Stella was impressed. "Why'd you go straight to the patent applications?"
"It looked similar to the usual gold and silver cleaners that I've seen, but it was different enough that I figured it was something new. We had a case back in Bozeman involving this stuff. I got to learn more than I thought it was possible to know about what you use to clean jewelry. Besides, apart from the bloodstain, the necklace was very clean, so cleaning products made sense."
Nodding, Stella said, "That tracks with what Angell got out of the other employees. She reinterviewed Annie Wolfowitz, the one Maria was supposed to close with last night. She said that the necklace was clean when she saw it last and that Maria was obsessive about keeping it shiny."
"I think that's part of why Dina stole it," Lindsay said. "Maria was constantly showing it off and reminding everyone that her boyfriend got it for her. Not that I blame her-it's eighteen karat. That isn't cheap."
Letting out a long sigh, Stella said, "The problem is, all of this is telling us that it probably isn't Morgenstern. Whoever left this blood trace is probably our killer, and we don't know who it is."
Stella was growing quite frustrated with the Campagna case. Lindsay's work on the necklace had been superb, but mostly what it did was eliminate Jack Morgenstern as a suspect, which put them back at square one.
When Mac returned from Staten Island, Stella asked to see him for a brainstorming session. She brought Lindsay and Angell along as well.
Just as they were settling down, Parsons sent Stella a text message. Stella read it and sighed. "DNA on the blood isn't Morgenstern's or Maria's and it doesn't match any of the reference samples we got. So not only is Morgenstern clear, but so are Dina and all the other people who work there, and so's the boyfriend."
Angell sighed. "Great. We can also eliminate Gomer Wilson."
Frowning in confusion, Stella asked, "Who?"
"The guy from the Health Department that Maria got into a shouting match with?"
Snapping her fingers, Stella said, "Right. How could I forget Gomer?"
"Who's Gomer?" Mac asked Stella.
"According to Belluso, the bakery was shut down by the Health Department after their inspector, a man named Gomer Wilson, got into an argument with our vic. He shut Belluso's down for a day."
"Unfortunately," Angell said, "he has an airtight alibi. Last week, he and his wife and two sons moved to Indianapolis. His wife's a college professor, and she left her job in NYU's English department for a position at Purdue. He was at a job interview at the Indianapolis DMV late in the afternoon, so unless he went straight from the interview to the airport, boarded a flight to New York and went straight from LaGuardia to Riverdale, I don't think he's our killer."
Mac leaned forward in his chair. "All right, what do we know? I mean, know for sure."
Stella started counting off items on her fingers. "We know that Morgenstern went into Belluso's right before closing, which is around when Maria died, and that he and Maria were alone together. We know that there was a black poly/cotton fiber on Maria and that Morgenstern was wearing a black poly/cotton sweatshirt."
"The fiber," Lindsay added, "was a match for Morgenstern's shirt, but it's also a match for one of my sweatshirts. It's not definitive."
Nodding, Stella went on: "We know he has a printer that could've been used to write the love letters DelVecchio brought us. And we know that he was previously arrested for rape."
"But that was a false arrest," Mac said.
"Yeah," Angell said. "I dug into the case file a little, just to be sure that there wasn't any wiggle room, and I talked to the guy at the five-two who handled it. It really was a case of mistaken ID. Morgenstern matched enough of the description to bring him in, but only that. The cops at the five-two went a little overboard. But the DNA proved it wasn't Morgenstern-and that's why he has a nice house on Cambridge Avenue now." That last was said with a bitter smile. "So we've got, what? Anything?"
"Nothing we can make an arrest on," Mac said.
"Which means we're nowhere," Angell said. "We can't go near Morgenstern unless we have something solid. Leaving aside his lawyer, if we arrest somebody who successfully sued the city for false arrest, we'll be in for a PR nightmare." Before Mac could say anything, Angell said, "I know, I know, but I got a message on my voice mail from Sinclair's office reminding me that we've already falsely arrested Jack Morgenstern once and that it might not be such a hot idea to do it again. I really don't like being on the chief of detectives' radar, and I'd like to get off it as soon as possible, please."
Mac fumed for a second, then softened. Stella knew that his initial response to PR considerations was "Who gives a damn?" His primary interest was the work. Everything else would take care of itself, as long as the work was done right. Stella knew that the world didn't actually work like that-and so did Mac, really-but that didn't mean either of them had to like it.
And there was also the unspoken part of what Angell said: I don't want to go through what you just went through.
Finally, Mac just said, "I don't blame you. So where do we go from here?"
An idea that had been percolating in the back of Stella's mind burbled to the front. "I'd like to go back to Belluso's," she said. "The place has a steady stream of regulars, and whoever killed Maria had to be one of those regulars. It was somebody who was let in as the place was closing, and someone who would've been able to get behind the counter. Morgenstern wasn't the only regular, after all. I'd like to see who else comes in there." Then she smiled. "Besides, it's been way too long since I've had a good cannoli."
Rubbing his chin, Mac nodded. "All right. It certainly couldn't hurt."
Angell said, "It's not like we've got much of anything else."
"Okay. I'll head up there now," Stella said.
She rose from the chair in Mac's office. It wasn't much, but maybe she'd find something. Worst case, she spent an afternoon sitting in an Italian-style cafй, and she could think of worse ways to spend an afternoon.
After Stella, Lindsay, and Angell left Mac's office, Sheldon and Danny came in. They sat on the sofa while Mac himself leaned against the front of his desk. "What've you got?" Mac asked.
"We played around with Danny's favorite toy," Sheldon said, "and figured out a scenario whereby someone could've knocked Washburne's body off the weight bench in the hustle and bustle after Barker was stabbed. Based on Washburne's weight and the positioning of everything, and assuming the guy was moving at a certain speed, it works."
"So you're saying it's likely that Melendez didn't hit Washburne with the weight?"
"I dunno about likely, Mac," Danny said, "but if the wound really was postmortem, it had to've happened one of two ways. One is that Melendez went to the trouble of knocking him off the bench-"
"Or," Mac said, "he fell off when he died."
"Yeah," Sheldon said, "but wouldn't somebody have noticed? Washburne was a well-liked member of the prison community, wasn't he?"
Mac nodded. "That's why Melendez got a stomach full of fists this morning. So you're saying that the only way he could've died without anybody noticing right away was if he died on the bench and didn't move?"