Patricia Cornwell - Body of Evidence

She skimmed a list. "Tobacco ash, pinkish paper particles consistent with the stamp on cigarette packs, glass beads, a couple bits of broken glass consistent with beer bottle and headlight glass. As usual, there are pieces and parts of bugs, vegetable debris, also one spherical metal ball. And a lot of salt."

"As in table salt?"

"That's right," she said. "All this was on her prayer rug?"

I asked. "Also from the area of the floor where her body was found," she replied. "And a lot of the same debris was on her body, in her nail scrapings, and in her hair."

Beryl didn't smoke. There was no reason for tobacco ash or particles from a cigarette pack stamp to be found inside her house. Salt is associated with food, and it didn't make sense for salt to be upstairs or on her body.

"Marino brought in six different vacuurnings, all of them from carpets and areas of the floor where blood was found," Joni said. "In addition, I've looked at the control sample vacuumings taken from areas of her house or carpets where there was no blood or evidence of a struggle -areas where the police think the killer didn't go. The vacuumings are significantly different. The debris I just listed was found only in those areas where the killer was thought to have been, suggesting that most of this material was transferred from him to the scene and her body. It may have been clinging to his shoes, his clothing, his hair. Everywhere he went, everything he brushed up against collected some of this debris."

"He must be a veritable Pig Pen," I said.

"This stuff is almost invisible to the naked eye," the ever-serious Joni reminded me, "He probably wouldn't have a clue he was carrying so much trace on his person."

I studied her handwritten lists. There were only two types of cases from my past experience that might account for such an abundance of debris. One was when a body was dumped in a landfill or some other dirty place such as a road shoulder or gravel parking lot, the other when it was transported from one scene to another in the dirty trunk or on the dirty floor of a car. Neither scenario applied to Beryl.

"Break it down for me by color," I said. "Which of these are likely to be carpet versus garment fibers?"

"The six nylon fibers are red, dark red, blue, green, greenish yellow, and dark green. The greens may actually be black," she added. "Black doesn't look black under the scope. All of these are coarse, consistent with carpet-type fibers, and I'm suspicious some of them may be from vehicle versus household carpeting."

"Why?"

"Because of the debris I found. For example, the glass beads are often associated with reflectorized paint, such as is used in street signs. The metal spheres I find quite often in car vacuumings. They're solder balls from the assembling of the vehicle's undercarriage. You don't see them, but they're there. Bits of broken glass-broken glass is all over the place, especially along road shoulders and in parking lots. You pick it up on the bottom of your shoes and track it into your car. Same goes for the cigarette debris. Finally, we're left with salt, and that makes me most suspicious the origin of Beryl's trace is vehicular. People go to McDonald's. They eat french fries inside their cars. Probably every car in this city has salt in it."

"Let's say you're right," I said. "Let's say these fibers are from car carpeting. That still doesn't explain why there would be possibly six different nylon carpet fibers. It's not likely this guy has six different types of carpet inside his vehicle."

"No, that's not likely," Joni said. "But the fibers could have been transferred to the inside of his car. Maybe he works in a profession that exposes him to carpets. Maybe he has an occupation that puts him in and out of different cars throughout the day."

"A car wash?"

I asked, envisioning Beryl's car. It was spotless inside and out Joni thought about this, her young face intense. "Could very well be something like that. If he works in one of these car washes where attendants clean the interiors, the trunks, he'd be exposed to a variety of carpet fibers all day long. It's inevitable he's going to pick up some of them. Another possibility is he works as a car mechanic."

I reached for my coffee. "Okay. Let's get to the other four fibers. What can you tell me about them?"

She glanced over her paperwork. "One is acrylic, one olefin, one polyethylene, the other Dynel. Again, the first three are consistent with carpet-type fibers. The Dynel fiber is interesting because I don't see Dynel very often. It's generally associated with fake fur coats, furlike rugs, wigs. But this Dynel fiber is rather fine, more consistent with garment material."

"The only clothing fiber you found?"

"I'm inclined that way," she answered.

"Beryl was thought to have been wearing a tannish pants suit…"

"It's not Dynel," she said. "At least her slacks and jacket aren't. They're a cotton and polyester blend. It's possible her blouse was Dynel, no way to know since it hasn't turned up."

She retrieved another slide from the file folder and mounted it on the stage. "As for the orange fiber I mentioned, the only acrylic one I found, it has a shape at cross section I've never seen before."

She drew a diagram to demonstrate, three circles joined in the center, bringing to mind a three-leaf clover without a stem. Fibers are manufactured by forcing a melted or dissolved polymer through the very fine holes of a spinneret. Cross-sectionally, the resulting filaments, or fibers, will be the same shape as the spinneret holes, just as a line of toothpaste will be the same cross-sectional shape as the opening in the tube it was squeezed through. I had never seen the clover-leaf shape before, either. Most acrylics are a peanut, dog bone, dumbbell, round, or mushroom shape at cross section.

"Here."

Joni moved to one side, making room for me.

I peered through the ocular lens. The fiber looked like a blotchy twisted ribbon, its varying shades of bright orange lightly peppered with black particles of titanium dioxide.

"As you can see," she explained, "the color is also a little awkward. The orange. Uneven, and moderately dense with delustering particles to dull the fiber's shine.

All the same, the orange is garish, a real Halloween orange, which I find peculiar for clothing or carpet fibers. The diameter is moderately coarse."

"Which would make it consistent with carpeting," I ventured. "Despite the peculiar color."

"Possibly."

I began thinking about what materials I had come across that were bright orange. "What about traffic vests?"

I asked. "They're bright orange, and a fiber from that would fit with the vehicle-type debris you've identified."

"Unlikely," she replied. "Most traffic vests I've seen are nylon versus acrylic, usually a very coarse mesh that isn't likely to shed. In addition, windbreakers and jackets you might associate with road crews or traffic cops are smooth, also unlikely to shed, and they're usually nylon."

She paused, adding thoughtfully, "It also seems to me you aren't likely to find much, if any, delustering particles-you wouldn't want a traffic vest to appear dull."

I backed away from the stereoscope. "Whatever the case, this fiber is so distinctive I suspect it's patented. Someone out there should recognize it even if we don't have a known material for comparison."

"Good luck."

"I know. Proprietary blackouts," I said. "The textile industry is as secretive about their patents as people are about their assignations."

Joni stretched her arms and massaged the back of her neck. "It's always struck me as miraculous the Feds were able to get so much cooperation in the Wayne Williams case," she said, referring to the grisly twenty-two-month spree in Atlanta, in which it is believed that as many as thirty black children were murdered by the same serial killer. Fibrous debris recovered from twelve of the victims' bodies was linked to the residence and automobiles used by Williams.