“Let’s say you’re right,” I said. “Let’s say these fibers are from car carpeting. That still doesn’t explain why there would be possibly six different nylon carpet fibers. It’s not likely this guy has six different types of carpet inside his vehicle.”
“No, that’s not likely,” Joni said. “But the fibers could have been transferred to the inside of his car.
Maybe he works in a profession that exposes him to carpets. Maybe he has an occupation that puts him in and out of different cars throughout the day.”
“A car wash?”
I asked, envisioning Beryl’s car. It was spotless inside and out Joni thought about this, her young face intense. “Could very well be something like that. If he works in one of these car washes where attendants clean the interiors, the trunks, he’d be exposed to a variety of carpet fibers all day long.
It’s inevitable he’s going to pick up some of them. Another possibility is he works as a car mechanic.”
I reached for my coffee. “Okay. Let’s get to the other four fibers. What can you tell me about them?”
She glanced over her paperwork. “One is acrylic, one olefin, one polyethylene, the other Dynel.
Again, the first three are consistent with carpet-type fibers. The Dynel fiber is interesting because I
don’t see Dynel very often. It’s generally associated with fake fur coats, furlike rugs, wigs. But this Dynel fiber is rather fine, more consistent with garment material.”
“The only clothing fiber you found?”
“I’m inclined that way,” she answered.
“Beryl was thought to have been wearing a tannish pants suit…”
“It’s not Dynel,” she said. “At least her slacks and jacket aren’t. They’re a cotton and polyester blend. It’s possible her blouse was Dynel, no way to know since it hasn’t turned up.”
She retrieved another slide from the file folder and mounted it on the stage. “As for the orange fiber I mentioned, the only acrylic one I found, it has a shape at cross section I’ve never seen before.”
She drew a diagram to demonstrate, three circles joined in the center, bringing to mind a three-leaf clover without a stem. Fibers are manufactured by forcing a melted or dissolved polymer through the very fine holes of a spinneret. Cross-sectionally, the resulting filaments, or fibers, will be the same shape as the spinneret holes, just as a line of toothpaste will be the same cross-sectional shape as the opening in the tube it was squeezed through. I had never seen the clover-leaf shape before, either. Most acrylics are a peanut, dog bone, dumbbell, round, or mushroom shape at cross section.
“Here.”
Joni moved to one side, making room for me.
I peered through the ocular lens. The fiber looked like a blotchy twisted ribbon, its varying shades of bright orange lightly peppered with black particles of titanium dioxide.
“As you can see,” she explained, “the color is also a little awkward. The orange. Uneven, and moderately dense with delustering particles to dull the fiber’s shine.
All the same, the orange is garish, a real Halloween orange, which I find peculiar for clothing or carpet fibers. The diameter is moderately coarse.”
“Which would make it consistent with carpeting,” I ventured. “Despite the peculiar color.”
“Possibly.”
I began thinking about what materials I had come across that were bright orange. “What about traffic vests?”
I asked. “They’re bright orange, and a fiber from that would fit with the vehicle-type debris you’ve identified.”
“Unlikely,” she replied. “Most traffic vests I’ve seen are nylon versus acrylic, usually a very coarse mesh that isn’t likely to shed. In addition, windbreakers and jackets you might associate with road crews or traffic cops are smooth, also unlikely to shed, and they’re usually nylon.”
She paused, adding thoughtfully, “It also seems to me you aren’t likely to find much, if any, delustering particles–you wouldn’t want a traffic vest to appear dull.”
I backed away from the stereoscope. “Whatever the case, this fiber is so distinctive I suspect it’s patented. Someone out there should recognize it even if we don’t have a known material for comparison.”
“Good luck.”
“I know. Proprietary blackouts,” I said. “The textile industry is as secretive about their patents as people are about their assignations.”