The Secret Friend

When the elevator doors opened, Fletcher stepped inside and moved to the right, out of the camera's view. The doors shut.

If Fletcher was working for Hale, he wouldn't have to sneak inside the building.

Darby rewound the tape and watched it again.

What were you doing inside the penthouse? What were you looking for?

She watched the tape three more times and, failing to find anything useful, left the conference room.

Coop and Keith Woodbury were working inside a small evidence room. Pieces of Emma Hale's jewellery sat inside a clear fuming cabinet slowly filling with a cyanoacrylate vapour. Off-white latent fingerprints appeared on the jewellery.

'How's the humidity level?' Coop asked.

Woodbury, tall and sleek, with a shaved head and a runner's build, examined the gauge. 'It looks good,' he said, his voice, as always soft and pleasant. He saw Darby, said hello and then turned his attention back to the gauge.

Coop put down his clipboard. 'The AFIS results came back – no good news, I'm afraid,' he told her. 'The partial thumb we found on the jewellery drawer's metal handle not only failed to find a corresponding match, it couldn't even find a probable match. We'll need a better-quality print.'

'Any luck with the jewellery?'

'We've only done one tray. So far, all the prints belong to Emma Hale. It's going to take a few days to get through this.'

Darby nodded. Fuming with cyanoacrylate, the main chemical in superglue, yielded great latent prints but the process was slow. Then there was the additional step of dusting the prints to preserve them so they could be lifted.

'How did the meeting with the father go?' Coop asked.

Darby hopped up on the back counter and filled them in on her talk with Hale and the subsequent burglary.

'Nice timing,' Coop said. 'You think Fletcher knows about the missing necklace?'

'The only way he could know about it is if he had access to our evidence file,' Darby said. 'Hale doesn't have a copy.'

'So what the hell was Fletcher doing there?'

'I have no idea. I want to talk about the Virgin Mary statue.'

'No prints.'

'I know,' Darby said. 'Either our man wiped it clean before he placed it in the pocket or he was wearing gloves. But wearing gloves while holding a sewing needle would be tricky, don't you think?'

'Depends on the type of gloves he was wearing. If they were ski gloves or ones made of thick leather then, yeah, it would be hard to hold a sewing needle and thread the pocket. But if he was wearing latex…' Coop shrugged.

'What if he wasn't wearing gloves at all?' Darby said. 'What if he sewed the pocket shut with his bare hands?'

'I see where you're going. Trying to lift a latent print from clothing… it rarely happens. Fabric doesn't hold a print's ridge characteristics.'

'That's true. Generally,' Darby said. 'Chen's running pants are made of nylon, and the area around the pocket was spotted with blood. What if he left a print?'

'Then the question becomes how to lift it without damaging the blood sample for DNA testing.'

'There are some chemicals we can mix together that won't damage the core STR loci.'

Woodbury, who had been quietly listening, spoke up. 'If you go that route, I wouldn't recommend using a peroxidase-reaction chemical. For one, they're not easy to use. Second, there's a toxicity issue.'

'What about using a solution based on a general protein-staining dye?' Darby asked.

Woodbury thought it over.

'That would be safer,' he said after a moment. 'I'll have to do some research and see if I can find the appropriate, ah, recipe.'

'And we'll have to wait until the clothes are dry,' Coop added.

'I want to examine Chen's skin,' Darby said. 'I want to see if our man touched her with his bare hands.'

'I'd say the chances of a latent print surviving that long underwater are slim to none.'

'Coop, what's the first rule you told me when it comes to fingerprints?'

'There are no rules.'

'Exactly,' Darby said, hopping off the table. 'Let me tell you what I have in mind…'

26

Coop needed to finish processing the jewellery inside the fuming cabinet. He agreed to meet them at the morgue. Keith Woodbury helped Darby carry the items she needed.

Judith Chen's nude body lay on a steel table. While Woodbury set up the equipment in another room, Darby plugged in the portable Luma-Lite and, wearing a pair of orange-tinted goggles, moved the wand of light over Chen's body.

At 180 nanometres, Darby found diluted bloodstains on the woman's face and chest. On Chen's forehead was a smear shaped like the letter 't.' Darby thought the smear resembled a crucifix.

She paused several times to adjust the light's wavelength. At 525 nanometres, she discovered a full latent print. She called Coop.

'Bingo.'

'You're shitting me.'

'I shit you not,' Darby said. 'I have a nice latent print on her forehead. It's at the tip of – get this – a cross.'

'There's a cross on her forehead?'

'My guess is he baptized her before dumping her into the water. Don't you remember anything from Catholic school?'

'I've tried to block it all out,' Coop said. 'How are we going to lift the print?'

'My recommendation is to use superglue – Keith's setting up the fuming chamber right now. We'll put Chen's body in the chamber, and once the cyanoacrylate has set, we can dust the print using an ultraviolet powder and then develop it with something like Ardrox dye. Since you're the fingerprint expert, I'll let you make the call.'

'Thank you.'

'You're welcome,' Darby said. 'Now haul your ass over here, and bring that partial latent thumbprint with you.' Darby left Coop and Woodbury to lift the print from Chen's forehead and drove to Natick.

Judith Chen lived with a roommate in a duplex, on the corner of a crowded street. A Natick patrol car sat in the driveway. The rest of the street was quiet. Good. The media wasn't here.

Darby showed her ID to the patrolman.

'Bedroom's on the second floor, right at the top of the stairs,' he said, stepping out of the car. 'Parents were here earlier. They didn't take anything.'

'What about Chen's roommate?'

'I don't know. She moved back in with her parents – she's from Long Island, I'm pretty sure – she left here must have been in early December. She's taking a semester off. Got all spooked about Chen's disappearance and didn't want to live here alone. I'll get you her name and phone number.'

The house was dark. Darby turned on the light and climbed the stairs.

A bathroom was on the top floor. It was spotless. Darby wondered if the roommate had cleaned it before leaving.

She opened the medicine cabinet. The left half was empty. The right side contained items which most likely belonged to Chen – vials, tubes and containers of various makeup and lotions; a lot of Alka-Seltzer and cold medications. There were two prescription bottles – Paxil, an antidepressant, and something called Requip.

Darby walked down the hallway. It took her a moment to find the light switch for the bedroom.

Hanging on Judith Chen's wall was a framed picture of her holding a Labrador puppy – the same photo Darby had tacked to the wall inside her home office.

Some of the picture frames were on the floor. Darby wondered if the parents had taken them off the wall earlier in the day. The bed had a pink comforter and matching throw pillows. Darby saw the indentation marks where the parents had probably sat.

Darby was glad the room seemed to be in order. She wanted to see how the woman had lived.

A small Dell laptop sat on a tiny desk. She turned on the lamp. Three large chemistry textbooks and several spiral notebooks were staked in the corner. Everything was coated in dust.

Darby put on a pair of latex gloves and flipped through the notebook pages full of complex chemistry and calculus equations.

An hour had passed when her phone rang.

'You're going to love this,' Coop said. 'The print from Chen's forehead matches the partial print we recovered from the handle of Hale's jewellery drawer. I'll put the forehead print into AFIS. Keep your fingers crossed.'