J. Bertrand - Pattern of Wounds

“For certain?” I clench my fist and all but pump it in the air.

“I’ve double-checked Dr. Green’s measurements and they’re consistent with this blade. She did a great job on those estimations, by the way. I couldn’t have given you better.”

“So this is absolutely the murder weapon?”

“In my opinion, yes.”

“And what about the fresher sample? If it belongs to the killer-”

He shakes his head. “The second sample is from a woman, too. Your DNA section ran it through CODIS and came back with nothing, so whoever she is, she’s not in the database.”

“Maybe the prints are hers, then.” I can hear the disappointment in my own voice. A couple of days ago, finding a woman’s blood on the knife and being told that the ridge density of the prints might suggest a female, my mind would have raced to Joy Hill. But Carter didn’t wrestle the knife away from a fifty-something woman.

“You’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, I would start checking on where the knife came from. If it’s some kind of custom piece, there are bound to be records of who bought it.”

“Thanks,” I say. “I’ll get right on that.”

Apart from the number, the only word on the blade is SCHARF. An Internet search from Bridger’s desk pulls up a custom knife maker in California named Wade Scharf. The photos on his site look vaguely reminiscent of the murder weapon, but I can’t find any exact matches. I dial the phone number on his contact page and reach his wife. She informs me in a creaky elderly voice that Wade is out in the shop. After I identify myself, she volunteers to fetch him.

“A homicide?” he asks, like he’s unfamiliar with the term.

I describe the knife and answer a couple of his follow-ups.

“That sounds like one of my Old School Bowies. Does it have a coffin handle?”

“You’re gonna have to tell me what that is.”

“If you hold it with the point down, the handle swells toward the top and has diagonal steps on either side, like a coffin from the eighteen hundreds.”

“Then yes, I think it does.”

“All right. Let me get my paperwork.” Over the line I can hear him opening and closing metal filing cabinets, digging through papers. “That was a limited edition I did four or five years ago. Some of them were snapped up as preorders and some went to dealers. There’s a dealer in Houston I do a lot of business with, and I’m betting your knife is one of those.” He hums to himself while scanning a list, rattling names off under his breath. “Yep, I’m right. The dealer’s name is Sam Dearborn. Here’s his number if you’ve got a pen handy.”

I write Dearborn’s number down and thank Scharf for his help.

“This doesn’t sit too well with me,” he says. “People collect my work, you know. The prices are sky high. I’d bet most of my blades are never used at all-certainly not for something like this.”

“There’s a first time for everything,” I say.

Getting in touch with Sam Dearborn is a little harder. The number rings to a voicemail box informing me business hours end at five. I leave a message for him to call me back. Searching the computer again, I find Dearborn’s website, which also lists a mobile number. I dial and wait.

“Dearborn Gun and Blade,” he says.

I explain who I am and tell him Scharf pointed me in his direction. “You received some knives from a limited edition he did, some coffin-handled Old School Bowies. I’m trying to find out who bought number twenty-nine.”

“I’m not sure I can help you with that.”

“This is a murder investigation, Mr. Dearborn.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I want to help. But if I remember correctly, I had five of those and sold them at gun and knife shows. I move a lot of product through my booth that way. If they paid with a credit card, I might have a record, but a lot of guys will pay in cash. Not to mention, collectibles trade hands. I know a lot of people liquidating collections in this economy, so there’s no guarantee the person I sold it to is who you’re looking for. In fact, I’d go out on a limb and say he’s not. My customers are a pretty select group.”

“Can you check your records and get back to me? This is an urgent request.”

“Of course,” he says. “It might not be until tomorrow. I’m already gone for the day.”

“Maybe you could go back to the office and take care of this? Time is of the essence.”

He lets out a huff of consternation. “I guess so,” he says. “Should I call you on this number?”

“That would be fine.”

After driving back from the medical examiner’s office, I zone out in my cubicle for a few minutes, eyes closed, resting my head in my hands. Then I call Charlotte again and make sure she’s all right. She says she is, but adds that what happened is just beginning to sink in.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight.”

“Don’t even say that word. Sleep. I’m gonna come see you later. Tell Ann not to worry-I’ll make sure I don’t have a tail.”

We laugh together, and then Bascombe comes up behind me.

“Gotta go,” I tell her.

It takes ten minutes to bring the lieutenant up to speed on the case, and another ten to relate the highlights of my New Orleans trip. He’s intrigued by the story Bourgeois told about the envelopes, annoyed that we conducted the interview while a drugged prostitute was tied up and bleeding down the hall, and uninterested in Gene Fontenot’s protestations of innocence in the Fauk confession. I leave out his admission of guilt in the recent case.

“So what are you doing now?”

“Waiting,” I say. “The crime lab’s supposed to be getting back to me on the prints, and I’ve got the knife dealer checking his receipts from the gun shows.”

“Have you briefed Aguilar?”

“I was just about to.”

“Well, do it.”

When I poke my head over his cubicle wall, there’s no sign of Aguilar, but the photos from my house, this morning’s crime scene, are spread in a semicircle. The forced back door, the splintered bathroom entry, washed-out flash photography of Carter’s injuries, and of the bruising on Charlotte’s face. The knife. I pull the last one from the stack. If Carter was right about the man wearing gloves, then the prints on the handle probably belong to someone else. If the expert’s speculation is right, they’re bound to be from the same woman whose dried blood was under the grip scales. The coffin handle. I turn the photo so that the point aims down. The stag handles are bone-colored with rough furrows of brown. The prints would have come from the smooth parts on either side of the exposed tang.

“Detective.”

I turn to find Eric Castro in the cubicle entrance, a report clutched in both hands like he’s afraid of it getting away.

“You have the fingerprint results?”

He nods. “The criminal databases came back with nothing.”

“Figures.” I rub my eyes with the heel of my palm, suddenly tired.

“But. .” he says. “When we ran them against the immigration database, we got a hit.”

“Give me that.”

I snatch the report away, scanning the page while Castro peers over my shoulder. The original check went through HPD to the Sheriff’s Department and from there to DPS. I flip the page and find the immigration results, complete with Green Card photos of a fair-skinned, blue-eyed blonde in her twenties and a full set of prints.

“The name, the name-”

Castro points to a line near the top, then smiles. “How you’re supposed to pronounce that, I don’t know.”

I say the words out loud: “ Agnieszka Oliszewski .”

The Polish grad student who lived with Joy Hill, the one who had a relationship with Dr. Hill’s husband. What were her prints doing on the handle of the knife? What was her blood doing under the scales?