Chain of Evidence

CHAPTER 16

“There’s no question in my mind that the rug in Payne’s study was vacuumed sometime just before the suicide, but not being a detective,” Bragg said sarcastically, “I don’t see how that might bear upon the investigation.” Teddy Bragg looked better today, more color to his face, less to his eyes. He smelled like cigarettes. The file for the Halloween suicide, Harold Payne, lay open on his desk. The small office was cluttered with paperwork. A Lucite microscope, a forensic science award, sat in the corner gathering dust alongside a canning jar containing a pancreas suspended in a clear fluid. Dart had never asked about the pancreas, but he’d seen it there for years. Lights glowed on a small FM clock radio, indicating it was switched on, but the volume was evidently turned down.

“Before the suicide?” Dart asked curiously.

“Definitely prior to the shooting, yes. We’ve lifted blood splatter from the surface of the rug.”

“What’s the point?” Kowalski asked irritably.

Bragg answered, “The point, detective, is who vacuumed that rug, when, and why? We checked with the wife, who explained that the housecleaner had been there the same day; but for reasons that I’ll get into, that doesn’t cut it.”

“She was in there-the wife,” Dart reminded, “ahead of our arrival.”

“Yes, so she could be lying.”

Kowalski glanced over at Dart with a look that penetrated. Perhaps, Dart thought, he too understood that this might lead back to Zeller.

Bragg cautioned, “We know by the vacuum pattern-the width of the swath-that it wasn’t any of the machines in the house. Furthermore, we’ve checked the bags of the two machines and IDed wool fibers with the proper dye lot to match the study rug-and that tells us two things: one, the rug was vacuumed, possibly that same day; two, someone else using a different machine vacuumed the rug after the housecleaner but before the suicide.

“The upstairs canister vacuum,” he continued, “would appear to have resided upstairs and only worked the upstairs.” To Dart he said, “You know how I hate inconsistencies like this. It’s petty bullshit, I know. But it bugs the crap out of me.”

Kowalski complained, “It doesn’t matter.” He added, “Not to me. Does it affect your ruling in any way?”

“Roman, great minds think alike,” Bragg said. “I asked myself the same question: Does any of this matter? The kill is by his own hand, it’s clean-in a manner of speaking-and convincing. So what do we care?”

“Exactly.”

“But we do care,” Bragg contradicted. “All because of one tiny piece of evidence.”

Kowalski’s brow knitted. “What’s that?”

“You see,” Bragg said to Dart, “these portable battery-charged vacuums don’t get up much horsepower. These Dustbuster things. Oh, they’re fine for crumbs on the counter, or spilled sugar, but you put them to work on an Oriental wool rug like we find in Payne’s study, and they just don’t measure up-not when measured against our industrial-strength twenty-amp variety. It’s like one of those cheap television ads on cable: You vacuum an area with yours, and we’ll go over the top of the same area with ours and lift a good amount of material that your vacuum missed. And that’s just what happened.” He met eyes with both men-in Bragg’s Dart could see a contained but eager excitement. Scientists have to get their kicks somewhere, he thought.

Ted Bragg motioned for them to sit tight and went off in search of something. He returned a moment later with two wax paper bags. He placed them down on a light table and set a ruler between them. He then carefully opened each bag and drew the contents out onto the light table with a set of plastic chopsticks. He was careful and exact with his actions. “On the left is what we vacuumed from the study. On the right is what came from the door mat outside the kitchen door in the garage.”

Seeing the evidence before him, Dart began to piece together Bragg’s evidence. The pile from the study included dust, crumbs, hairs, and an abundance of fibers, mostly wool by their curled appearance. The doormat in the garage had netted some sticks, dust, and what appeared to be a small blob of oil and dirt. But both groups shared similar items: small elliptically shaped pieces of vegetation.

“Pine needles?” Dart asked.

“You see?” Bragg encouraged. “I told you it’s interesting.”

“You call that interesting?” Kowalski challenged.

“We haven’t divined the species,” the lab man reported, maintaining his attention on Dart. “But, as you can see, a similar vegetation was found both in the study rug and on the garage doormat.”

“So what?” Kowalski complained irritably.

