Ed McBain - Pusher

They did not know that none of these men was the one who'd killed Maria. They could not have known that Maria's murderer had worn gloves until he'd climbed into bed with her that night. They did not know, and so they passed the prints on to the detectives, who checked them through I.E. and then indulged in a time-consuming round-up of available possible killers, all of whom had readily accessible (and generally true) alibis. Some of the prints had been left by persons who had never had a brush with the police. The I.E. could not identify those prints. Those men were never pulled in for questioning.

Considering the nature of the murder room, the lab boys were not surprised to find a good many naked footprints here and there, especially in the dust-covered corners near the bed. Unfortunately, the I.E. did not keep an active footprint file. These footprints then were simply put away for possible comparison with suspects later on. One of the footprints, unsurprisingly, had been left by Maria Hernandez.

The lab boys could find no usable shoe impressions in the room.

They found many head hairs and several pubic hairs on the bloodstained sheets of the bed. They also found semen stains. The blanket that had been on the bed was vacuumed, and the dust collected on filter paper. The dust was then examined and analyzed carefully. The technicians found nothing in the dust that proved helpful to them.

They found one thing in the room that was of possible real value.

A feather.

Now, the work they performed in that room may sound very simple and very unstrenuous, especially when all they could turn up was a lousy little feather, a handful of unimportant latents, and a few soleprints, and some hairs, and some blood, and some semen.

Really now! How much work could all that have involved?

Well, a semen stain looks like a geographical map and has the feel of a starched area. Unfortunately, looks alone are not enough for the purposes of identification. The suspected stain had to be packed. It had to be packed so that no friction ensued, because semen stains are brittle and can fracture into tiny, easily lost pieces. Friction could also break the spermatozoa. In other words, the stain could not be rolled, and it could not be folded, and it could not be haphazardly tossed into a bag of old clothes. It had to be packed so that its sides were absolutely free of friction of any sort, and this took time and trouble.

When the suspect stain reached the laboratory, its real examination began.

The first microchemical test it underwent was called the Florence reaction test, wherein a small part of the stain was dissolved in a solution of 1.56 grains of iodide of potassium, 2.54 grams of pure crystalline iodine and 30 cc. of distilled water. The test showed only that there was a probability of semen in the stain. It showed this because brown and rhombic-shaped Florence semen crystals appeared under the microscope. Unfortunately, however, similar crystals could have been obtained with either mucus or saliva, and so the test was not conclusive. But it did admit to a probability, and so the second test was performed, and the second test was the Puranen reaction test.

The Puranen reagent, into which a part of the stain extracted with several drops of saline was placed, consisted of a five-percent solution of 2, 4-dinitro-l-naphthol-7-sulfonic acid, flavianic acid. The stain portion, the saline and the solution were put into a micro tube, and the tube in turn put into a refrigerator for several hours. At the end of that time a yellowish precipitate of spermine flavianate was visible at the bottom of the tube. This precipitate was put under the microscope, and the all-powerful eye revealed crosslike crystals characteristic of seminal fluid.

And then, of course, the further microscopic examination included a search for at least several spermheads— defined by shape and staining—with necks attached. Luckily, the stain had not been changed by either friction or putrefaction. Had it been so altered, the search for the presence of spermatozoa might have been even more time-consuming and less fruitful.

So that's what they did with one stain. It consumed the major part of the day. Nor was it very exciting work. They were not searching for elusive cold germs. They were not seeking the cure for cancer. They were simply trying to compile a list of facts that might lead to the killer of Maria Hernandez or that, at a later date, might help to identify a suspect positively.

And if these men devoted long hours to the death of one junkie, another man was devoting long hours to the life of another junkie.

The junkie happened to be his son.

Peter Byrnes would never know how close he had come to washing his hands of the whole matter. He had fought first with the idea that the entire concept was a hoax. My son a drug addict ? he had asked, my son ? My son's fingerprints on an alleged murder weapon ? No, he had told himself, it is a lie, a complete lie from start to finish. He would seek out this lie, pull it from beneath its rock, force it to crawl into the sunshine where he could step upon it. He would confront his son with the lie, and together they would destroy it.

But he had confronted his son, and he had known even before he asked "Are you a drug addict?" that his son was indeed a drug addict, and that a portion of the lie was not a lie. The knowledge had at once shocked and disgusted him, even though he had somehow expected it. For a lesser man than Byrnes, for a lesser cop than Byrnes, the knowledge might have been less devastating. But Byrnes despised crime, and Byrnes despised punks, and he had learned that his son was a punk engaged in criminal activities. And they had faced each other in their silent living room, and Byrnes had talked logically and sensibly, Byrnes had outlined the entire predicament to his son, never once allowing his disgust to rise into his throat, never once crying out against this punk criminal who was his son, never once saying the words of banishment.

His instinct told him to throw this person out into the street. This was an instinct nurtured over the years, an instinct that was an ingrained part of Byrnes' character.

But there was a deeper instinct, an instinct shared at fires in paleolithic times, when men clasped sons against the night, and the instinct had been passed down through the blood of man, and it coursed through the veins of Peter Byrnes, and Byrnes could think only He is my son .

And so he had talked levelly and calmly, exploding only once or twice, but even then exploding only with impatience and not allowing the disgust to overrule his mind.

His son was an addict.

Irrevocably, irreconcilably, his son was an addict. The caller had not lied on that score.

The second half of the lie turned out to be true, too. Byrnes checked his son's fingerprints against those that had been found on the syringe, and the fingerprints matched. He revealed this information to no one in the department, and the concealment left him feeling guilty and somehow contaminated.

The lie, then, had not been a lie at all.

It had started out as a two-part falsehood, and had turned into a shining, shimmering truth.

But what about the rest? Had Larry argued with Hernandez on the afternoon of the boy's death? And if he had, were not the implications clear? Were not the implications that Larry Byrnes had killed Aníbal Hernandez perfectly clear?

Byrnes could not believe the implications.

His son had turned into something he could not easily understand, something he had perhaps never understood and might never understand—but he knew his son was not a murderer.

And so, on that Thursday, December 21st, he waited for the man to call again, as he had promised; and he bore the additional burden now of a new homicide, the death of Aníbal's sister. He waited all that day, and no call came, and when he went home in the afternoon, it was to a task he dreaded.