The naked edge

4

In addition to fresh clothes, what they needed were a magnifying glass and a strong pair of tweezers, all of which were in bags Jamie carried to where Cavanaugh had parked in a remote area of the shopping mall's parking lot. Jamie had worn Eddie's leather jacket to conceal the blood on her top. To be thorough, she'd bought two magnifying glasses, and after she and Cavanaugh put on jeans and pullovers in the back seat, they leaned toward the steering wheel, careful not to touch it as they gazed through the magnifying glasses, examining it in painstaking detail.

"I see something glinting," Jamie said on her third pass over the wheel. She pointed. "There."

"Careful." Cavanaugh stared through the magnifying glass. "Yes. I see it." He raised the tweezers and probed at the back of the wheel, gripping something, pulling it free.

The needle glinted in the late-afternoon sunlight coming through the windshield.

Jamie shivered.

"Looks like the back end's been snipped off," Cavanaugh said. "After it was pushed through the padding on the steering wheel, it must have been trimmed so it wouldn't stick out on either side."

"But hidden the way it was, the driver wouldn't get pricked unless he gripped the steering wheel with a little extra force," Jamie said. "Which Eddie would have needed to do when he turned the corner onto Seventh Avenue."

"Let's keep checking in case there are more."

But twenty minutes of further searching revealed nothing else. They dropped the needle into a plastic bag.