Second Chance

Chapter 29

CLAIRE MET ME in the lobby of the Hall just as I returned with a salad. “Where you heading?” I asked.

She kept my eye coyly dressed in an attractive purple coat-dress, a Tumi leather briefcase slung over her shoulder.

"Actually I was coming to see you.

Claire had a look on her face that I had learned to recognize. You wouldn't call it smugness or self-importance; Claire didn't run that way. It was more of a twinkle that read, I found something. Or more like, Sometimes I even amaze myself.

“You had lunch?” I asked.

She snickered. “Lunch? Who has time for lunch? Since ten-thirty I've been under a microscope across the bay covering for you.” She peeked into my bag and caught a glimpse of my curried-chicken salad. “That looks tempting.”

I pulled it back. “That depends. On what you came up with.”

She pushed me into the elevator.

“I had to promise Teitleman parterre box seats to the symphony to calm him down,” Claire said as we got to my office.

“You can consider it Edmund's treat.” Edmund was her husband, who for the past six years had played kettle drums for the San Francisco Symphony.

“I'll send him a note,” I said as we sat around my desk.

“Maybe I can get Giants tickets.” I set out my lunch.

“You mind?” she asked, dangling a plastic fork over the salad. “Saving your ass is tiring work.” I pulled the container away. “Like I said. Depends on what you have.”

Without hesitating, Claire speared a piece of chicken.

“Didn't make sense, did it, why a black man would be acting out hate crimes against his own race?”

“All right,” I said, pushing the container her way.

“What did you find out?”

She nodded. “Mostly it was pretty much like you told me. None of the normal abrasions or lacerations you would connect with forced submission. But then there were those unusual dermal specimens from under the subject's nails. So we scoped it. They did reveal a hyperpigmented skin type. As the report said, 'normally consistent with a non-Caucasian.” Samples are out being histopathologied as we speak."

“So what are you saying?” I pressed. “The person who killed that woman was black?”

Claire leaned over, lifting the last piece of chicken out from under my fork. "At first blush, I could see how someone might feel that way. If not African American, a dark Latino, or Asian. Teitleman was inclined to agree, until I asked him to perform one last test.

“I ever tell you,” she mooned her wide brown eyes - “I did my residency at Moffitt in dermapathology?”

“Claire.” I found myself shaking my head and smiling.

She was so good at what she did.

She shrugged. “huh? I don't know how we overlooked that. Anyway, basically, what a lab is going to be looking for is whether that hyperpigmentation is intracellular, as in melanocytes, which are the dark, pigmented cells that are much more concentrated in non-Caucasians, or intercellular... in the tissue, more on the surface of the skin.”

“English, Claire. Is the subject white or black?”

“Melanocytes,” she continued as if I hadn't asked, “are the dark skin cells concentrated in people of color.” She pushed up her sleeve. “You're looking at Melanocyte Central here. Trouble is, the sampling found under the Chipman lady's nails didn't have a one. All that pigment was intercellular - surface coloration. On top of that, it was a bluish hue, atypical for naturally occurring melanin. Any self-respecting dermapathologist would've caught that.”

“Caught what, Claire?” I asked, fixing on her smug grin.

“Caught that it wasn't a black man who did that terrible thing,” she said emphatically, "but a white man with some topical pigmentation. Ink, Lindsay.

What that poor woman dug her nails into was the killer's tattoo."