“On the very top of the garage doormat,” Bragg clarified. “Determining a person’s actions-what a person may or may not have done-is a responsibility we both share-you, from a wide variety of evidence and witnesses; me from the translation of the physical sciences. I can tell you a couple of interesting facts, Roman, and maybe you can make sense of them for me.”

Kowalski looked like a kid in the schoolyard who didn’t want to play; he pursed his lips and looked around nervously for somewhere to steal a smoke.

“That rug in the study had been vacuumed-it’s not something I can necessarily prove but it’s something I know to be a fact. Our examination of the machine used to vacuum that rug earlier in the day came up negative for any such organics. And yet our subsequent vacuuming of the same area produced this as-yet-unidentified organic matter, most likely some kind of conifer needle. We also picked up a trace amount of phosphorus and nitrogen compounds-common potting soil, Detective. Similar organic matter and soil was discovered atop the garage doormat, suggesting someone had wiped his or her feet on the way into the house. I questioned the wife; it was not she. A little tough to question the victim, but there was nothing on the soles of his slippers to suggest a similar organic matter. We returned to the home and inspected eleven pairs of boots and shoes: all negative.”

Kowalski said nervously, “So the wife was screwing the gardener in the old man’s study and they made a mess of things. They cleaned up, but not so good. Maybe the old man found out and put a bullet through his lid.”

Bragg nodded agreement as he said, “Might be, except that the gardener put the beds up for winter three weeks ago, and a search of the premises revealed no such potting soil. The beds were heavily mulched. Oat straw. We picked up no trace amounts in our vacuum filters.” He hesitated and said, “What we did come up with was this.” He produced a clear plastic container. There were small blue crystals inside. “It’s a salt and fertilizer compound sold as deicer. The blue is a dye they add for marketing purposes. The compound melts ice but doesn’t kill common plants, flowers, or grass.” He summarized: “Three items-the conifer needles, the potting soil, and the rock salt. It’s enough of a signature, Ivy, if you bring me a suspect.”

The unspoken message interested Dart more than the facts: Ted Bragg had invested an inordinate amount of time in this case that otherwise would have been considered a “grounder.” His poorly staffed forensic sciences division was a busy place; they put investigations to bed as quickly as possible. Bragg, or his assistant, Samantha Richardson, had returned to Payne’s, possibly more than once, in search of evidence. It revealed to Dart how unsettled the man was with his discoveries.

All that Bragg could do was present the evidence in hopes of interesting the lead detective. Ultimately, it was the lead detective’s call whether to pursue that evidence. He clearly saw Kowalski as the weak link.

“So what exactly are you saying?” Kowalski asked rhetorically, answering, “What you’re saying is that some Joe entered the house through a locked garage and did a little housecleaning before he left, after which, our friend Harry Payne blows his hat off with a nine millimeter. Am I missing something here?” He addressed Dart, “This sounds like a bunch of bullshit to me-no offense, Teddy. What do you think?” he asked Dart in a leading tone.

Dart hesitated.

Kowalski said, “Fuck the pine needles and the goddamned potting soil. There’s always crap at any crime scene that you can’t explain. Am I right, or am I right?”

“You’re probably right,” Dart confessed. “Where do we go with this?” he asked Bragg.

“Where you go with it is your business,” Bragg reminded, clearly upset. “I’m just telling you what I found.”

“Where would you go with it?” Dart restated.

Kowalski rocked uncomfortably onto his heels.

Bragg pondered the question, he searched Kowalski’s eyes and then Dart’s. “A botanist, probably. Identify the organic matter. That may or may not tell us something. And I think I would run a crew out to the Payne house once more to do some detail work between the garage entrance to the kitchen and the door to the study.”

“But the garage was locked,” Kowalski protested.

“I can’t argue that,” Bragg agreed, “but Ivy asked me what I’d do, and that’s what I’d do.”

“Yeah, well,” Kowalski complained, “I say forget about it. This is not a fly ball, boys. It’s a grounder. The guy ate a nine-millimeter-case and casket closed. You want to beat it stupid, that’s your business. Me? I got other shit to do.” Kowalski flicked his thick black hair off his forehead with his meaty hand and said, “Later.”

Dart saw him reaching for a smoke before he was out of the lab.

Bragg said, “Something like this comes up, you know who I wish were still around?”

“Yeah, I know,” Dart acknowledged, his stomach burning. I know, he thought privately. And just maybe he’s closer to this than you think.