Play dead

THIRTY-SEVEN

Tracy Mcgovern was Deputy Director of the crime lab. A tall, slender woman of fifty, she had silver, shoulder-length hair, blunt- cut bangs. She favored shapeless black suits, rock-and-roll T-shirts, and Ecco walkers. Tracy had spent nearly ten years working with the FBI's Mitochondrial DNA Unit-a division that examines items of evidence associated with cold cases, as well as small pieces of evidence containing little biological material-before returning to her hometown of Philadelphia. According to her colleagues, she had the unique ability to sleep three twenty-minute stretches per twenty-four-hour period, right at her desk, and continue working on a case until the perpetrator was caught. Tracy McGovern was not so much a bloodhound as she was a greyhound.

The three boxes from the Shiloh Street crime scene were on the floor. In the harsh light of the lab they looked even brighter, more colorful. It was hard to reconcile this with the purpose for which they had been used.

"There were no prints on the boxes," Tracy said. "They've been rather thoroughly wiped down with a common household cleaning solution."

Byrne again noted the craftsmanship that went into the design and construction of these boxes. The mitered edges were almost invisible.

"These hinges look expensive," Byrne said.

"They are," Tracy said. "They're made by an Austrian company called Grass. They're available from only a few dozen companies on the Internet. You might want to check them out." Tracy handed Byrne a printout of specialty hardware websites.

"We're still collecting trace evidence from the boxes, but there is something else I wanted to show you."

Tracy walked across the lab, returned with a large paper evidence bag. "I didn't work on this last time, so I thought I'd give it a look."

She reached in the evidence bag and removed Caitlin O'Riordan's backpack.

"Detective Pistone emptied the bag on scene, brought everything back in pieces, I'm afraid. I hate to speak ill of the retired, but it was sloppy work. The exterior got dusted, the interior vacuumed and cleared, and then it got stuck on a shelf. We've reprocessed the bag for prints only," Tracy said. "The only exemplars belong to Miss O'Riordan. We'll get on hair and fiber again later today."

Tracy unzipped the bag.

"I went poking around inside," she said. "There's a plastic insert on the bottom that flips up."

Tracy turned the backpack inside out. The inside flap was torn along one edge. "I looked inside here and found something. It was a section of a magazine cover."

"It was underneath?" Jessica asked.

"It was slid inside along this tear," Tracy said, pointing to the seam. The plastic lining had come away from the hard cardboard insert. "I'm inclined to believe Miss O'Riordan may have put it in there for safekeeping."

"Where is the magazine cover now?" Jessica asked.

"It's being processed for prints." Tracy took out two photocopies of photographs, front and back of the evidence.

The images were of about a third of a page of a magazine cover, torn diagonally. It was Seventeen Magazine, the May 2008 issue. Written on the back was a phone number. The last five numbers were obscured, perhaps with water damage, but the area code was clear enough.

"Has Hell Rohmer seen this?" Jessica asked.

"He gets it next," Tracy said. "He's already pacing upstairs."

Jessica picked up the photocopy, angled it toward the light.

"Eight-five-six area code," she said.

"Eight-five-six," Byrne echoed. "Camden."

The Fingerprint Lab found three distinct sets of prints on the glossy surface of the magazine cover. One belonged to Caitlin O'Riordan. One exemplar was not in the system. One set-thumb and forefinger- were ten point exemplars. They ran the prints through a local database, as well as AFIS. The Automated Fingerprint Identification System was a national database used to match unknown prints against known, using either the newer Live Scan technologies-which employed a laser scanning device-or the old method of prints taken in ink.

The third set rang every bell in the system. It belonged to a man named Ignacio Sanz. The detectives checked his name on PCIC and NCIC and found that Ignacio had a long sheet, had twice been arrested, tried, and convicted for gross sexual imposition and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He had done two stretches at Curran-Fromhold, the last being eighteen months, a sentence ending this past April.

Jessica glanced at Byrne as they read the sheet. They were definitely of the same mind: Ignacio Sanz was a creep, a deviant, and he was on the street right around the time Caitlin O'Riordan was murdered in May.

Byrne got on the phone, reached out to Sanz's parole officer. Within an hour they had a home address and a work address.