"Do you remember what was said?" Boldt asked.
Agnes Rutherford nodded. "Thereabouts. As I rounded the corner the one with the hard voice asked the other. "Who the hell is that? "Those exact words?"
"Yes. He didn't expect me. And then there was a long silence. Then the other dragged her out, I think. At the time, of course, I didn't know what was happening, but that's what I think was going on."
"And you didn't call the police?" Boldt asked, dumbfounded. "I was-I am-afraid of you. I spent a good many years of my life avoiding you. Hiding. On the streets, you understand. Would anyone have believed an old, blind, bag lady, Mr. Boldt? Would they have? You don't believe me now. I can hear it in your voice. You can't believe an old blind lady can survive the streets but I did! Daphne believes me, I bet, but only because she knows me." She added, "I didn't call the police, I called The Shelter. I called Daphne."
Daphne glared at Boldt then. He was trying to see this through the eyes of the law-Phil Shoswitz, or prosecuting attorney Bob Proctor-and he didn't like what he saw: There was no proof of a crime. No matter what,Agnes Rutherford believed she witnessed, she had not seen it. Police work was as much practicality as it was instinct. Sharon Shaffer's history was that of a runaway.
This would not be an easy sell, despite the cooperative relationship between the police and The Shelter. The prosecuting attorney's office was another realm entirely.
Boldt examined the room. He remembered the Stevie Wonder line: Her clothes are old, but never are they dirty. That was how this room looked: pieced together from yard sales but clean to the corners. Vacuumed recently. He asked Agnes Rutherford, "Is this room still pretty much as it was?"
The woman answered, "Oh, yes. Exactly. I haven't touched a thing. My rooms are back there. I don't fool with Sharon's things."
Boldt walked slowly and carefully over to the table and chairs.
The cop in him understood the significance of what, to untrained eyes, might have looked like nothing more than dust on the table. It wasn't dust. Tiny particles of shredded paper perhaps. He studied the table top and then, using his handkerchief so he wouldn't leave fingerprints, applied pressure to the back of the chair. It squeaked. "That's the one," Agnes said.
Boldt told her, "The house had just been cleaned." He made it a statement. "She had vacuumed the carpet that morning."
"Now just exactly how did you know that?" Agnes Rutherford asked.
Daphne asked Boldt, "Lou?" Boldt didn't need any more convincing, he was standing amid a pile of evidence. There were drops of blood on the arm of the chair. "Call the lab," he said. "And tell them to bring a lot of lights."
"Lights?" Daphne asked. "For the carpet," Boldt explained. Variations in the nap of the carpet allowed him to see a pair of scuff lines and the perfectly formed impressions of shoe prints.
Boldt enjoyed watching the ID Unit -the Scientific Identification Department-at work. Educated as scientists, they didn't think like other cops. They worked as a team, speaking in half-sentences, using techie jargon unintelligible to the layman. With their nerd packs and a language all their own, these men and women remained on the social fringe of the police fraternity but played an increasingly important role in any investigation. The star witnesses in an investigation were no longer the boyfriend or the observant neighbor but these ID Unit technicians. Convictions relied on a foundation of incriminating scientific evidence. A jury, even a judge, preferred believe a computer-generated enlargement of work from an electron microscope rather than a woman like Agnes who had heard voices through a wall. You didn't bother Bob Proctor and his band of PA's unless you had,a file full of stats to support your case.
The only thing about ID that really irritated Boldt was how slowly they went about their jobs. If Sharon Shaffer had been abducted, which he now believed, he could only imagine how terrified she must be at this moment-providing she was still alive. No ransom call, no notification whatsoever. Impatience nagged at him.
The ID Unit continued its meticulous examination of the crime scene. The first round involved the detailed photographing, in varying degrees of enlargement and detail, of all angles and aspects relevant to the possible crime. Several general shots were taken, followed by increasingly specific studies of the carpet, the chair Sharon had apparently sat in, the table top, and the fixtures.
The area was vacuumed next-excluding the carpet-for fibers, using small, hand-held, filter-specific vacuum cleaners. Each filter was removed and labeled and then bagged in a white paper bag. Plastic bags were rarely used by Hairs And Fibers because of their static charge.
While several of the team continued to measure and photograph the "impressions" in the carpet, others began carefully dusting surfaces with dark and light powders using soft animal-hair brushes. Any developed prints were first photographed and then "lifted" using wide strips of transparent packing tape. The powder, print and all, came up with the lift, which was then mounted on card stock, labeled, and set aside.
All this while Boldt, consulting Daphne, wrote up a detailed first officer's report, describing the scene exactly as he had found it, his suspicions, and his findings. The report came to two single-spaced legal pages written longhand. They both signed and dated it for the specific hour.
Bernie Lofgrin ate too much and exercised too little. He had the coloring of an Irishman and the temper of a Scot. He wore glasses as thick as ashtrays and suspenders with full-frontal nudes hand painted onto them. When Bernie tugged them this way and that, the nudes did a belly dance. Everyone called him the Professor. He ran his squad like a Scout leader and put away more beer at The Big joke than an alumnus on homecoming weekend. Over the past year he had become a regular during Boldt's piano sets. He had joined the Boldt-Dixon jazz record exchange-taping each other's albums. Bemie's collection leaned toward drummers and trombone players.
Boldt knew that with this being a Sunday it should have been only a skeleton-crew ID unit. But Lofgrin had come himself and had brought additional overtime help as a personal favor.
As he approached, his thick glasses were aimed at Boldt like unfocused binoculars. He seemed to have eyes the size of fried eggs. "One of the two suspects wears a shoe size eight-and-a-half wide. Maybe D, maybe E. The other suspect, some kind of running shoe. The way the nap in the carpet stood up for us, these guys might as well have left us plaster impressions. We might even have a make on the manufacturer of those running shoes by sometime tomorrow. Wee got a distinctive, triangular tread pattern in a couple of takes. Size thirteen, by the way. Big Foot. Fibers on the table vacuumed up just fine. Crisp paper by the look of it. We got another small piece under the table. Light blue ink on it reads"USA/ as in 'printed in. ' " "Was that what the guy was waving a microphone over?" Boldt asked. "You jazz guys think anything with a wire running into it is a microphone. That device measures low-level radioactivity."
"A Geiger counter?"
"Like that, yeah. The reason being that I suspected it was the paper covering to a Band-Aid or gauze, something like that. That paper has a distinctive look. That Geiger counter-as you call it picked up a charge consistent with my suspicions."
"Radioactivity?"
"It's how they sterilize them. Band-Aids, gauze, nearly every selfcontained disposable item in a hospital-they zap 'em with lowlevel radioactivity after they're packaged-that way they can guarantee sterility."