"Uh-oh," Merle said.
"Uh-oh is right," Beatrice chimed in.
I pushed the elйvator button.
"You going anyplace special for Christmas, Dr. Scarpelts.
They could tell by the look on my face that Christmas was a topic I didn't particularly care to talk about.
"You're probably too busy for Christmas," Merle quickly said.
Both women got uncomfortable for the same reason everybody else did when they were reminded of what had happened to Benton.
"I know this time of year gets real busy," Merle awkwardly changed the subject. "All those people drinking on the road. More suicides and people getting mad at each other."
Christmas would be here in about two weeks. Fielding was on call that day. I couldn't count how many Christmases I had worn a pager.
"People burning up in fires, too."
"When bad things happen this time of year," I said to them as the elevator doors opened, "we feel them more. That's a lot of it."
"Maybe that's it."
"I don't know 'bout that, remember that electrical fire…?'
The doors shut and I headed ъp to the second floor, which had been designed to accommodate tours for citizens and politicians and anyone else interested in our work. All labs were behind big expanses of plate glass, and at first this had seemed odd and uncomfortable to scientists used to working in secret behind cinder block walls. By now, nobody cared. Examiners tested trigger pulls and worked with bloodstains, fingerprints and fibers without paying much attention to who was on the other side of the glass, which at this moment included me pushing my gurney past.
Neils Vander's world was a large space of countertops, with all sorts of unusual technical instruments and juryrigged contraptions scattered all over the place. Against one wall were wooden cabinets with glass doors, and these Vander had turned into glue chambers, using clothesline and clothespins to hold up objects exposed to the Super Glue fumes generated by a hot plate.
In the past; scientists and police had had very little success in lifting prints frуm nonporous objects such as plastic bags, electrical tape and leather. Then, quite by accident, it was discovered that the fumes from Super Glue adhere to ridge detail, much as traditional dusting powder does, and out pops a white latent print. In a corner was another glue chamber called a Cyvac II that could accommodate larger objects such as a shotgun or rifle or car bumper, or theoretically even an entire body.
Humidity chambers raised prints off porous items, such as paper or wood, that had been treated with ninhydrin, although Vander sometimes resorted to the quick method of using a household steam iron, arid once or twice had scorched the evidence, or so I'd heard. Scattered about were Nederman lights equipped with vacuums to suck up fumes and residues from drug Baggies.
Other rooms in Vander's domain housed the Automatic Fingerprints Identification System known as AFIS, and darkrooms for digital audio and video enhancement. He oversaw the photo lab, where more than a hundred and fifty rolls of processed film carne off the speedmaster every day. It took me a while to locate Vander, but I finally caught him in the impression lab, where pizza boxes ingenious cops used to transport plaster casts of tire tracks and footwear prints were neatly stacked in corners, and a door someone had tried to kick in was leaning against a wall.
Vander* was seated before a computer, comparing footwear impressions on a split screen. I left the gurney outside the door.
"You're nice to do this," I said.
His pale blue eyes always seemed to be elsewhere, and as usual, his lab coat was stained purple from ninhydrin and a felt-tip pen had bled through one of his pockets.
"This is a real good one," he said, tapping the video screen as he got out of his chair. "Guy buys new shoes and you know how slippery they are if the bottoms are leather? So he gets a knife and slashes them, you know, roughs them up because he's getting married and doesn't want to slip coming down the aisle."
I followed him out of the lab, not really in the mood for anecdotes.
"Well, he gets burglarized. Shoes, bunch of other clothes and stuff, gone. Two days later a woman in his neighborhood is raped. Police find these weird shoeprints at the scene. In fact, there'd been quite a lot of burglaries in that area."
We entered the alternate light source lab.
"Turns out it was this kid. Thirteen." Vander was shaking his head as he flipped on the lights. "I just don't know about kids anymore. When I was thirteen, the worst thing I ever did was shoot a bird with a BB gun."
He mounted the Luma-Lite on a tripod.
"That's pretty bad in my book," I told him.
While I laid out the clothes on white paper under the chemical hood, he plugged in the Luma-Lite and its fans began to whir. A minute later he started the source lamp, rotating the intensity knob to full power. He set a pair of protective glasses near me and placed a blue 450 nanometer optical filter over the output lens. We put on our glasses and turned out the lights. The Luma-Lite cast a blue glow across the floor. Vander's shadow moved as he did, and nearby jars of dye lit up Brilliant Yellow and Blitz Green and Redwop. Their dust was a constellation of neon stars scattered throughout the room.
"You know, we've got these idiots at police departments these days who are getting their own Luma-Lites and processing their own scenes," Vander's voice sounded in the dark. "So they dust with Redwop and put the print on a black background, so I have to photograph it with the Luma-Lite on and reverse the damn print to white."
He started with the plastic wastepaper basket found inside the container and was instantly rewarded with the faint ridges of fingerprint smudges, which he dusted with Redwop, its electric red dust drifting through the dark.
"Good way to start," I said. "Keep it up, Neils."
Vander moved the tripod closer to the dead man's black jeans and the inside-out right pocket began to glow a dull rouge. I poked the material with my gloved finger and found smears of iridescent orange.
"Don't believe I've ever gotten a red like that before," Vander mused.
We spent an hour going over all of the clothing, including shoes and belt, and nothing else fluoresced.
"Definitely two different things there," Vander said as I turned on the lights. "Two different things fluorescing naturally. No dye stains involved except the one I used on the bucket."
I picked up the phone and called the morgue. Fielding answered.
"I need everything that was in the pockets of our unidentified man. It should be air-drying on a tray."
"That would be some foreign money, a cigar clipper and a lighter."
"Yes,"
Lights off again and we finished scanning the exterior of all the clothing, finding more of the odd pale hair.
"Is that coming off his head?" Vander asked as my forceps entered the cool, blue light, gently grabbing hairs and placing them inside an envelope.
"His head hair is dark and coarse," I replied. "So no, this hair can't be his."
"Looks like cat hair. One of these long-haired types that I don't allow in the house anymore. Angora? Himalayan?"
"Rare. Not too many people have either one," I said.
"My wife loves cats;" Vander went on. "She had this one named Creamsicle. Damn thing would look for my clothes and lie on them, and when I'd find them to get, dressed, damn if they didn't look just like this."
"I guess it could be cat hair," I supposed.
"Too fine for dog hair, don't you think?"
"Not if it's something like a Skye terrier. Long, straight silky hair."
"Pale yellow?"
"They can be tawny," I said. "Maybe the undercoat? I don't know."
"Maybe the guy's a breeder or works with one," Vander suggested. "Aren't there long-hair rabbits, too?"
"Knock, knock;" Fielding's voice sounded as he opened the door.