Last shot

Chapter 27

I need to be clear on this matter: I'm going to have to destroy the evidence." Aaronson's rectangular glasses dangled from a ball-chain clasp, hung up in the collar of his ironed Izod.

The L.A. County Sheriff's CSI lab, divided into cubicles with distinct blacktop benches, smelled pervasively of bleach. Since the Marshals had no in-house forensics, they relied on Sheriff's criminalists. Aaronson, Tim's go-to guy, was a narrow, fussy man with methodical diction and a punctilious eye. He was brilliant, and he made it look hard.

The fresh spread of butcher paper, which covered his bench to collect trace materials, threw Tess's Littlerock Weekly obituary, taken from Walker's cell, into relief. Aaronson had rested the torn strip of newsprint-folded along its original lines-atop a plain business envelope, positioned to show how it might have picked up impressions from a pen writing a return address.

The three men stared at the faint indentations in the clipping's upper left corner, ballooned into close-up through the boom-mounted eight-power lens. In the background, Sports Talk radio bemoaned Kobe Bryant's continuing underperformance.

"I dusted it, sprinkled graphite, but newsprint gives poor resolution," Aaronson said. "I even put it under a fiber-optic, used oblique lighting, the stereo zoom, digital photos-to no avail. There's just no high-tech way of doing this yielding." Bear reached for the paper, and Aaronson put in his trademark line: "Don't touch that, please."

"So you have to…what?" Tim asked.

"I want your approval for the old-fashioned method. We'll only get one shot at it, and if it doesn't work, the specimen's spoiled." Aaronson withdrew a number-two pencil from the overloaded breast pocket of his lab coat and a narrow X-Acto knife from his top drawer. Pressing firmly, the tip of his tongue poking into view at the corner of his mouth, he halved the pencil lengthwise and held up one of the two resulting sticks, showing off the exposed run of graphite at the core. "We swipe it across the obit, hope it brings up the contrast."

Tim and Bear looked at each other for a moment, then shrugged in unison. Bear said, "What the hell."

Aaronson drew the split pencil evenly across the newsprint. Leaning over, he blew the graphite dust clear. Untouched by the charcoal swath, the faintly sunken numbers and letters of an address showed, fading where the pen pressure had lightened.

Hurwitz, Gregg — Rackley 04

Last Shot (2006)

3328 Sand

Canyon C

"Canyon Country?" Bear pointed at the mention of the community in the obituary proper-the dentist's office where Tess had worked. "It's up the 14, on the way to Littlerock, where Tess lived and Walker grew up."

Aaronson's quiet-touch keyboard purred under the fluid motion of his fingers. He filled in the blank fields on the database screen, punched "return" with a satisfied flourish, and waited as the hourglass icon tinkled sand. It didn't take long before two matching Canyon Country addresses popped up-3328 Sanders Avenue #5 and 3328 Sand Canyon Road. Annoyed with Bear's and Tim's craning around the monitor, Aaronson glared at them disapprovingly and angled the screen farther in his direction.

"Can you get us names?" Tim asked.

"Of course." A few wiggles of the mouse and Aaronson said, "In the first we have a Chellee Meehleis."

"And in the second?" Bear asked impatiently.

Front teeth pinching his thin lower lip, Aaronson right-clicked several times, and then his scalp shifted back, wrinkling his forehead. "Pierce Jameson," he said.