Chris Mooney - The Secret Friend

The place was trashed. Computer monitors were smashed against the floor, desk drawers overturned, contents spilled everywhere. Plants had been thrown against the white walls, some of which were spray-painted with bright neon swastikas and the phrases 'Jews Go Home' and 'White Power'.

The patrolman, short with thick shoulders and a doughy face, stifled a yawn. 'Assholes came in here and, as you can see, tossed the place to shit,' he told Bryson. 'The little bastards were pretty smart. They cut the wires for the alarm.'

'Why do you think kids did this?'

'Every time we get one of these hate-crime things, teenagers are always behind it. Probably one of those Aryan Brotherhood groups from Southie. They came here last year, broke into a synagogue and spray-painted the same lovely phrases all over the walls. It's an initiation thing.'

'And now they're ransacking office buildings?'

'Hey, I'm just throwing out ideas. You're the detective, so why I don't let you go and detect?'

'Who called it in?'

'One of the plough guys,' the patrolman said. 'The two of 'em got here this morning at around nine. When they made their way around to the front, they saw the door, took a quick peek inside, called it in and here we are.'

Bryson nodded, looking at a security camera mounted against the ceiling.

'You can forget that,' the patrolman said. 'The tapes were removed from the recorders.'

'Show me.'

The door to the security room had been pried open. Given the marks, Darby suspected something like a crowbar was used.

Like the lobby, the small room had been ransacked – recorders, computer monitors and cheaply made pressboard bookcases were smashed against the floor covered in hundreds of DVDs stored inside clear jewel cases. Some of the DVDs were smashed into pieces. Darby noticed pieces of equipment that transferred VHS tape to DVD.

Bryson picked up one of the cases. It was neatly labelled with the building's name, month and year of the recording.

'How much you want to bet the recording we need is missing?' Bryson asked.

'That's a sucker's bet,' Darby said. 'Still, we should get people here to catalogue the DVDs and see what's missing.'

'I'll make the call. We're going to have to process this. I'll call Ops, get some people here.'

'I'm going to get back to the lab. I'd also like to look at Chen's place.'

'She's renting in Natick. They have a key. I'll let them know you'll be calling.'

'I'd like to view last night's security tape.'

'I already made you a copy. I put it in the overnight drop-off.' Bryson sighed as he tossed the DVD case onto the floor. 'I'll have patrol drive you into town.'

The lab's overnight drop-off box contained only one item: a sealed padded mailer. Darby saw her name written across the front. She opened the mailer on her way to the conference room.

The VHS security tape showed, in grainy colour, Emma Hale's parking garage. Sitting on the edge of the table, Darby watched a man with short black hair, pale skin and a black wool coat walk quickly across the garage to the delivery elevator. He pressed the button and waited, his back facing the camera. The man's hair colour and clothing matched the intruder she had met last night – Malcolm Fletcher.

When the elevator doors opened, Fletcher stepped inside and moved to the right, out of the camera's view. The doors shut.

If Fletcher was working for Hale, he wouldn't have to sneak inside the building.

Darby rewound the tape and watched it again.

What were you doing inside the penthouse? What were you looking for?

She watched the tape three more times and, failing to find anything useful, left the conference room.

Coop and Keith Woodbury were working inside a small evidence room. Pieces of Emma Hale's jewellery sat inside a clear fuming cabinet slowly filling with a cyanoacrylate vapour. Off-white latent fingerprints appeared on the jewellery.

'How's the humidity level?' Coop asked.

Woodbury, tall and sleek, with a shaved head and a runner's build, examined the gauge. 'It looks good,' he said, his voice, as always soft and pleasant. He saw Darby, said hello and then turned his attention back to the gauge.

Coop put down his clipboard. 'The AFIS results came back – no good news, I'm afraid,' he told her. 'The partial thumb we found on the jewellery drawer's metal handle not only failed to find a corresponding match, it couldn't even find a probable match. We'll need a better-quality print.'

'Any luck with the jewellery?'

'We've only done one tray. So far, all the prints belong to Emma Hale. It's going to take a few days to get through this.'

Darby nodded. Fuming with cyanoacrylate, the main chemical in superglue, yielded great latent prints but the process was slow. Then there was the additional step of dusting the prints to preserve them so they could be lifted.

'How did the meeting with the father go?' Coop asked.

Darby hopped up on the back counter and filled them in on her talk with Hale and the subsequent burglary.

'Nice timing,' Coop said. 'You think Fletcher knows about the missing necklace?'

'The only way he could know about it is if he had access to our evidence file,' Darby said. 'Hale doesn't have a copy.'

'So what the hell was Fletcher doing there?'

'I have no idea. I want to talk about the Virgin Mary statue.'

'No prints.'

'I know,' Darby said. 'Either our man wiped it clean before he placed it in the pocket or he was wearing gloves. But wearing gloves while holding a sewing needle would be tricky, don't you think?'

'Depends on the type of gloves he was wearing. If they were ski gloves or ones made of thick leather then, yeah, it would be hard to hold a sewing needle and thread the pocket. But if he was wearing latex…' Coop shrugged.

'What if he wasn't wearing gloves at all?' Darby said. 'What if he sewed the pocket shut with his bare hands?'

'I see where you're going. Trying to lift a latent print from clothing… it rarely happens. Fabric doesn't hold a print's ridge characteristics.'

'That's true. Generally,' Darby said. 'Chen's running pants are made of nylon, and the area around the pocket was spotted with blood. What if he left a print?'

'Then the question becomes how to lift it without damaging the blood sample for DNA testing.'

'There are some chemicals we can mix together that won't damage the core STR loci.'

Woodbury, who had been quietly listening, spoke up. 'If you go that route, I wouldn't recommend using a peroxidase-reaction chemical. For one, they're not easy to use. Second, there's a toxicity issue.'

'What about using a solution based on a general protein-staining dye?' Darby asked.

Woodbury thought it over.

'That would be safer,' he said after a moment. 'I'll have to do some research and see if I can find the appropriate, ah, recipe.'

'And we'll have to wait until the clothes are dry,' Coop added.

'I want to examine Chen's skin,' Darby said. 'I want to see if our man touched her with his bare hands.'

'I'd say the chances of a latent print surviving that long underwater are slim to none.'

'Coop, what's the first rule you told me when it comes to fingerprints?'

'There are no rules.'

'Exactly,' Darby said, hopping off the table. 'Let me tell you what I have in mind…'

Coop needed to finish processing the jewellery inside the fuming cabinet. He agreed to meet them at the morgue. Keith Woodbury helped Darby carry the items she needed.

Judith Chen's nude body lay on a steel table. While Woodbury set up the equipment in another room, Darby plugged in the portable Luma-Lite and, wearing a pair of orange-tinted goggles, moved the wand of light over Chen's body.

At 180 nanometres, Darby found diluted bloodstains on the woman's face and chest. On Chen's forehead was a smear shaped like the letter 't.' Darby thought the smear resembled a crucifix.