"Yes, and when the security guy got here. Station sounds like HOT 105."
"Thanks." Quinn made a note. "My son listens. I can't stand the noise."
Ainslie was beginning a series of calls on his, portable police phone. Room 805's telephone would not be used until after a fingerprint check.
His first call was to summon a Crime Scene ID detail identification technicians who were part of a civilian arm of the Miami Police Department. The ID team would photograph the crime scene and all evidence, including minuscule items that untrained eyes might miss. They would seek fingerprints, preserve blood samples, and do whatever else the detectives needed. Meanwhile, until the ID crew arrived, the crime scene would remain "frozen in time" exactly as when discovered.
One single blundering individual, merely walking or touching, could destroy a vital clue and make the difference between a crime being solved and a criminal going free. Sometimes even senior police officers, visiting a murder scene out of curiosity, compromised evidence; that was one reason why a Homicide lead investigator had total authority at any scene, no matter what his or her rank.
More calls by Ainslie: a report to Homicide's commander, Lieutenant Newbold, already on his way; a request for attendance of a state attorney; a plea to Police Headquarters for an information officer to handle the media people.
As soon as the ID team was finished with the victims' bodies, Ainslie would summon a medical examiner, whose first inspection should take place as soon as possible after death. ME's were touchy, however, about being called too soon and having to wait while the ID people completed their work.
Later still, after the medical inspection and the bodies' removal to the Dade County morgue, an autopsy would follow, which Bernard Quinn would attend.
While Ainslie was telephoning, Quinn used a rubber glove to unplug the loud radio. Next he began a detailed study of the victims' bodies their wounds, remaining clothing, articles nearby all the while still making notes. He observed several pieces of expensive-looking jewelry on a bedside table. Then, turning his head, he exclaimed, "Hey, look at this!"
Ainslie joined him. Incongruous and bizarre laid out on the far side of the dead persons, and initially out of sight, were four dead cats.
The detectives studied the inert creatures.
At length Ainslie said, "This is meant to tell us something. Any ideas?"
Quinn shook his head. "Not offhand. I'll work on it."
In the weeks and months to come, every brain in Homicide would conjecture reasons for the dead cats' presence. While numerous exotic theories were advanced, in the end it was conceded that none made sense. Only much later would it be realized that an important matching clue was present at the Frost came scene, within a few short inches of the cats.
Now Quinn leaned down, viewing more closely the crudely severed body parts. After a moment he gulped. Ainslie glanced across. ''You all right?''
Quinn managed to say, "Back in a minute," and headed for the outer door.
In the corridor outside, Cobo pointed to an open doorway down the hall. "In there, Chief!''
Seconds later, Quinn disgorged into a toilet bowl the breakfast he had eaten an hour before. After rinsing his mouth, hands, and face, he returned to the murder scene. "Long time since I've done that," he said ruefully.
Ainslie nodded. The experience was one that Homicide officers shared from time to time, and no one criticized. What was unforgivable was vomiting at a murder scene and contaminating evidence.
Voices in the hall signaled the arrival of an ID crew. A lead technician, Julio Verona, stepped inside, followed by an ID technician grade one, Sylvia Walden. Verona, short, stocky, and balding, stood still, his piercing dark eyes moving methodically over the scene confronting him. Walden, younger, blond, and leggy, whose specialty was fingerprints, carried a black box resembling a weekend suitcase.
Nobody spoke while the two surveyed the room. Finally, Verona shook his head and sighed. "I have two grandkids. This morning we were having breakfast and watching this TV news story about a couple of teenagers who murdered their mother's boyfriend. So I tell the kids, 'This world we're handing you has become a pretty rotten place,' then right at that moment I got this call." He gestured to the mutilated bodies. "It gets worse every day."
Ainslie said thoughtfully, "The world's always been a savage place, Julio. The difference now is there are a lot more people to kill, and more who do the killing. And every day news travels faster and farther; sometimes we watch the horror while it's happening."
Verona shrugged. "As always, Malcolm the scholar's viewpoint. Either way's depressing."
He began photographing the dead couple, taking three photos of several groupings: an overall shot, a medium, and a close-up. After the bodies he would photograph other areas of room 805, the corridor outside, stairwells, elevators, and the building exterior, the last including entrances and exits a criminal might have used. Such photos often revealed evidence originally overlooked.
As well, Verona would make a detailed sketch of the scene, to be transferred later to a specialized, dedicated computer.
Sylvia Walden was now busy, searching for latent fingerprints, concentrating on the doorway first, inside and out, where a perpetrator's prints were most likely to be found. When entering, intruders were often nervous or careless; if they took precautions about prints, it was usually later.
Walden was dusting wood surfaces with a black graphite powder mixed with tiny iron filings, and applied with a magnetic brush; the mix adhered to moisture, lipids, amino acids, salts, and other chemicals of which fingerprints were composed.
On smoother surfaces glass or metal a nonmagnetic powder was used, of differing colors to suit varied backgrounds. As she worked, Walden switched from one type of powder to another, knowing that prints varied depending on skin texture, temperature, or contaminants on hands.
Officer Tomas Ceballos had reentered the room and briefly stood watching Walden at work. Turning her head, she told him, smiling, "Finding good prints is harder than people think."
Ceballos brightened. He had noticed Walden the minute she arrived. "It always looks easy on TV."
"Doesn't everything? In real life," she explained, "it's surfaces that make the difference. Smooth ones like glass are best, but only if they're clean and dry; if there's dust, prints will smear they're useless. Doorknobs are hopeless; the area's not flat, too small for good prints, and just turning a knob smears any prints made." Walden regarded the young officer, clearly liking what she saw. "Did you know fingerprints can be affected by what someone ate recently?"
"Is this a joke?"
"No joke." After another smile, she went on working. "Acidic foods cause extra skin moisture and clearer prints. So if you're planning a crime, don't eat citrus fruits beforehand oranges, grapefruit, tomatoes, lemon, lime. Oh, and no vinegar! That's the worst."
"Or the best, from our viewpoint," Julio Verona corrected.
"When I make detective," Ceballos said, "I'll remember all that." Then he asked Walden, "Do you give private lessons?"
"Not normally." She smiled. "But I can make exceptions."
"Good, I'll be in touch." Officer Ceballos left the room looking pleased.
Malcolm Ainslie, who had overheard, commented, "Even at a murder scene, life goes on."
Walden grimaced, glancing toward the mutilated bodies. "If it didn't, you'd go crazy."
Already she had located several prints, though whether from the killer or killers, or the dead couple, or belonging to hotel employees on legitimate business would be determined later. For now the next step was to "lift" each print onto a transparent tape that was placed on a "latent lift card." The card, dated, signed, and the print's location noted, would then become evidence.