“I know.”
Cameron let out another long breath and motioned toward the door. “Close it.”
I stood to push the door closed.
“What did you find, Cam? What are we talking about here?”
He removed his glasses and set them on the desk. “I found hairs.”
“Where? On who?”
He held up his hands to slow me down.
“I finished going over the clothing from the Gonzalez case. I found a single hair on her shirt. At the navel or so. I’d have to put the shirt back on her to be any more exact, but definitely near the midriff.”
“What kind of hair?”
“Head hair. From a white male.”
“Can you get DNA?”
He shook his head. “Not likely. It was broken, not plucked. No mitochondria tissue.”
“The root, you mean?”
He looked at me as if he were considering chastising me for using such an unscientific term. “I can’t say for sure how the hair got there, but it’s the only piece of human or animal foreign matter I could find when I processed her clothing.”
“So, if it belongs to her killer,” I said, “then we’ve narrowed the field down to a white male which gets rid of about seven percent of the city’s population. Leaving me only ninety-three percent to wade through.”
“Forty-six,” Cameron said. “Roughly.”
“What?”
“Forty-six percent. The hair belongs to a white male. You can eliminate all non-whites and all females. That leaves forty-six percent. Roughly.”
“Forty-six percent of four hundred and eighty thousand only leaves, what? A couple hundred thousand suspects?”
Cameron smiled slightly. “Roughly.”
“Well, then I guess we’re making progress. Did you find any carpet fibers at all?”
“None. But there’s more on the hair.”
I motioned for him to continue.
“After I found the head hair on Gonzalez, I went back to the hair samples on the Taylor case. I checked over the clothing again, but didn’t find anything. But when I re-examined the pubic hairs from the combing and checked every single one, I found a foreign hair.”
I sat up straight. “From Fawn Taylor?”
“Yeah. It was broken off, too, so no mitochondria. But it was definitely an adult pubic hair belonging to a white male.”
“Same guy?”
Cameron shrugged. “No way to tell without DNA. Like you said, there’s a couple hundred thousand of them living in the area. And I don’t even know if we can get sufficient DNA material from either sample to test. The FBI has more sophisticated equipment, so I could send the samples to Quantico for analysis…”
“But…?”
“But that costs money.”
“So? It’s a murder case. The department will pay for it.”
“And it requires the M.E. to sign off.”
“So?” I asked, but I knew what he was driving at.
“So that means he’ll know I double-checked him. He’ll get pissed off. He’ll — “
I held up my hand to stop him. “You just tell him what you told me. You found the hair. Then you called me to tell me about it. I asked you to do a second pass over the clothing and samples from the Taylor case. Everyone is so serial killer happy around here, anyway, so that’ll make sense to him. Just tell him ‘that’s the way you do it here.’”
Cameron chewed his lip.
“He can’t touch you, Cam. He’s a contracted employee. You’re civil service. He can make your life less than perfect for a while. But if he steps too far, he’ll be the one in trouble, not you. And, either way, his contract will be up at some point. But you’ll still be here. Because you’re a civil service employee. Get it? When he’s gone, you don’t want look back and realize that we could have done a better job.”
“Okay,” Cameron said. “I’ll play it the way you said. He’ll probably buy it.”
I stood, said “Thanks” and left the antiseptic smell of the dead behind.
Serena Gonzalez was in the local computer system. She only had one entry and it was a month old. Patrol Officer Westboard stopped her at Sprague/Madelia for suspicion of prostitution and did a field contact report. I waded through the menus and got to his narrative. It was brief, but I read it anyway.
Subject was walking down Sprague Avenue dressed in provocative clothing. Claimed to be staying at the Palms Motel at Sprague and Ivory. Said she was walking home from the Club Tip Top, where she worked as a stripper. California driver’s license provided. No wants. Released her with a warning.
I was grateful that a patrol officer took the time to document a field contact. That five minutes of work he did a month ago probably saved me from tramping around the East Sprague corridor, showing her picture and trying to put together some idea of where she stayed and where she worked.
I needed to go to the motel and verify she still lived there prior to the murder. If she did, I’d have to execute a search warrant on her room. Then go to the Tip Top and interview people there.
I hit the Print button, sending Westboard’s field contact to the printer so I could put it in my case file.
I could do the Tip Top interviews on my own. That was no problem. But I had to update Crawford if I was going to do a search warrant and by department policy, I couldn’t execute it alone. That meant help. Which meant Lindsay.
I backed out of the Field Contact menu and went to the Main Menu. I typed in Gonzalez’s name and date of birth and sent it to California Department of Licensing. Less than three seconds later, the computer beeped at me. I pulled up the response. There were seven listings for a Serena Gonzalez, but the one with the matching date of birth was on top and highlighted. I selected it.
Serena Gonzalez showed an address in Salinas, California. I had no idea where that was, but there was an atlas at the reference desk. Her license had been issued three years ago. That would’ve been her first license, I realized. And her last.
So now I had to locate Salinas and give their Police Department a call. Something else I could do on my own. And not as pressing as the motel room search warrant.
It was time to see the Crawfish.
“I’ll give you Lindsay and Billings to help out with the search warrant,” Crawford said. “Let me know what you get at the motel,” he told me. He glanced down at his watch, signaling that our meeting was over.
I left his office and the major crimes unit. I found Billings at this desk in Southside General Investigative Division. He was three bites into a sandwich bulging with mayonnaise.
“Where’s Lindsay?”
He motioned to his right with his head. I glanced over and saw Lindsay standing next to the secretary’s desk. He was leaning over and laughing with her. She was about forty and frumpy and appeared to be enjoying the attention.
I called Lindsay’s name and he turned around. When he saw me, he got a look on his face like a kid who’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. I waved him over. He about fell down as he scurried toward us.
“What’s up, Tower?”
“I might have to do up a search warrant and I need some help.”
“Great! Let’s do it.” He slapped Billings on a fat shoulder and Billings gave him a dirty look. Lindsay didn’t notice. “Where’s it at?”
I gave them the details.
“Classy place,” Lindsay joked.
Billings finished his sandwich and opened a plastic baggie full of potato chips.
“You think she was a hooker?” Lindsay asked.
“Not sure. But I’ll head out there and find out if it’s even a good location for her. For all we know, she gave the patrol officer a bad address. Or she could have moved. Or the motel might’ve cleaned her out already.”
Billings nodded. “One can only hope,” he said through the crunching of his chips.
“Yeah, well, I’ll check it out and give you a call. If the room is a good scene, I’ll need you two to sit on it while I write the warrant.”
Billings crunched another chip. “It’d be a thrill.”