barry frowns. 'How's that?'

Simmons hands over the camera. 'See for yourself.'

It's a digital 35mm SLR camera, with an LCD screen on the back so that you can preview the photos taken. The resolution on these cameras is significant enough these days that they are the primary tool used to record raised prints. The photo on the screen is small, but we can see what John is referring to.

'Are those scars?' I ask.

'I believe so.'

The sole of the foot is covered with them. They are all long and thin and horizontal, going from one side of the foot to the next, none of them lengthwise.

Barry hands the camera back to Simmons. 'You seen anything like that before?'

'I have, in fact. I've done volunteer work for Amnesty International on three occasions, assisting in postmortem examinations of possible torture victims as well as evidence collection from suspected torture sites. These scars resemble the kind created when the soles of the feet are caned or switched.'

I wince. 'I take it that's painful?'

'Excruciating. Done inexpertly--or expertly depending on your goal, I suppose--it can be crippling, but it is generally done to punish, not to maim.'

'These on both feet?' Barry asks.

'Both.'

We're silent, considering this turn of events. The possibility that our perpetrator had been tortured sometime in his life was germane to his profile, if nothing else.

'It fits with the picture of him as a disorganized offender,' I remark.

Even if other things don't.

'Caning of the feet is rare here,' Simmons says. 'Its use is predominant in South America and parts of the Middle East, as well as Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines.'

'Anything else we should know about?' Barry asks.

'Not as yet. We'll be capturing the contents of the filtration system, of course, so we'll have to wait and see.'

Forensic handling of a crime scene is a process of identification and individualization. Individualization occurs when a piece of evidence comes from a unique source. Fingerprints are individualized to a single person. Bullets can, in most cases, be individualized to a specific weapon. DNA is the ultimate in individualization. The vast majority of evidence can only be identified. Identification is the process of classifying evidence as coming from a common--but not unique--source. Metal shavings are found in the crushed skull of a victim. The shavings are examined and identified as a metal commonly used in making hammers. Identification. The paths can cross. We have a suspect. We check to see if the suspect owns a hammer. He does. Marks on the victim's skull match the claw of the suspect's hammer and further investigation finds the victim's DNA on the edges of the claw. We fingerprint the handle and find only the suspect's prints on it. Identification and individualization, back and forth, conspiring to seal his fate. It's a laborious process, one that requires not just technical expertise, but the ability to apply logic and connect the dots. I had observed the visible, the blood in the pool water, and surmised that our suspect took a swim. Callie processed this information, saw the wet tile, and led us to an invisible footprint.

The precision of Sherlock Holmes is a nice fantasy. The reality is that we are thinking vacuums. We suck up everything and then we parse it and hope we'll understand what we find.

I'm standing on the lawn with Barry, waiting for Callie to wrap up with Photographer Dan. It's been a long day, and the thinking vacuums are in there sucking away. Alan should be wrapping up soon. I ache to leave.

Barry pulls a pack of Marlboros from his front shirt pocket. My old brand, I think, wistful.