Ridley Pearson - The Angel Maker

The ID Unit continued its meticulous examination of the crime scene. The first round involved the detailed photographing, in varying degrees of enlargement and detail, of all angles and aspects relevant to the possible crime. Several general shots were taken, followed by increasingly specific studies of the carpet, the chair Sharon had apparently sat in, the table top, and the fixtures.

The area was vacuumed next-excluding the carpet-for fibers, using small, hand-held, filter-specific vacuum cleaners. Each filter was removed and labeled and then bagged in a white paper bag. Plastic bags were rarely used by Hairs And Fibers because of their static charge.

While several of the team continued to measure and photograph the "impressions" in the carpet, others began carefully dusting surfaces with dark and light powders using soft animal-hair brushes. Any developed prints were first photographed and then "lifted" using wide strips of transparent packing tape. The powder, print and all, came up with the lift, which was then mounted on card stock, labeled, and set aside.

All this while Boldt, consulting Daphne, wrote up a detailed first officer's report, describing the scene exactly as he had found it, his suspicions, and his findings. The report came to two single-spaced legal pages written longhand. They both signed and dated it for the specific hour.

Bernie Lofgrin ate too much and exercised too little. He had the coloring of an Irishman and the temper of a Scot. He wore glasses as thick as ashtrays and suspenders with full-frontal nudes hand painted onto them. When Bernie tugged them this way and that, the nudes did a belly dance. Everyone called him the Professor. He ran his squad like a Scout leader and put away more beer at The Big joke than an alumnus on homecoming weekend. Over the past year he had become a regular during Boldt's piano sets. He had joined the Boldt-Dixon jazz record exchange-taping each other's albums. Bemie's collection leaned toward drummers and trombone players.

Boldt knew that with this being a Sunday it should have been only a skeleton-crew ID unit. But Lofgrin had come himself and had brought additional overtime help as a personal favor.

As he approached, his thick glasses were aimed at Boldt like unfocused binoculars. He seemed to have eyes the size of fried eggs. "One of the two suspects wears a shoe size eight-and-a-half wide. Maybe D, maybe E. The other suspect, some kind of running shoe. The way the nap in the carpet stood up for us, these guys might as well have left us plaster impressions. We might even have a make on the manufacturer of those running shoes by sometime tomorrow. Wee got a distinctive, triangular tread pattern in a couple of takes. Size thirteen, by the way. Big Foot. Fibers on the table vacuumed up just fine. Crisp paper by the look of it. We got another small piece under the table. Light blue ink on it reads" USA/ as in 'printed in. ' " "Was that what the guy was waving a microphone over?" Boldt asked. "You jazz guys think anything with a wire running into it is a microphone. That device measures low-level radioactivity."

"A Geiger counter?"

"Like that, yeah. The reason being that I suspected it was the paper covering to a Band-Aid or gauze, something like that. That paper has a distinctive look. That Geiger counter-as you call it picked up a charge consistent with my suspicions."

"Radioactivity?"

"It's how they sterilize them. Band-Aids, gauze, nearly every selfcontained disposable item in a hospital-they zap 'em with lowlevel radioactivity after they're packaged-that way they can guarantee sterility."

"Live and learn."

"Stick with me, kid. Evidence points to two possibilities: real careful junkies-doubtful; or a doctor-more likely."

"A doctor?"

"We've got some real obvious residual fluidsdried up you understand-discovered both on the arm of the chair and beneath the table. We got a good photo of the drip pattern. My guess is it was squirted. Size of the droplets suggest-"

"A syringe." Boldt interrupted. "Either that or this guy is the original needledick and he came all over that chair." He smiled. "We'll get all this shit off to the state lab. Might have that blood you found typed sometime tomorrow," he said, answering Boldt's thoughts before he could voice them. "Mr. Eight-and-a-half-wide was carrying some kind of flatbottomed case, fourteen' by eighteen inches."

"Like a doctor's bag?"

"That's my guess, yes." Bernie went on. "Big Foot, the guy with the running shoes, was carrying a laptop computer. He set it down next to the chair and gave us enough of an impression for an educated guess that that's what it was, although you can't take that one to the bank. If you bring in these two in the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, I may be able to lift some of these carpet fibers from the edges of their shoes. It's a cheap synthetic, loose weave, real prone to shedding. The static should hold the fibers on the shoes for a while. As to your idea that maybe the person in that chair was dragged out of the room, it's possible but we're not likely to prove it. Something was dragged-I can testify to that-and it had two legs or feet or posts, but that's as close as we'll get. Our other vacuum samples could give us a hell of a lot more to work with. Stay tuned." He slapped Boldt on the arm and returned to his crew.

Boldt looked around at an anxious Daphne, who had just returned from interviewing the neighbors in the apartment houses. He waved her over. "Nothing," she said. "Fourteen families of people and no one saw a thing!" He asked her to call the city's 911 dispatch, Sharon's doctor, ambulance services, and the two closest area hospitals, inquiring whether on the previous day Sharon had sought medical attention. "What's UP?"

"The Professor has uncovered some evidence that points to either a drug deal or a doctor."

"Not drugs, Lou. Not Sharon. I know her past says otherwise, but I know the woman."

"Would I have you calling hospitals if I suspected a drug deal?"

She eased noticeably. "But if she didn't call an ambulance, then a drug deal is easier to believe."

"Not for me it isn't."

"Daffy, somehow two people convinced a streetwise woman to open her door for them. How? It also now appears that somehow she was further convinced to roll up her sleeve for them. You know Bob Proctor's reputation. It's going to be our job to disprove any street-drug connection. The state lab will have a lot to say about that. But if we found her admitted to an area hospital, we'd all feel a hell of a lot better."

"That's not the way Agnes reports it. She says she was kidnapped."

"I know that, Daffy."

"Lou?" The Professor, Bernie Lofgrin, called out, kneeling by one of the chairs. Boldt joined him there. "You're the quintessential king of no coincidences," Lofgrin said. "Am I right?"

"So?"

"So we did the lab work-up on the Cynthia Chapman clothing-Matthews' runaway. "Kay?"

"Okay." Boldt felt his pulse quicken. Why would the Professor bring up Cindy Chapman now?

Lofgrin, who was wearing a pair of jeweler's loupes clipped to his already thick glasses, found a magnifying glass in a bag and handed it to Boldt. "Get a load of this," he said.

He pointed. Boldt focused the glass onto the spot indicated. A clump of animal hairs clung to the fabric of the chair. Under the glass they looked like pick-up-sticks. "What do you see?" Lofgrin asked confidently. "Animal hairs," Boldt replied. "A pile of them."

"Notice the extremely long white ones? See how much longer they are than the others? They're unusually long. We lifted similar hairs off Chapman's clothes." He made a face at Boldt. A lab guy like Lofgrin would never use the word identical. In the scientific world, identical rarely existed. "What we've got here is a visual cross-match."

Lofgrin's magnified eyes looked like two ventilated beach balls.