or fluid, whether or not the surface was wet or dry, and the likely age of the prints.
Since he would be dealing with dry stationery that had been kept out of direct sunlight for a number of years and quite possibly handled by several of the victim’s family members, Matt decided to start with a simple visual inspection of the documents. In the crime lab, he sat on a stool across from Claire Paley at a large examination table. Wearing gloves and using tweezers, they removed each piece of paper and envelope from its protective plastic sleeve and studied it under white light. The few latents revealed by the white light were immediately documented and recorded, but they would have to use ultraviolet light to bring out the invisible prints.
Matt looked across the table at Claire. “When we finish the visual, we’ll put everything under ultraviolet. Do we have an autopsy fingerprint card for Denise Riley?”
“Yes,” Claire said, “plus Chief Kerney provided fingerprint cards for Helen Muiz, her husband, and other members of her family.”
“If nothing else, the chief is very thorough,” Matt said gloomily. Many officers in the department, Matt included, weren’t happy with the idea of losing Kerney as their top cop. He’d restored professionalism and pride to an organization that had been badly mismanaged by his predecessor.
An hour into the ultraviolet scan, Matt looked at the stack of untouched documents enclosed in clear plastic sleeves. With the number of latents that were showing up on each piece of stationery, he estimated it would take several days to finish the job. He called a halt to the process.
“There’s no way we can get through all of this in less than two or three days,” he said.
“I agree,” Claire said. “What do you suggest?”
“There’s a barely visible latent on a protective clear plastic coin sleeve that might match up with a print from a fixed surface at the crime scene. But since it’s on a nonporous surface, we need to enhance it.”
Claire rose from her stool. “Let’s get started. We’ll use laser light first, and if that doesn’t work, there are a couple of other techniques we can try.”
Clayton sat at a small conference table in Kerney’s office at police headquarters, paging through the cold case file of the coin collection robbery that the Brisbane P.D. had faxed.
Across the table, Kerney was on the phone talking to federal officials at government agencies. Since arriving at headquarters, he’d been asking every relevant bureau within the State Department, Justice Department, and Homeland Security to do an expedited computer database search on Denise Riley’s aliases.
Clayton waited for Kerney to hang up and then quickly said, “The victim of the coin collection theft was, or is, Andrew Edgerton.”
Kerney raised an eyebrow. “Meaning?”
“The last entry in the case file is two years old, and Mr. Edgerton was not in good health at that time. If he is still alive, he’ll turn seventy-nine on May 18.”
“What was the date of the theft again?”
Clayton flipped back to the face sheet and read off the date.
Kerney had made the copies of the letters Denise had sent to Helen Muiz before taking the originals to Claire Paley. He went to his desk, fanned through them, and found Denise’s Australian correspondence.
“Denise was in Australia at the time of the heist,” he said. “Does the case file give a phone number for Andrew Edgerton?”
“It does.”
“Read it off to me.”
“What time is it in Australia?” Clayton asked.
“I don’t know,” Kerney replied. “If it’s the middle of the night and Edgerton is dead, it won’t matter that I might have disturbed him. If he’s still alive, maybe he’ll be happy I woke him up and reminded him of the fact. Give me the number.”
Clayton read it off. Kerney wrote it down, looked up the international calling code for Australia in the phone book, dialed the number on his desk phone, and motioned to Clayton to turn on the speaker phone that sat in the center of the conference table.
Kerney looked at his watch. It was three o’clock in the afternoon, which meant it was sometime tomorrow morning in Australia. He listened for the call to go through, and when he heard the distinctive ringtone, he hung up the handset and joined Clayton at the conference table.
A man with an elderly voice answered the call and Kerney asked if he was speaking to Andrew Edgerton.
“That’s right.”
Kerney introduced himself as the Santa Fe, New Mexico, police chief, told Edgerton that Sergeant Clayton Istee was also on the line, and asked if Edgerton would mind talking about the theft of his coin collection.
“Have you found the collection?” Edgerton asked. “Did the thieves take it to the United States?”
“We only found one coin,” Kerney replied, “so I can’t tell you if the coins were smuggled into the country.”
“Which one did you find?”
Kerney described the Saint-Gaudens in detail.
“A very nice gold coin,” Edgerton said. “Probably worth a lot more now than what the insurance company reimbursed me. Don’t send it to me. The insurance company owns it now.”
“I understand that, Mr. Edgerton. Would you mind if we ask you some questions about the robbery?”
“Go ahead, but I’ll tell you right now I’ve been over all of this a dozen times or more and it hasn’t done a bit of good.”
Kerney and Clayton took turns asking Edgerton questions, and his answers were consistent with the facts recorded in the case file. The night of the robbery, Edgerton, a widower, had locked all the doors and windows to his house, armed his home security system, and gone to bed around ten-thirty. Just after midnight, a masked, armed man woke him and ordered him to open the safe in the downstairs library. Edgerton did as he was told and the robber cleaned out the contents, which consisted solely of the coin collection. The robber tied Edgerton up using duct tape and left by a rear door.
“There were two of them,” Edgerton said. “I’m sure of it. When the thief with the gun was leaving my house, I heard a car engine start up. He had a wheelman.”
Clayton smiled at Edgerton’s use of crime story slang. “But you didn’t see the driver.”
“No, and as I said, I didn’t really see the man with the gun. He was masked.”
“In your statement you said he was slender in build and about five-eight or five-nine in height,” Kerney said.
“That’s right. But he was wearing one of those ski masks so I didn’t get to see the color of his hair or any of his features.”
“His eyes?” Kerney asked.
“I was too scared to notice.”
“What did he sound like?” Kerney asked.
“An average bloke,” Edgerton replied.
“Australian?”
“That’s right.”
“Had there been any other recent robberies in your neighborhood?” Clayton asked.
“No. The police who investigated told me that I’d been targeted because of my coin collection. They talked to everyone who knew about it, and that wasn’t very many people as I tend to keep my affairs to myself.”
“A wise thing to do,” Clayton said. “Did anything out of the ordinary occur in your neighborhood prior to the robbery?”
“Out of the ordinary?”
“Door-to-door salesmen coming around, large parties that might have attracted strangers to the neighborhood, people asking for donations to worthy causes.”
“I can’t recall anything like that.”
“Mr. Edgerton,” Kerney said, consulting the list of names that Claire Paley had deciphered from Denise Riley’s letters. “I’d like to read you some names and have you tell me if you either know the person, or if the name sounds familiar.”
