I tried not to imagine Benton’s remains enveloped so, or the darkness of his cold, steel space at the shutting of the cooler door. It was awful to know all that I did. Death was not an abstraction, and I could envision every procedure, every sound and smell in a place where there was no loving touch, only a clinical objective and a crime to be solved. I was climbing out of my car when Marino rolled up.
‘Mind if I stick my car in here?’ he asked, even though he knew the bay parking was not for cops.
Marino was forever breaking rules.
‘Go ahead,’ I replied. ‘One of the vans is in the shop. Or at least I think it is. You’re not going to be here long.’
‘How the hell do you know?’
He locked his car door and flicked an ash. Marino was his rude self again, and I found this incredibly reassuring.
‘You going to your office first?’ he asked, as we followed a ramp to doors that led inside the morgue.
‘No. Straight upstairs.’
‘Then I’ll tell you what’s probably already on your desk,’ he said. ‘We got a positive I.D. for Claire Rawley. From hair in her brush.’
I wasn’t surprised, but the confirmation weighed me down with sadness again.
‘Thanks,’ I told him. ‘At least we know.’
19
THE TRACE EVIDENCE laboratories were on the third floor, and my first stop was the scanning electron microscope, or SEM, which exposed a specimen, such as the metal shaving from the Shephard case, to a beam of electrons. The elemental composition making up the specimen emitted electrons, and images were displayed on a video screen.
In short, the SEM recognized almost all of the one hundred and three elements, whether it was carbon, copper, or zinc, and because of the microscope’s depth of focus, high resolution, and high magnification, trace evidence such as gunshot residue or the hairs on a marijuana leaf could be viewed in amazing, if not eerie, detail.
The location of the Zeiss SEM was enthroned within a windowless room of teal and beige wall cupboards and shelves, counter space, and sinks. Because the extremely expensive instrument was very sensitive to mechanical vibration, magnetic fields, and electrical and thermal disturbances, the environment was precisely controlled.
The ventilation and air conditioning system were independent of the rest of the building, and photographically safe lighting was supplied by filament lamps that did not cause electrical interference and were directed up at the ceiling to dimly illuminate the room by reflection. Floors and walls were thick steel-beamed reinforced concrete impervious to human bustling or the traffic of the expressway.
Mary Chan was petite and fair-skinned, a first-rate microscopist, this minute on the phone and surrounded by her complex apparatus. With its instrument panels, power units, electron gun and optical column, X-ray analyzer, and vacuum chamber attached to a cylinder of nitrogen, the SEM looked like a console for the space shuttle. Chan’s lab coat was buttoned to her chin, and her friendly gesture told me she would be but a minute.
‘Take her temperature again and try the tapioca. If she doesn’t keep that down, call me back, okay?’ Chan was saying to someone. ‘I’ve got to go now.’
‘My daughter,’ she said to me as an apology. ‘A stomach upset, most likely from too much ice cream last night. She got into the Chunky Monkey when I wasn’t looking.’
Her smile was brave but tired, and I suspected she had been up most of the night.
‘Man, I love that stuff,’ Marino said as he handed her our packaged evidence.
‘Another metal shaving,’ I explained to her. ‘I hate to spring this on you, Mary, but if you could look at it now. It’s urgent.’
‘Another case or the same one?’
‘The fire in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania,’ I replied.
‘No kidding?’ She looked surprised as she slit taped brown paper with a scalpel. ‘Lord,’ she said, ‘that one sounds pretty awful, based on what I heard on the news, anyway. Then the FBI guy, too. Weird, weird, weird.’
She had no reason to know about my relationship with Benton.
‘Between those cases and the one in Warrenton, you have to wonder if there isn’t some whacko pyro on the loose,’ she went on.