I turn to Sellig. “What did you find?”
“He must have used whatever was handy. Or else he’s a fool,” she says.
“The clothesline cord,” she says.
“It’s traceable?” I ask.
“Like a trail of bread crumbs in a cave.”
I am matching her own satisfied smile.
“It’s composed of bundles of thread,” she says, “tightly woven, and wrapped in a sheath of white plastic. No two manufacturers use the same number or composition of threads.”
She reaches into her briefcase and pulls out a single typed page.
“The cord found in the van has a hundred and twenty-one interior filaments, nine different plastic types and one metal filament.” She looks up at me. “Identical in all respects with the cord used to tie down the first four Davenport victims.”
“The kids?” I say.
She nods.
I can see in her expression that this begs a question: the Scofields? Sellig ignores this for the moment. Half a loaf is better than nothing.
“It’s good,” I say, “but not conclusive. Might be strong enough to secure a search warrant, certainly for the van, maybe for the Russian’s apartment. How common is this stuff?”
“This particular cord is manufactured by only one company. But as to points of sale, it gets weaker. In this state at least eight thousand stores sell the stuff, nationwide maybe forty thousand.”
My expression sags. A good defense lawyer would have a field day with this. A critical judge, asked for a warrant, weighing the odds, might say that these tent stakes and this cord are probative of nothing more than the fact that perhaps Mr. Iganovich likes to camp.
But Sellig is still smiling. I sense in her demeanor that she’s not finished.
“The white plastic sheathing around the cord is a different story,” she says. “When it’s applied around the filaments, it’s hot. The stuff shrinks to a tight fit when it cools.”
She’s held the best for last.
“And?”
“The outer threads from the filaments leave their impression in the soft hot plastic on the inside of the sheath. The cutest little extrusion marks you ever saw,” she says. “Just like fingerprints all over the inside of the plastic sheathing.”
There is a nanosecond of bare silence between us, Claude and me taking this in. Then almost in a daze Dusalt puts our mutual thoughts to words: “Whoever possessed the rope in the van is dog meat.”
Sellig nods. “Pure Alpo.”
She shows us a photograph, an eight-hundred-percent blow-up of two pieces of plastic sheathing with its filaments removed. This looks like a giant straw, except for the little bumps and nodules on the inside of each tube.
Even my untrained eye can see that the patterns on the two pieces are an exact match, nodules and bumps in all the same places.
“These are two matching ends of the same cord,” she says. “The one on the left is the end piece from the coil of cord in the suspect’s van. The one on the right was taken from the wrist of Sharon Collins, the last coed killed. The other pieces taken off the kids.” Sellig’s referring to the student victims. “It is conclusive,” she says. “They all match. Sequential pieces cut from the same length of rope.”
I will not have to grovel before a judge for a search warrant.
Chapter Seven
By the time I follow Claude and Emil Johnson to the third floor, an evidence tech is already putting up yellow tape to block off one end of the hall close to Iganovich’s apartment.
I grab Claude, whisper in his ear. “We should get Sellig in here, now,” I tell him.
He nods and issues a quick instruction to one of the cops in the hall.
Two special enforcement officers packing M-16’s, guys in black combat garb, with paramilitary training and hair triggers, come out of the apartment. One of them is unloading his weapon, soft-nosed cartridges in a clip, lead that will expand like putty when it hits a target.
The suspect is obviously not home. We wait outside the door. A few seconds later Sellig is escorted up the stairs by a uniformed cop. She’s carrying a small black case, like an undersized brief box. She goes in, and we follow. I have my hands in my pockets.
I feel a little ridiculous, trussed-up in a Kevlar flak jacket that reaches from belt to collar. Emil has asked that I be here, in case questions arise during the search. His effort I think to spread some accountability.
“An all-points bulletin has been issued for Iganovich,” he tells me. This based on the arrest warrant I secured, the evidence contained in Sellig’s report on the cord found in the Russian’s van.
“Be careful by the door.” Emil’s command presence. Across the threshold there’s a bowl of cat food, little white fuzz growing on its contents, and flies, flies are everywhere. The most overpowering sensation about the place is its odor. This is something between rancid meat, and a leaking septic tank.
Claude has a handkerchief over his mouth. He is trying to make his way through the cluttered filth to a window on the other side of the room. He opens it and there’s a slight cross ventilation. The full fury of this smell passes me on its way to the door where I am standing.
There are several days’ newspapers piled up in the hall outside. They are rolled, wrapped in an outer cover of blank newsprint, but I can see dates on two of these. I make a mental note of this.
The place is sparse, what the fair landlord would have to advertise as a small studio apartment. There is a couch in the living room, a sleeper that looks like it hasn’t been closed up in years, an event that may have coincided with the last time the bedding was changed. A small coffee table-it is difficult to imagine that this might have rested before a neatly closed couch at one time-has been pushed into a corner. It is now cluttered with old mail, newspapers and dirty dishes, remnants of food remaining in some of these.
I trip through this mess, careful not to disturb anything until Sellig is finished. She is opening the little case, putting on gloves.
She’s co-opted two of the local evidence techs. They are taking pictures, pinpointing the location of objects in the room. One of the deputies is wielding a video camera, doing a walk-through and panning the rooms. This should take all of thirty seconds on his tape.
A few of the more curious neighbors are now wandering by the door, for a look inside. One of the uniforms is telling them to move on, back to their rooms or out of the building. He reaches for the door to close it, but Emil calls him off.
“What you wanna do, kill us?” he says. He’s muttering to himself. “Place smells like the foul end of my aunt Matilda.”
Sellig is busy carefully pulling clothes from the closet. This is not an extensive wardrobe, two pairs of pants, tattered chinos, and a light jacket. I think she is probably looking for blood stains. She comes up empty. She talks to one of the county technicians and two minutes later the guy is back with a small hand-held vacuum. This is made for police work, with a little box that holds a finely made filter. The technician is giving a pair of jeans the once-over with this thing. When he’s finished he pulls the filter and places it in a plastic bag. Another deputy then marks the bags for identification, and the process starts again on the next pair.
They are looking for trace evidence, a bit of sand, a piece of reed from the creek, something that might show up later under a microscope, that could place Iganovich on the Putah Creek, something to corroborate the clothesline cord. They package the pants separately in bags, the jacket in another.
My hands are in my pockets, pushed all the way to the bottom, to keep from touching anything. I wish I could say the same for Emil. He is fingering little items in a half-open dresser drawer, personal trinkets that I assume belong to the suspect. He pulls a set of rosary beads from the drawer and looks at them, then at me.
“Fuckin’ guy’s probably an altar boy,” he says.