I tapped lightly on the doorframe to get his attention. He pulled his gaze from his computer and gave me a wide smile. “Angel of Death!” He chuckled and motioned to the chair in front of his desk. “Come on in, have a seat.”
I closed the door behind me, then sat. His eyes flicked briefly to the closed door, but he didn’t comment on it. I fidgeted for a few seconds while I tried to think of how to explain my theory. “Is that your brother?” I asked with a nod toward the framed photo, seizing on the first piece of conversation I could think of.
Ben smiled, shook his head. “Nope. My boyfriend.”
I blinked in surprise. “Oh!” I paused, fumbled for something to say that wouldn’t make me sound like a jackass. “You’re, um…No one gives you shit about that around here?”
He chuckled. “They’re welcome to try. I’m sure some shit is said behind my back, but no one’s been dumb enough to say anything to my face or to Neil. I bring him to all of the departmental gatherings that spouses or girlfriends are welcome at, and so far everyone’s been cool.”
I found myself grinning. Ben might have a teddy bear exterior, but there was a hard glint in his eye right now that told me he would seriously fuck up the first person who dared mess with someone he cared about. “I’d like to meet him someday,” I said.
Ben gave a slight nod. “That can be arranged. So, what’s going on?”
“Okay, here’s the thing,” I began. “I know there are people who think the loss of that body was some sort of fuck up on my part—”
“I don’t believe that,” he interrupted, eyes narrowing.
I gave him a weak smile. “Thanks. But the other theory is that it was some sort of stupid prank, and I honestly can’t believe that it was anything of the sort.”
He leaned back in his chair, nodded. “I can tell this is bugging the shit out of you.”
“It is, and not just because my name is being dragged through the mud,” I said. “Look, there’s something weird about the guy who died. I know that on paper he looks like a nobody, but there has to be something else about him.” I set the bag with the watch on his desk. “I took this off the body when I first bagged him up. I was hoping to see if it could be fingerprinted…to see if the dead guy really was this nobody security guard everyone thinks he is.”
Ben picked up the bag and peered at the contents. To my surprise a grin spread across his face. “I love it. A goddamn conspiracy theory.” He looked back up to me. “I’ll take it over to the lab right now.” He stood up. “Wanna come with me?”
“Sure!” I said. I loved forensics and CSI and all that shit. There was no way I was going to turn down a chance to see the inside of a crime lab.
The crime lab was in a building adjacent to the Investigations Division, joined by a covered walkway. Upon entering I found myself in a cramped room with a single desk covered in piles of paperwork and one other door that had the kind of key card lock that we used at the coroner’s office. A middle-aged Asian woman with hair cut in a short pixie style sat behind the desk. She gave Ben a nod of greeting and me a somewhat inquisitive look. I could see her taking note of the coroner’s office insignia on my shirt and some of the doubt in her eyes faded.
“Morning, Tracie,” Ben said. “Is there anyone around who isn’t too busy and could do a quick processing of a piece of evidence for fingerprints?”
“No such thing as a ‘quick processing,’” she admonished. “And there’s also no such thing as ‘isn’t too busy’ around here. We do have a backlog of cases to work, you know.”
He gave her a placating smile. “Sure, but I’m always super nice to y’all, and deserve to be bumped ahead of those other rude bastards.”
She snorted, but went ahead and picked up her phone and punched a button. “Hey, Detective Roth is here and wants to kiss your ass because he needs something done right damn now. You want me to tell him to get screwed?”
I blinked in surprise, but Tracie caught my eye and winked. “Gotcha,” she said into the phone, then hung up. “Sean said you’ll owe him lunch,” she told Ben, “but he’ll come do it.”
“Perfect,” he said. “He can put it on my tab.”
Less than a minute later the red-haired tech opened the secured door. “Oh, hi there, Angel. Hi, Ben. Come on in. This is just one item, right?” He gave Ben a look filled with distrust. “Not like the time that you had fifty-three beer cans?”
Ben groaned. “I swear, that wasn’t my fault.”
“Of course not,” he replied with a roll of his eyes. “Come on in and let me take a look at what you have.”
We dutifully followed him through the lab and, much like my first tour of the coroner’s office, I was disappointed to see that there was no neon or chrome or anything else cool and slick. Nothing but cramped offices and aging lab equipment. We eventually came to a large room that had four large tables in it, all covered with a ridiculous number of bags or boxes with “Evidence” stickers on them. Sean stopped at a table that actually had some clear space on it, then yanked a pair of latex gloves from a box near the edge and tugged them on. Ben set the bag with the watch in front of him, and I watched impatiently as Sean carefully opened the bag and peered inside.
“Okay, I’ll stick it in the fuming chamber, and we’ll see what we come up with,” he said.
“Fuming chamber? What’s that?” I asked. I knew I risked looking like an idiot, but I was also wildly curious about how all of this forensic stuff worked. Even if there wasn’t any chrome or neon.
Luckily Sean didn’t seem to think it was a dumb question. “Superglue fuming. All you need is an airtight tank, some heat, and a few drops of Superglue.” He lifted the watch with a gloved hand. “See, fingerprints leave stuff behind—traces of amino acids, proteins, fatty acids. That stuff reacts to the fumes produced when Superglue is heated, and a sticky, white material forms that clings to the ridges of fingerprints, making them visible.” He turned and started walking. “Here, I’ll show you.”
I followed him eagerly into an adjacent room. A metal table dominated the center of the room and along one wall were a series of glass-doored chambers of varying sizes, from about a foot high to stretching from floor to ceiling.
“These are fuming chambers,” he explained, carefully opening the door of one that was only about a foot high. He carefully hung the watch from a metal hook, then opened a small plastic tube and squeezed the contents into a metal tray at the bottom of the chamber. After closing the door of the chamber and locking it, he punched some buttons on the front. “Now the chamber will heat up to release the fumes, which will settle on any fingerprints that might be on the watch,” he explained. “And when it’s done the chamber will vent the fumes safely away.” He gave me a wry smile. “That’s a vast improvement over the technique we used to have to use, which was basically a fish tank.”
I watched, fascinated as a mist slowly filled the chamber. “How long does it take?”
“About five minutes, but then you have to wait for it to vent. Like I said, much better than the fish tank method, where we basically had to yank the cover off and run to keep from inhaling toxic fumes.”
A short while later the lights turned green, and Sean carefully removed the watch. He peered at it through a magnifying glass, nodding.
“Well, there’s a beautiful print on the watch,” he said, to my delight. “I can definitely run that through AFIS.”