Tess Gerritsen - Die Again

“I’ve got one of the hairs under the scope now,” said Erin. “Have a seat and I’ll show you my problem.”

Jane settled on the lab stool and looked into the double-headed teaching microscope. Through the eyepieces, she saw a strand that stretched diagonally across the field of view.

“This is Strand Number One collected from Ms. Underwood’s blue bathrobe,” said Erin, looking through the other pair of eyepieces. “Color: white. Curvature: straight. Length: three centimeters. You can see the cuticle, cortex, and medulla very clearly. Focus first on the color. See how it’s not quite uniform? It seems to get paler as you reach the tip, a feature that’s called banding. Natural human hair tends to be of uniform color throughout the entire strand, so this is the first clue we’re dealing with something that’s not human. Now look at the medulla, the central pipeline running through the length of the strand. This medulla is wider than in human hair.”

“So what kind of hair is this?”

“The outer layer of cuticle gives us a pretty good idea. I’ve taken photomicrographs. Let me show you.” Erin swiveled around to the computer on her desk and tapped on the keyboard. A magnified image of the hair appeared on-screen. The surface of the strand was covered with slender triangular scales, layered like armor.

“I’d describe these scales as spinous,” said Erin. “See how they lift up slightly, as if about to peel away, like little petals? I love how intricate everything looks under high magnification. A whole new universe that we can’t see with the naked eye.” Erin smiled at the screen as if viewing a foreign city she wished she could visit. Trapped all day in this windowless room, her crime beat was these microscopic landscapes of keratin and protein.

“So what does it mean?” asked Jane. “The fact it’s got spinous scales?”

“It confirms my first impression that it’s not human. As for species, this scale shape is characteristic of mink, seals, and house cats.”

“Common things are common. So I’m guessing this is from a house cat.”

Erin nodded. “I can’t say it with one hundred percent certainty, but a cat is the most likely source. A single cat sheds hundreds of thousands of hairs in a single year.”

“Holy cow. That’s a lot of vacuuming.”

“And if you’ve got more than one cat in the house, or dozens of them like some of those cat hoarders, imagine how many hairs that adds up to.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I saw one forensic study that showed it’s impossible to enter a residence where a cat lives without picking up some of its hair. Most American households have at least one cat or dog, so who knows how this particular hair got transferred to the victim’s bathrobe? If she didn’t have a cat herself, she could have been around a friend’s cat.”

“Her sister says the victim was severely allergic and avoided animals. I’m wondering if she picked up these hairs from a secondary source. The killer.”

“And you think this killer transferred them from the Leon Gott crime scene.”

“Gott had two cats and a dog, so his house was like a fur factory. I got covered in cat hair just walking through the place. The killer would have picked up hairs, too. If I collected a few hairs from Gott’s cats, can you run DNA comparisons with these three strands?”

Erin sighed and slid her glasses up on her head. “I’m afraid DNA would present a bit of a problem. All three of these strands from Jodi Underwood’s bathrobe were shed during the animals’ telogen phase. These hairs have no root tags, ergo no nuclear DNA.”

“What about under the microscope? Just a visual comparison?”

“That would only tell us we’re looking at white hairs that might be from the same cat. Not good enough as proof in court.”

“Is there any way I can prove these hairs were transferred from Gott’s house?”

“Possibly. If you spend any time around cats, you’ll notice how much they clean themselves. They’re constantly grooming, and every time they lick their own hair, they shed epithelial cells from their mouths. We might be able to get mitochondrial DNA markers off these strands. I’m afraid it’ll take weeks to get back the results.”

“It would be proof, though?”

“Yes, it would be.”

“Then I guess I need to collect some cat hairs.”

“Pulled directly from the animal itself, so we can harvest root material.”

Jane groaned. “That’s not going to be easy, since one of the cats doesn’t want to be caught. He’s still somewhere in the victim’s house, running loose.”

“Oh dear. I hope someone’s feeding him.”

“Guess who goes over there every single day to leave food and water and change the litter box?”

Erin laughed. “Don’t tell me. Detective Frost?”

“He claims he can’t stand cats, but I swear he’d run into a burning building just to save a kitty.”

“You know, I always liked Detective Frost. He’s such a sweetie.”

Jane snorted. “Yeah, makes me look like a bitch in comparison.”

“What he needs is to find himself another wife,” said Erin as she removed the microscope slide. “I wanted to set him up with one of my girlfriends, but she refuses to date cops. Says they have control issues.” She placed a new slide under the microscope. “Okay, let me show you another hair collected from the same bathrobe. This is the one that’s got me completely stumped.”

Jane settled back onto the lab stool and peered into the eyepiece. “It looks like the first strand. What’s different about it?”

“At first glance, it does seem similar. White, straight, about five centimeters. It has the same color banding that tells us this is probably not human. Initially I thought it was also from Felis catus , a house cat. But when you examine it at 1500X, you’ll see it’s from a very different origin.” She swiveled back to her computer and opened a second window on the screen, showing a different photomicrograph. She arranged the two images side by side.

Jane frowned. “The second hair looks nothing like a house cat’s.”

“The cuticular scales are very different. They look like little flat-topped mountain peaks. Not at all like a housecat’s spinous scales.”

“What animal is this second hair from?”

“I’ve compared it to every animal hair in my database. But this is something I’ve never seen before.”

A mystery creature . Jane thought of Leon Gott’s house and its wall of mounted trophy heads. And she thought of his taxidermy workshop where he regularly scraped and dried and stretched the pelts of animals from around the world. “Could this hair be from a snow leopard?” she asked.

“That’s pretty specific. Why a snow leopard?”

“Because Gott was working on a snow leopard pelt, and it’s now missing.”

“They’re extremely rare animals, so I don’t know where I’d get a hair sample to compare. But there is a way to determine species. Remember how we ID’d that weird hair from the Chinatown murder? The strand that turned out to be from a monkey?”

“You sent it to a lab in Oregon.”

“Right, the Wildlife Forensics Lab. They have a database of keratin patterns from species around the world. With electrophoresis, you can analyze a hair’s protein component and match it against known keratin patterns.”

“Let’s do it. If this hair came from a snow leopard, then it was almost certainly transferred from Gott’s house.”

“In the meantime,” said Erin, “get me that house cat hair. If the DNA matches, you’ll have the proof you need that these two murders are linked.”

“YOU WERE A BIG MISTAKE,” SAID MAURA. “I NEVER SHOULD HAVE brought you home.”