Stretching his back so a couple of vertebrae cracked, he got up and said, "Pleasure workin' with you, Doc. Now if you'll excuse me, I gotta see a man about a dog."
In fact, he had a date with Lindsay, assuming she was done with whatever she and Stella were doing for the Campagna case.
If she wasn't, he'd wait. She was worth it.
18
LINDSAY MONROE OPENED THE evidence envelope and plucked out the gold necklace.
The first thing she did was lay it down gently on the white surface of the big table in the crime lab, with the tiny stain visible, and photograph it. After taking several shots of it as a whole, she attached the Sigma telephoto lens to the camera and zoomed in on the stain itself.
She grabbed a sterile cotton swab and moistened it with distilled water, then applied it to the necklace where the stain was. The blood obligingly came off on the swab.
She applied part of the sample on the swab to a plastic container. Then she brought the swab over to the matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) mass spectrograph. The MALDI would measure the mass-to-charge ratio of the ions, which would enable Lindsay to discover the molecular nature of the sample. In this particular case, it would allow her to identify the species of the sample's source from the hemogloblin in the blood.
While she waited for that analysis to complete, she brought the plastic container to the DNA lab.
She saw the blond-haired head of Jane Parsons sitting at her desk. Turning around at Lindsay's entrance, she smiled raggedly and said, "Ah-beware Montanans bearing gifts."
Lindsay smiled. "Sorry, but I've got blood."
"Don't we all?" She shook her head. "Sorry-had a long night. I've been dating this nice young ER doctor, and he keeps odd hours."
"When do you get to see him?" Lindsay asked. She knew that emergency-room physicians kept hours that were as long as they were odd. She'd gotten to know a couple of ER docs since coming to New York. Often during assault and rape cases, she'd have to go to the ER at Bellevue or Cabrini or St. Luke's-Roosevelt or somewhere. In particular, Lindsay had had to do a lot of rape kits, since it was generally preferred that female techs do those, and Stella wasn't always available. But the docs in the ER were constantly talking about their lack of a social life.
"Not very often, which is why I take advantage when I can. I joked with him last night that he should become a librarian-their hours are a trifle more sane. Besides, he likes to read, it'd be good work for him. And I'm babbling, I'm sorry-what've you got for me?"
Handing over the sample, Lindsay said, "This is for the Campagna case. It might be the vic's, but if it isn't, we need to know. First person to check it against after the vic is Jack Morgenstern-he's in the system. And then do the reference samples that are in the case file."
"All right. Oh, and the results are back on the trace around the vic's knuckles. Hang on." Jane started digging around on her desk. "I swear, I was organized once." She finally liberated the proper folder. "I'm afraid there's no love there-the blood and epithelials you found were all hers. The only way it's a transfer is if she was killed by a family member."
"Thanks, Jane. And I hope you and the ER doc are able to make it work."
"I'm sure we will, somehow. Pity he can't actually become a librarian."
Frowning, Lindsay asked, "Why not?"
"You need a degree for that, I'm afraid. And the only master's degree my young man has is in biology."
Lindsay had no idea you needed a master's degree to be a librarian, but that was neither here nor there. "Well, I'm sure you two will work it out."
"Let's hope, shall we? We don't have it as easy as you and Danny do."
Having already turned to leave, Lindsay stopped dead in her tracks. "What're you talking about?" She tried desperately to sound casual and hoped it worked.
"Don't be coy, Lindsay. He flew to Montana for you. I've known the good Mr. Messer for some time-he wouldn't willingly cross the Hudson River without good cause, much less go somewhere like the Show-me State."
Chuckling, Lindsay said, "That's Missouri."
"Beg pardon?"
"Missouri is the Show-me State. Montana is the Treasure State. Or Big Sky Country."
"There's treasure in Montana?"
Lindsay smiled, remembering something Danny had said: that Montana's best treasure was in New York now. It was one of the most romantic things Danny had said to her-not that the competition was fierce, as Danny wasn't good at romantic sayings. Gestures, yes, but the actual words had a hard time making it through his sarcasm filter.
To Parsons, she only said, "There's some left, yeah. Let me know about the blood."
"I will. And best of luck with Danny."
Tempted to say "I don't think I need it," Lindsay just nodded and left. Things had been going really well for them, after a rocky start. Still, they were taking it very slow. Office romances were fraught with peril, and they didn't want to risk the work. They also weren't completely sure how Mac would respond to two people on the same team having a relationship, though Danny seemed to think that he didn't have a leg to stand on, considering his relationship with Peyton.
But Peyton wasn't on the team. It wasn't the same thing.
However, she'd worry about that later. While she was waiting for Parsons and the MALDI to finish their respective work, she returned to the necklace.
Something had been bothering her about the necklace from the moment she walked into the Rosengauses' apartment, and looking at it now, she finally realized what it was: it was sparkling. Gold necklaces didn't stay that clean without a great deal of effort on the part of the owner.
Repeating the steps she'd taken with the dried blood, Lindsay used the cotton swab on a cleaner part of the necklace, hoping that the residue that came off would be something useful. Bringing it over to the MALDI, she saw that the mass spectrometer had just finished on the dried blood sample. Grabbing the printout from the printer attached to the MALDI, she saw that the hemoglobin came from human blood, type AB-negative.
Now she put the new sample into the mass spectrometer and ran it. While she waited, she returned to the necklace, examining it closely but not finding anything else of use. However, she did call up the autopsy photos and compared the photos she'd taken of the lobster-claw clasp to that of the abrasion on the back of Maria Campagna's neck. It wasn't a perfect match-one of the first things she learned in the Bozeman crime lab was that there was no such animal-but it was a very close match. Certainly close enough to convince a jury that the necklace belonged to her and that she'd worn it regularly.
When the MALDI finished, Lindsay looked at the molecular composition and found her memory jogged to a case she'd had back home a few years earlier. It was very similar to a sample from that rash of home robberies. The perp's lawyer had claimed that the jewelry recovered wasn't the same as the jewelry that was reported stolen, and one of the ways Lindsay had been able to prove the lawyer wrong was by testing the residue of silver polish and gold cleaner on the recovered jewelry against what the victim used.
Right now, she was staring at a molecular composition that bore a very close resemblance to the ones she saw from the mass spectrometer back in Bozeman.
She was flipping through patent applications on the computer when Stella came in, shrugging into a white lab coat. "How goes it?"
"Not bad. All done with Cabrera?"
Stella nodded. "Yeah, the testimony'll be a breeze. Anything on that necklace?"
Handing the results from the MALDI to her, Lindsay said, "The blood's definitely human. Type AB-negative. Jane's running it now. Oh, and she said that the only DNA on Maria's knuckles was Maria's."
"Damn." Stella scanned the results. "Morgenstern's O-positive."
"There's more," Lindsay said. She knew Stella and Angell both had latched onto Morgenstern as a suspect, so she knew that this news wouldn't be well received. "I examined the necklace, and besides the blood, there's residue from another substance. I've been checking it against patent applications, and I've got a hit." She pointed at the flat-screen monitor in front of her. Two identical molecular compositions were in two windows on the screen, but one image came from the U.S. Patent Office and the other from the New York Crime Lab. "This is a gold and silver cleaner that went on the market earlier this year."