The door opened, the space flooding with light. Two men were peering into the cooler. When they spotted Lena standing beside the pathologist, the man in the lab coat stepped away and the second man entered on his own. He was holding a manila envelope and seemed as uncomfortable by the setting as Lena was. She recognized him as Martin Orth from SID, but they had never been formally introduced. Orth was a division supervisor and it appeared strange to see someone so high in the food chain off-site and making what looked like a delivery.
“Lena Gamble?” he asked.
All three shook hands and introduced themselves. Then Orth handed the envelope to Lena, straining to keep his eyes on her and away from the victim.
“You were right,” he said. “It’s her.”
A moment passed-SID’s confirmation giving the depravity new life and breadth.
“You’re absolutely sure,” she said.
Orth nodded. “We ran side-by-sides from the blood samples taken in the alley last week, the parking lot at the Cock-a-doodle-do on Saturday, and the garage on Barton Avenue. Everything matches. It’s her. It’s Jane Doe. That’s where she was killed.”
His voice trailed off, his gaze finally moving to the victim. Lena could see the pain in his eyes as he measured the woman’s battered face and skimmed over her wounds. A certain amount of determination lingered in his jawline as he turned back to her.
“We’re twenty-four-seven on this, Lena. Weekends and holidays. Forget about the backlog. Anything you want, you get until this guy’s in the ground.”
She wished the case was that simple. One man acting on his own.
“What about the meat grinder?” she said.
“We found trace amounts of muscle tissue, but we don’t think it’s human. There’s enough rust to indicate that it went through a dishwasher. We’re not really sure what it is.”
Lena traded looks with Madina, then turned back to Orth.
“What about the rest of the garage?” she said.
“It’s gonna take a while,” Orth said. “Everything we pulled looks like it came from the victim, not the doer. Hair, fiber, fingerprints. But there’s still hope. There’s still a long way to go.”
“What about the trash can by the workbench? He left behind a smock. Everything he wore Wednesday night.”
“We’re concentrating on the gloves for touch DNA. There’s a chance we might luck out and lift a print, but I wouldn’t count on it. They’re vinyl.”
Lena understood the odds, but remained upbeat. Nathan Good would have been wearing the gloves long enough to have left a fair amount of perspiration behind. Although touch DNA, or low copy DNA, was still new, still not legislated in all fifty states, the science had evolved and could yield a positive result. But lifting a print from inside a vinyl glove would be more difficult. While it had been done before, success depended on the conditions being just right. Still, they were inching closer. And when she caught the glint in Orth’s eye, she realized that there was more.
“What is it?” she asked.
“He left something behind,” Orth said. “It’s not as good as a fingerprint. It’s not something that we can key into a database and pull out his name and address. But it’s almost as good. That sheet of linoleum underneath the operating table?”
“You lifted a shoe print.”
Orth grinned with pride. “About three-thirty this morning,” he said. “It was invisible, but we found it. It’s amazing what florescent powder and a black light can do. I called and they said that you were here, so I came down. The placement on the linoleum couldn’t be reached once the plywood was clamped to the saw horses. I figure he left the print when he was setting up and didn’t have his booties on.”
“You got the entire print or just a piece?”
“Take a look. A copy’s in that envelope. We lifted the whole thing, but it gets better. He was wearing Bruno Maglis just like O.J.: a size ten Magdy boot. It’s a lace-up dress shoe with a rubber sole. List price: four hundred eight-four dollars and ninety-five cents.”
She pulled the photograph out of the envelope and gazed at the shoe print. Everything crystal clear.
“He has money,” she said.
“He’s got more than that. Look. He’s got a small Phillips head screw embedded in his right heel. Maybe he stepped on it in the garage. Maybe not. Either way, you get the deal.”
She found the screw in the photograph. “The shoe puts him away forever.”
“Like I said, Lena, it’s not a fingerprint. But in court-”
“It’ll work just as well.”
Her cell phone started vibrating. When she checked the screen, she knew that she had to take the call. It was Klinger, dialing in from Chief Logan’s office.
“He wants to see you,” Klinger said. “I told him that you’d be here in fifteen minutes. That was ten minutes ago, so you’ll be late.”
The chief’s adjutant didn’t give her a chance to respond. Before she could say anything, he hung up on her again.
25
District Attorney Jimmy J. Higgins hustled out of the chief’s office and rolled down the hall toward the elevator. As he passed Lena, he kept his eyes fixed on some invisible object ten feet ahead, scratched the back of his overly groomed silver hair, and muttered the word bitch under his breath.
Lena didn’t stop or turn or even question whether or not she’d actually heard it. She kept walking until she reached the door at the end of the hall.
Klinger looked up as she entered. He was seated at his desk, installing software in a new laptop computer. The carton and packing materials were on the floor. Checking his watch, he smiled and pointed at Chief Logan’s office.
“You’re late,” he said.
Lena ignored him and tapped on the door. Bracing herself for the main event, she took a deep breath and walked in.
“Close the door behind you,” the chief said.
She followed the chief’s instructions. When she turned, she noticed Lieutenant Barrera leaning against the windowsill and caught the imperceptible shake of his head. He was here, and he was her ally. But he was also trying to warn her. Keep cool. Trouble ahead.
Chief Logan cleared his throat. “Did you see the DA on his way out?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did he say anything to you?”
“He called me a bitch.”
A beat went by She had been matter-of-fact in her delivery Then the chief shrugged from behind his oversized desk.
“The man’s pissed,” he said. “A lot of people are. Welcome to the real world, Gamble. Now take a seat.”
He was studying her, measuring her with those dark eyes of his. As she moved toward the chair, she noticed an M21 sniper rifle mounted behind glass and hanging on the near wall beside his medals from the Vietnam War. Several black-and-white photographs were on display as well, one that included the chief sitting beside a.50 caliber Browning machine gun in the jungle. She remembered reading something about the chief’s war record in The Times after his interview with the police commission. He had been one of the first to use a.50 caliber weapon in a sniping role, and had recorded the second farthest confirmed kill during the war. She couldn’t remember the distance, but thought that it was over two thousand meters.
“Why do you think the DA’s pissed, Gamble?”
She turned back to the chief, considering his question. She wanted to say that Jimmy J. Higgins was pissed off because he had become a pig, but didn’t. She wanted to say that the district attorney had let the high-profile job go to his head. That he would do or say anything for a political campaign contribution or a decent headline. That he loved having a limo and a driver and hanging out with celebrities. That he campaigned on ending the dangerous practice of keeping score on wins and losses like so many other cities had, but never followed up on his promise to see justice through no matter how it turned out.
But the truth was that she knew why Higgins had called her a bitch the moment it slipped out of his sloppy mouth. The DA was taking heat from both the press and his political rivals for backing down on a young TV actor who crashed his Land Rover and killed his teenage friend sitting in the passenger seat. The actor’s blood alcohol level was four times over the legal limit. An ample supply of cocaine had been found in his system as well. Detectives working the case wanted to charge the actor with gross vehicular manslaughter, which carried a prison sentence of ten years. Instead, the kid went to rehab. This was the second incident in as many months where a celebrity had been responsible for the death of an innocent person while driving drunk. The second time in two months that Jimmy J. Higgins had looked the other way because he had so many celebrity friends.