The Secret Friend

26

Coop needed to finish processing the jewellery inside the fuming cabinet. He agreed to meet them at the morgue. Keith Woodbury helped Darby carry the items she needed.

Judith Chen's nude body lay on a steel table. While Woodbury set up the equipment in another room, Darby plugged in the portable Luma-Lite and, wearing a pair of orange-tinted goggles, moved the wand of light over Chen's body.

At 180 nanometres, Darby found diluted bloodstains on the woman's face and chest. On Chen's forehead was a smear shaped like the letter 't.' Darby thought the smear resembled a crucifix.

She paused several times to adjust the light's wavelength. At 525 nanometres, she discovered a full latent print. She called Coop.

'Bingo.'

'You're shitting me.'

'I shit you not,' Darby said. 'I have a nice latent print on her forehead. It's at the tip of – get this – a cross.'

'There's a cross on her forehead?'

'My guess is he baptized her before dumping her into the water. Don't you remember anything from Catholic school?'

'I've tried to block it all out,' Coop said. 'How are we going to lift the print?'

'My recommendation is to use superglue – Keith's setting up the fuming chamber right now. We'll put Chen's body in the chamber, and once the cyanoacrylate has set, we can dust the print using an ultraviolet powder and then develop it with something like Ardrox dye. Since you're the fingerprint expert, I'll let you make the call.'

'Thank you.'

'You're welcome,' Darby said. 'Now haul your ass over here, and bring that partial latent thumbprint with you.' Darby left Coop and Woodbury to lift the print from Chen's forehead and drove to Natick.

Judith Chen lived with a roommate in a duplex, on the corner of a crowded street. A Natick patrol car sat in the driveway. The rest of the street was quiet. Good. The media wasn't here.

Darby showed her ID to the patrolman.

'Bedroom's on the second floor, right at the top of the stairs,' he said, stepping out of the car. 'Parents were here earlier. They didn't take anything.'

'What about Chen's roommate?'

'I don't know. She moved back in with her parents – she's from Long Island, I'm pretty sure – she left here must have been in early December. She's taking a semester off. Got all spooked about Chen's disappearance and didn't want to live here alone. I'll get you her name and phone number.'

The house was dark. Darby turned on the light and climbed the stairs.

A bathroom was on the top floor. It was spotless. Darby wondered if the roommate had cleaned it before leaving.

She opened the medicine cabinet. The left half was empty. The right side contained items which most likely belonged to Chen – vials, tubes and containers of various makeup and lotions; a lot of Alka-Seltzer and cold medications. There were two prescription bottles – Paxil, an antidepressant, and something called Requip.

Darby walked down the hallway. It took her a moment to find the light switch for the bedroom.

Hanging on Judith Chen's wall was a framed picture of her holding a Labrador puppy – the same photo Darby had tacked to the wall inside her home office.

Some of the picture frames were on the floor. Darby wondered if the parents had taken them off the wall earlier in the day. The bed had a pink comforter and matching throw pillows. Darby saw the indentation marks where the parents had probably sat.

Darby was glad the room seemed to be in order. She wanted to see how the woman had lived.

A small Dell laptop sat on a tiny desk. She turned on the lamp. Three large chemistry textbooks and several spiral notebooks were staked in the corner. Everything was coated in dust.

Darby put on a pair of latex gloves and flipped through the notebook pages full of complex chemistry and calculus equations.

An hour had passed when her phone rang.

'You're going to love this,' Coop said. 'The print from Chen's forehead matches the partial print we recovered from the handle of Hale's jewellery drawer. I'll put the forehead print into AFIS. Keep your fingers crossed.'

The notebooks didn't contain any 'To Do' lists, Post-It notes or handwritten reminders like where to meet friends for dinner. The desk drawers contained computer manuals and several paperback copies of Jane Austen novels.

Darby turned on the laptop, relieved when it didn't ask for a password.

Chen used Microsoft Outlook for email and the calendar to keep track of appointments. Darby sorted through the months leading up to her abduction and found only entries containing Chen's class schedules and the dates that certain projects were due.

Her phone rang again. The caller was Tim Bryson.

'We've catalogued the security DVDs. Care to guess which ones are missing?'

'The ones from the day Emma Hale disappeared to the day her body was found,' Darby said.

'You got it. I vote we put people on Hale and see if Fletcher shows up.'

'I saw the security tape. If Fletcher is working for Hale, why did he sneak inside?'

'I don't know. Maybe he isn't. Maybe Fletcher is going to try and approach Hale, or maybe he's simply acting alone. All I'm saying is that we should cover all the bases.'

'I agree. You think the commissioner will go for it?'

'That's the next hurdle. What do you have on your end?'

Darby told him about the latent print found on Judith Chen's forehead and the matching print recovered from Hale's jewellery drawer handle.

She hung up and turned her attention back to the laptop. The files saved in Microsoft Word contained homework assignments and several essays for an English composition class.

There was a small folder holding digital photographs of Chen with what appeared to be her family and female friends. There were several photos of her with the dog and a white cat with black fur around its eye and chin.

Darby was examining Chen's internet search history when her phone rang again.

'Good afternoon, Dr McCormick.'

It was the intruder, the man with the strange eyes, Malcolm Fletcher.