Jeffery Deaver - The Broken Window

“I know what they are, rookie.”

“Oh, sure. Right. And venous distention in the scalp and face. This is the probable murder weapon.” He held up a bag containing a length of rope about four feet long.

“Mel?”

Cooper took the rope and carefully opened it over a large sheet of clean newsprint, dusting to dislodge trace. He then examined what he’d found and took a few samples of the fibers.

“What?” Rhyme asked impatiently.

“Checking.”

The rookie took refuge in his notes again. “As far as the rape, it was vaginal and anal. Postmortem, the tour doctor thought.”

“Posing of the body?”

“No…but one thing I noticed, Detective,” Pulaski said. “All her fingernails were long, except one. It was cut really short.”

“Blood?”

“Yes. It was cut right down to the quick.” He hesitated. “Probably premortem.”

So 522’s a bit of a sadist, Rhyme reflected. “He likes pain.”

“Check the other crime-scene photos, from the earlier rape.”

The young officer hurried off to find the pictures. He shuffled through them and found one, squinting. “Look at this, Detective. Yeah, he cut off a fingernail there too. The same finger.”

“Our boy likes trophies. That’s good to know.”

Pulaski nodded enthusiastically. “And think about it-the wedding ring finger. Probably something about his past. Maybe his wife left him, maybe he was neglected by his mother or a mother figure-”

“Good point, Pulaski. Reminds me-we forgot something else.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“Did you check your horoscope this morning before we started the investigation?”

“My…?”

“Oh, and who got the tea-leaf-reading assignment? I forget.”

Sellitto was chuckling. Pulaski was blushing.

Rhyme snapped, “Psychological profiling isn’t helpful. What’s helpful about the nail is knowing that Five Twenty-Two now has in his possession a DNA connection to the crime. Not to mention that if we can decide what kind of implement he used to remove the trophy, we might be able to trace the purchase and find him. Evidence, rookie. Not psychobabble.”

“Sure, Detective. Got it.”

“‘Lincoln’ is fine.”

“Okay. Sure.”

“The rope, Mel?”

Cooper was scrolling through the fiber database. “Generic hemp. Available in thousands of retail outlets around the country.” He ran a chemical analysis. “No trace.”

Crap.

“What else, Pulaski?” Sellitto asked.

He went through the list. Fishing line, binding her hands, and cutting through the skin, which resulted in the bleeding. Duct tape covered her mouth. The tape was Home Depot brand, of course, torn off the roll 522 had ditched; the ragged ends matched perfectly. Two unopened condoms were discovered near the body, the young officer explained, holding up the bag. They were Trojan-Enz brand.

“And here are the swabs.”

Mel Cooper took the plastic evidence bags and checked the vaginal and rectal swabs. The M.E.’s office would give a more detailed report but it was clear that among the substances were traces of a spermicidal lubricant similar to that used with the condoms. There was no semen anywhere at the scene.

Another swab, from the floor, where Pulaski found the treadmark of a running shoe, revealed beer. It proved to be Miller brand. The electrostatic image of the tread was, naturally, a size-13 Sure-Track right shoe-the same that 522 had ditched in the trash can. “And the owners of the loft had no beer, right? You did search the kitchen and pantry?”

“Right, yes, sir. And I didn’t find any.”

Lon Sellitto was nodding. “Bet you ten bucks that Miller is DeLeon’s brew of choice.”

“I won’t take you up on that one, Lon. What else was there?”

Pulaski held up a plastic bag containing a brown fleck that he’d found just above the victim’s ear. Analysis revealed it to be tobacco. “What’s the story with that, Mel?”

The tech’s examination revealed that it was a fine-cut piece, the sort used in cigarettes, but it was not the same as the Tareyton sampler in the database. Lincoln Rhyme was one of the few nonsmokers in the country who decried the bans on smoking; tobacco and ash were wonderful forensic links between criminal and crime scene. Cooper couldn’t tell the brand. He decided, though, that because the tobacco was so desiccated it was probably old.

“Did Myra smoke? Or the people in the loft?”

“I didn’t see any evidence of it. And I did what you’re always telling us. I smelled the scene when I got there. No smell of smoking.”

“Good.” Rhyme was pleased with the search so far. “What’s the friction-ridge situation?”

“Checked fingerprint samples of the homeowners-from the medicine cabinet and things in the bedside table.”

“So you weren’t fudging. You really did read my book.” Rhyme had devoted a number of paragraphs in his forensic text to the importance of collecting control prints at crime scenes and where to best find them.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m so pleased. Did I make any royalties?”

“I borrowed my brother’s.” Pulaski’s twin was a cop down at the Sixth Precinct in Greenwich Village.

“Let’s hope he paid for it.”

Most of the prints found in the loft were the couples’-which they determined from the samples. The others were probably from visitors but it wasn’t impossible that 522 had been careless. Cooper scanned all of them into the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. The results would be available soon.

“Okay, tell me, Pulaski, what was your impression of the scene?”

The question seemed to throw him. “Impression?”

“Those are the trees.” Rhyme lowered his eyes toward the evidence bags. “What did you think of the forest?”

The young officer thought. “Well, I did have a thought. It’s stupid, though.”

“You know I’ll be the first one to say if you’ve come up with a stupid theory, rookie.”

“It’s just, when I first got there my impression was that the struggle seemed off.”

“How do you mean?”

“See, her bike was chained to a lamppost outside the loft. Like she’d parked it, not thinking anything was wrong.”

“So he didn’t just grab her on the street.”

“Right. And to get into the loft you went through a gate and then down a long corridor to the front door. It was real narrow and it was packed with things the couple stored outside-jars and cans, sports things, some stuff to be recycled, tools for their garden. But nothing was disturbed.” He tapped another photo. “But look inside-that’s where the struggle began. The table and the vases. Right by the front door.” His voice went soft again. “Looks like she fought real hard.”

Rhyme nodded. “All right. So Five Twenty-Two lures her to the loft, smooth-talking her. She locks up the bike, walks down the corridor and they go into the loft. She stops in the entryway, sees he’s lying and tries to get out.”

He considered this. “So he must’ve known enough about Myra to put her at ease, and make her feel that she could trust him… Sure, think about it: He’s got all this information-about who people are, what people buy, when they’re on vacation, whether they have alarms, where they’re going to be… Not bad, rookie. Now we know something concrete about him.”

Pulaski struggled to keep a smile off his face.

Cooper’s computer dinged. He read the screen. “No hits on the prints. Zero.”

Rhyme shrugged, not surprised. “I’m interested in this idea-that he knows so much. Somebody give DeLeon Williams a call. Was Five Twenty-Two right about all the evidence?”

Sellitto’s brief conversation revealed that, yes, Williams wore size-13 Sure-Track shoes, he regularly bought Trojan-Enz brand condoms, he had forty-pound fishing line, he drank Miller beer and he’d recently been to Home Depot for duct tape and hemp rope to use as a tie-down.