Luckily, Hawkes had a good starting point. If the prints weren't a match for any of the forty-five in question, then he'd expand the search to the inmates and employees of RHCF. If that didn't match-well, then they had a mystery on their hands, and he'd expand the search further.
While he waited for the search to run its course, he called up the digital photos of the crime scene, selecting the ones he'd taken of Washburne's head wound with the ruler next to it. He got up, double-checked the size of the doughnut weight, then called up the photo of the weight and resized it so its image was proportional to that of the picture of Washburne. Using the mouse, he cut out the weight from one photo and then dragged it over to the wound.
The weight fit perfectly in the wound. (Instinctively, he kept thinking of the weight as the murder weapon, but his years as an ME had taught him never to make assumptions until the cause of death was determined, and Dr. Driscoll hadn't done the autopsy yet.)
He'd saved the images at various stages and now appended all those images to his report, quickly typing in the results.
Shortly after he finished that task, the computer finished its comparison of the fingerprints. Hawkes had recovered seven decent prints from the barbell and one from the doughnut weight. Two of the barbell prints belonged to Malik Washburne.
The one on the doughnut weight and the other five on the barbell belonged to Jorge Melendez. Alt-Tabbing to another window, Hawkes called up Melendez's sheet from the database. He was doing time for possession with intent to sell.
Pulling his Treo out of his pocket and removing his plastic-frame glasses, Hawkes called Mac.
Then he hung up after the first ring, remembering that Mac's own phone was still sitting in the arsenal at RHCF.
Putting his glasses back on, he Alt-Tabbed his desktop computer over to an Internet browser and accessed the phone directory on the NYPD's intranet. It didn't take him long to find RHCF's number, and he called that, asking for Captain Russell.
"Captain Russell can't come to the phone right now," he was told.
"This is Dr. Sheldon Hawkes of the New York Crime Lab. I actually need to speak to Detective Mac Taylor or Detective Don Flack. They're both on-site interviewing witnesses in the incident you guys had today."
"Can I have your badge number, please?"
Hawkes gave it.
"Hold, please."
Adam popped his head into the lab and saw that Hawkes was on the phone. "I'll come back," he whispered.
Hawkes removed the Treo from his ear, put it on speaker, and set it down on the table. "S'okay, I'm on hold. What is it?"
"I ran that dried blood first, like you asked." Adam said. "It wasn't Washburne's, and it wasn't Barker's."
Hawkes nodded in acknowledgment. It made sense to run those two comparisons first, especially given how much of Barker's blood had splattered all over the yard.
"It's AB negative." Adam held out a sheet of paper. "I sent it to DNA, but in the meantime, I checked it against the other forty-three guys in the yard, and only three people had that blood type."
Hawkes took the paper from Adam and saw the three names on the list: HAKIM EL-JABBAR, JORGE MELENDEZ, TYRONE STANLEY.
"Sheldon?" That was Mac's voice on speakerphone.
"Yeah, Mac, it's me. Listen, have you talked to an inmate named Jorge Melendez yet?"
"Not yet-but he's on the list. Why?"
"Melendez's prints, along with Washburne's, are on the barbell Washburne was using, and Melendez's was the only usable print on the weight that cut Washburne's head open."
"All right, thanks. And write this number down." Mac read out a phone number with a 718 area code. "I already gave it to Danny when he called. Call that number directly if you need to reach me or Flack."
Hawkes made a note of it. "Got it. What did Danny tell you?"
"Plenty of clear prints on the toothbrush, and they all belonged to Jack Mulroney."
"So we've got one dunker, at least." Dunkers, or slam-dunks, were the cases that law enforcement lived for: where the perp confessed, the evidence all agreed with the confession, and the case could be put down with a minimum of fuss and effort.
"Yeah," Mac said. "Let me know what else you find."
After Mac hung up, Hawkes picked up the Treo and entered the new number in his contact list. Looking up at Adam, he said, "Let me know when that DNA comes in."
"Will do. Oh, yeah, I also ID'd that fiber you found on the vic's shoulder."
Hawkes Smirked. "Let me guess-comes from prison dickies, right?"
"Yes and no. You see, I am smarter than the average bear, and I determined that the thread you found specifically is a thread used to sew the seams on the pants of New York State Department of Corrections convict uniforms-and only the pants. They use a different kind of thread for the shirt seams."
At that Hawkes frowned. "How did a thread from a pair of pants get on our guy's shoulder?"
Smiling beneath his beard, Adam said, "That, my friend, is your problem."
"A problem for later. Right now, I'm gonna go bug Peyton."
"I'm sure she'll love that," Adam said dryly.
Grinning, Hawkes removed his glasses, dropped them in his white lab coat pocket, and headed downstairs to the morgue.
Hawkes had succeeded Peyton Driscoll as the chief medical examiner when she left the job to take a teaching position at Columbia University. In the interview she had conducted with Hawkes before he took over, she'd said, in that clipped British tone of hers, that she needed "a spot of mundanity." When Peyton finally returned, a year after Hawkes moved to the field, Peyton claimed to have decided that teaching was too "routine." Hawkes had asked her what happened to the spot of mundanity, and Peyton had replied, "I got it out with some detergent, and I'm back in the saddle."
As he approached the morgue, Hawkes saw the perfectly coiffed silver hair of Deputy Inspector Gerrard opening the door ahead of him.
With a due sense of anticipation and dread, Hawkes jogged to catch up to him. "Inspector."
Turning around, Gerrard said, "Dr. Hawkes. I'm guessing we're both here for the same reason."
Gerrard had already been the one to bring them this case, and now he was checking on the ME personally. Hawkes saw no way in which that could be construed as a good thing. He squared his shoulders and followed Gerrard into the morgue.
"Dr. Driscoll," Gerrard said in what he probably thought was an amiable tone, "what can you tell me about Malik Washburne?"
Peyton looked up, and her face went sour. "Inspector. At the moment, I can't tell you much, as I haven't started the autopsy yet."
"Well, whatever you do find, trace-wise, put a rush on it, and use my name. This case gets top priority."
"It does?"
Gerrard glared at Hawkes with penetrating eyes. "Yes, Doctor, it does. What possible problem could you have with that?"
Gerrard's defensiveness might be understandable given his recent sparring with Mac, but that didn't mean Hawkes had to like it. "I was just surprised, that's all. I wouldn't think two deaths in custody would get this kind of heat."
"Well, it does, and for two reasons. For one thing, Washburne was a member. He did wrong, but he was doing his time like a good soldier, and he deserved better than what he got."
Hawkes couldn't argue with that.
"Not to mention, RHCF hasn't had a DIC in twenty years, and now they got two in one day. Albany's nervous."
Peyton smiled insincerely. "And it's budget time, so naturally you wish to stay on Albany's good side."
"Staying on Albany's good side gets you geeks all your fancy toys, Doc," Gerrard said. "Speaking of which, what do those toys say about Washburne?"
"Not much so far," Peyton said, "again, by virtue of my not having begun the autopsy yet. However, I can say this much: the vast majority of the blood that we found on his body wasn't his. I sent it for DNA analysis."