"A shortage of clues from Tuesday?" Walden's voice was sympathetic.
"More like none. Which is why I'm here, mostly to ask why in hell a fingerprint report is taking so long."
"Three days isn't long," she answered sharply. "Not when I had a fistful of prints to check out and identify as you should know."
"Sorry, Sylvia," Quinn said penitently. "This sick case has turned me into an ass. Manners out the window."
"Don't worry”, he said. "We're all pretty frazzled over this."
"So what have you got?"
"Some prints came through this morning from New York. They belong to the guy who stayed in the hotel room just prior to the Frosts."
"Were they on file there?"
"No, no. He agreed to be fingerprinted by the NYPD to help us out. I'm just comparing them with those we found."
The computer that Walden faced was a state-of-the-art AFIS model shorthand for Automated Fingerprint Identification System. The machine, after scanning a fingerprint from a crime scene, could accomplish in less than two hours what it would take a human being an estimated one hundred and sixty years to complete a search through hundreds of thousands of fingerprints on record across the United States and provide a matching print, with identification, if one existed. Fingerprints in the system were stored and retrieved by a digital code that worked at lightning speed. AFIS was often an instant crime-solver; also, since its arrival, many old investigations had been reopened, with bygone fingerprints identified and criminals charged and convicted. Today, though, Walden's task was simpler comparing the set of prints from New York, transferred by modem, with unidentified prints she had lifted from room 805 of the Royal Colonial.
The computer did not take long to provide an answer. The New York prints matched those from 805.
Sylvia Walden sighed. "Not good news, I'm afraid, Bernie.'' She explained that the only fingerprints she had found at the murder scene proved to be from the dead victims, a hotel maid, and now the room's previous occupant.
Quinn ran his fingers through his tousled hair and grunted unhappily. There were days when he felt his retirement could not come soon enough.
"I'm not too surprised about the prints," Walden said. "I noticed some smudges in places where there might have been fingerprints smudges that latex gloves leave. I'm pretty sure the killer wore them. I do have something, though."
Quinn's brows shot up. "What?"
"An unidentified palm print. It's only a partial, but it doesn't match palm prints from any of those people whose fingerprints we've identified I asked for their palm prints specially. There's also a Police Department register of palm prints, but no match there, either." Walden, crossing to a desk, leafed through computer printouts and passed a single sheet to Quinn: it bore a black-and-white partial handprint. There it is."
"Interesting." He turned the sheet around, viewing it sideways and upside down, then handed it back. "Nobody I recognize,'' he said laconically. "So what can you do with it?"
"What I can do is this, Bernie: If you locate a suspect and get his palm prints, I'll tell you pretty close to a certainty if he was at the murder scene."
"If we ever get that far,'' he told her, "I'll be here like a rocket.''
Walking through the fifth-floor corridors on his way back to Homicide, Quinn felt slightly heartened. At least the palm print was a minor start.
From the outset there had been an unusual lack of evidence in the Frost case. The day after the murders were discovered, Quinn had returned to the Royal Colonial scene armed with a lengthy list of questions. First he took a fresh overview of the scene, then he and Julio Verona, the lead technician, discussed each item of discovery to assess its value. One of those items among others already removed as evidence was a torn envelope from the First Union Bank. Later that day, Quinn visited First Union branches in the area and learned that the morning before their deaths, the Frosts had cashed eight hundred Dollars in traveler's checks at a Southwest 27th Avenue branch near the hotel. The bank teller who had served them remembered the two older people well and was sure no one else was with them. Also, neither he nor the other tellers had noticed anyone following the Frosts when they left the bank.
Quinn ordered a further fingerprint search of room 805, in darkness, using fluorescent powder and laser lighting. The process sometimes revealed prints missed when a normal fingerprint powder was used. Again, nothing was found.
He obtained from the Royal Colonial manager a list of guests at the time of the murders, plus a second list of those who had stayed in the hotel during the preceding month. Each guest would be contacted by police, either by phone or in person. If anyone seemed suspicious or hostile, a closer follow-up would be made by an officer, or perhaps Quinn himself.
A sworn statement was taken from Cobo, the security guard. Quinn pressed hard with questions, hoping to jog Orlando Cobo's memory in case something small but significant had been overlooked. Other hotel staff who had known the Frosts also made sworn statements, but nothing new emerged.
Phone calls to and from room 805 during the victims' stay were checked by police. The hotel had a record of outgoing calls; the phone company was subpoenaed to provide a log of incoming calls. Again, no leads.
Quinn contacted several known informers, hoping for street gossip about the murders. He offered money for information, but there was none.
He flew to South Bend and inquired at the police department there if any police record existed involving the Frosts; the answer was no. To the victims' family members Quinn expressed condolences, followed by questions about the backgrounds of Homer and Blanche Frost. In particular, was there anyone who did not like the Frosts and might want to harm them? All responses were negative.
Aback in Miami, both Ainslie and Quinn were surprised by the absence of phoned-in tips following the extensive media coverage of the murders. The main facts were released through Public Information, though a few were held back, as was normal with homicides, to ensure that certain details were known only to the investigators and the murderer. Those details, if alluded to by a suspect, either inadvertently or in a confession, would strengthen the prosecution's case at trial.
Among the information not released was the presence of dead cats, and that Homer Frost's eyes had been set on fire.
Thus, as time began to slip by one week, two weeks, three any solution seemed increasingly remote. In a homicide investigation the first twelve hours are most critical. If by then a strong lead or suspect has not emerged, the likelihood of success diminishes with each passing day.
A trio of essentials with any homicide are witnesses, physical evidence, and a confession. Without the first and second, the third was unlikely. But in the Frost investigation there continued to be a glaring absence of all three. Inevitably, as other new homicides occurred, the Frost case lost its priority.
Months went by as crime in Florida kept on escalating. Every police force in the state, including homicide departments, was overwhelmed, many of their personnel exhausted. Part of the pressure was an unceasing Niagara of paper external mail, internal mail, Teletypes, fax messages, local police reports, protocol reports, crime reports, lab reports on blood and drugs, reports and requests from other jurisdictions, BOLOs . . . the list seemed endless.
Out of necessity, priorities emerged. Urgent local matters came first, and other paper was supposedly handled in order of importance; sometimes it wasn't. Some reports or requests were glanced at, then put aside, becoming an evergrowing pile for later reading. At times it could be three, six, or even nine months before certain papers were dealt with, if at all.
Bernard Quinn had once dubbed those papers the Tomorrow Pile, and the name stuck. Typically, he'd quoted Macbeth: