Karin Slaughter - Fractured

"Is there anything special about the brand or the watermark or-"

"Generic as a pair of loafers."

Faith decided that hiding her ignorance was only punishing herself. "I'm not really familiar with chemical processing. Why can't we just dust the paper for prints?"

He smiled, obviously pleased at the question. "I bet you dusted a cigarette butt for prints at the academy, right?" He laughed at her expression. "They've been doing that for as long as I can remember." He leaned back on the stool behind him. "Paper's porous. The natural oil in your fingertips leaves a good, readable print on a hard surface, but when you're dealing with fibers, the oil penetrates and migrates. Dusting it with powder is not going to bring out any latents. You use something like ninhydrin, which reacts with the amino acids in fingerprint residue, and hopefully, you get a pretty little print and we bring home your little girl."

The mood turned decidedly somber as they all considered how important these next few minutes would be.

Will said, "Let's get started."

Gordon took a pair of goggles out of his bag and a pair of green gloves. He told Will and Faith, "Y'all may want to step back. This is pretty toxic stuff." They both did as he advised, but Gordon still handed them paper masks to cover their mouths and noses.

He leaned down and took a small, unmarked metal container out of his bag. He unscrewed the cap and poured some of the contents into one of the pans, careful not to splash. Even through the mask, the fumes hit Faith like a flash of gunpowder. She had never smelled anything so blatantly chemical.

Gordon explained, "Ninhydrin and heptane. I mixed it up last night before I headed down." He capped the metal container. "We used to use Freon, but they outlawed that a few years back." He told Will, "I used the last of my stash two months ago. Hated to see it go."

Gordon used a pair of tweezers to pick up the first sheet of paper. "The ink's going to run a little bit," he warned.

"We already took pictures and made copies," Will told him.

Gordon dropped the paper into the chemical solution. Faith thought it was a lot like the old-fashioned way people used to develop photographs. She watched as he gently agitated the page in the solution. The type print shook, and Faith read the words over and over again as she waited for something to happen.

SHE BE LONGS TOME!!!

Whoever had written that note felt a closeness to Emma Campano. He had seen her, coveted her. Faith looked at the other note.

LEV HER ALONG!!!

Did the kidnapper feel like he needed to protect her from Adam?

"Here we go," Gordon said. She saw stray marks start to develop, forensic proof that the paper had been handled many times by different people. The creases of the folds came up first in a dark orange that quickly turned red. Other stray marks showed smeared thumbprints. A series of swirls came into relief, their color reminiscent of the purple from ditto machines that they used to use when Faith was in school. Thanks to the chemicals, she could see where the paper had been touched over and over again.

Gordon murmured, "That's kind of strange."

Will leaned over, keeping the mask on his face. "I've never seen it turn that dark before."

"Me, neither," Gordon said. "Where'd you find this?"

"A dorm room at Georgia Tech."

"Was it sitting near anything unusual?"

"It was in the pocket of a student. All of them were."

"Was he a chemistry major?"

Faith shrugged. "He worked with adhesives."

Gordon leaned over the pan, staring at the dark print, the distinctive swirls. "This is a left thumbprint. I would say that whoever made it was exposed to some kind of chemical that is reacting to the acetate in my solution."

He reached into his bag and pulled out a magnifying glass. Faith held her breath as she watched him lean over the toxic-smelling pan. He studied all the different fingerprints the chemicals had brought out. "Based on the latents, we've got three different people touching this paper." He looked at the black print again. "I'd say the thumbprint is the only time the third person touched this page." He indicated the position. "It's in the bottom left corner. He was being careful when he handled it."

Will said, "He might have put his thumb there because he was trying not to touch it as he slid it under the door."

"He might very well," Gordon agreed. "I need to dry this, then I can look at the back. Why don't y'all give me a few hours to see what I can come up with? Do you have comparisons of the two people you believe touched this?"

Faith said, "Adam's will be on file. We took Gabe Cohen's to rule him out before we searched Adam's room."

"What about Tommy Albertson's?"

She nodded. Albertson had been an ass about it, but she had managed to get prints off him.

"Well," Gordon began, "get me the comparisons. This is a pretty excellent print, coloring aside. I'll run it through AFIS," he said, referencing the automated fingerprint identification system. "The system's been running slow lately. You know the best way to go about this. Give me the right suspect and I can give you a solid match."

"Will?" A tall woman with spiky blond hair and the requisite white lab coat walked over. "Amanda told me to find you. We got a hit on the sperm from the crime scene."

Will's shock registered on his face. He shook his head, insisting, "No, it can't be the father."

"The father? No, Will, I'm telling you we got a hit from the sex-offender database." She held up a Post-it note.

Faith read the name, hissing, "Jesus, he was right under our nose."

Will seemed just as shocked as she felt. He asked the woman, "Do you have an address?"

Faith told him, "We know where he is."

"His house," Will said. "We need to check his house."

He was right. Faith took out her cell phone and dialed the switchboard. After giving her badge number, she told the operator, "I need ten-twenty-eight on a code forty-four." She read the name from the Post-it note. "Patrick Evander Bernard."

WILL SLOWED AT a red light, looking both ways and blowing through the intersection in front of an angry driver.

Amanda's voice was clipped on the phone. "Bernard was picked up in Savannah two years ago for sex with a minor. She was fifteen. He roughed her up pretty badly-bite marks, tearing, bruising. The skin on her palms and knees was ripped open. He pretty much did what he wanted to her."

"Why isn't he in jail?"

"He pleaded it down to reckless endangerment and paid the fine."

Will sped up, passing a truck. "That's a slap on the wrist. Why didn't he go to trial?"

"He met her in a bar. He claimed he took that as proof that she was twenty-one. The prosecutor was scared the jury would equate her sneaking into the bar with asking for trouble."

Will slammed on his brakes, nearly rear-ending a car that was stopped for another red light. "She deserves to be raped for having a fake ID?"

"The parents didn't pursue it. They didn't want their daughter raped again by the court system and the media."

Will could understand their fear. Fewer and fewer rape cases were making it to trial for this very reason. The light changed and he pressed the gas pedal to the floor. "Why was his DNA in the system?"

"It was processed through the rape kit when he was arrested."

"We need to get a copy of his fingerprints to Gordon Chew to match them against the thumbprint on the letter."

"We can't do that."

"Why not?"

"Part of his deal with the district attorney was that his record be expunged if he kept his nose clean for a year."