‘Nope. Lucky me,’ he said. ‘Bet you’re curious about your fibers.’
‘I was in the neighborhood,’ I said. ‘Thought I’d drop by.’
I was notorious for making evidence rounds, and in the main, the scientists endured my intensity patiently, and in the end were grateful. I knew I pressured them when caseloads were already overwhelming. But when people were being murdered and dismembered, evidence needed to be examined now.
‘Well, you’ve granted me a reprieve from working on our pipe-bomber,’ he said with another smile.
‘No luck with that,’ I assumed.
‘They had another one last night. I-195 North near Laburnum, right under the nose of Special Operations. You know, where Third Precinct used to be, if you can believe that?’
‘Let’s hope the person sticks with just blowing up traffic signs,’ I said.
‘Let’s hope.’ He stepped back from the UV lamp and got very serious. ‘Here’s what I’ve got so far from what you’ve turned in to me. Fibers from fabric remnants embedded in bone. Hair. And trace that was adhering to blood.’
‘Her hair?’ I asked, perplexed, for I had not receipted the long, grayish hairs to Koss. That was not his specialty.
‘What I saw under the scope don’t look human to me,’ he replied. ‘Maybe two different types of animal. I’ve sent them on to Roanoke.’
The state had only one hair expert, and he worked out of the western district forensic labs.
‘What about the trace?’ I asked.
‘My guess is it’s going to be debris from the landfill. But I want to look under the electron microscope. What I’ve got under UV now is fibers,’ he went on. ‘I should say they’re fragments, really, that I gave an ultrasonic bath in distilled water to remove blood. You want to take a look?’
He gave me room to peer through the lens, and I smelled Obsession cologne. I could not help but smile, for I remembered being his age and still having the energy to preen. There were three mounted fragments fluorescing like neon lights. The fabric was white or off-white, one of them spangled with what looked like iridescent flecks of gold.
‘What in the world is it?’ I glanced up at him.
‘Under the stereoscope, it looks synthetic,’ he replied. ‘The diameters regular, consistent like they would be if they, were extruded through spinnerettes, versus being natural and irregular. Like cotton, let’s say.’
‘And the fluorescing flecks?’ I was still looking.
‘That’s the interesting part,’ he said. ‘Though I’ve got to do further tests, at a glance it looks like paint.’
I paused for a moment to imagine this. ‘What kind?’ I asked.
‘It’s not flat and fine like automotive. This is gritty, more granular. Seems to be a pale, eggshell color. I’m thinking it’s structural.’
‘Are these the only fragments and fibers you’ve looked at?
‘I’m just getting started.’ He moved to another countertop and pulled out a stool. ‘I’ve looked at all of them under UV, and I’d say that about fifty percent of them have this paint-type substance soaked into the material. And although I can’t definitively say what the fabric is, I do know that all of the samples you submitted are the same type, and probably from the same source.’
He placed a slide in the stage of a polarizing microscope, which, like Ray-Ban sunglasses, reduced glare, splitting light in different waves with different refractive index values to give us yet another clue as to the identity of the material.
‘Now,’ he said, adjusting the focus as he stared into the lens without blinking. ‘This is the biggest fragment recovered, about the size of a dime. There are two sides to it.’
He moved out of the way and I looked at fibers reminiscent of blond hairs with speckles of pink and green along the shaft.
‘Very consistent with polyester,’ Koss explained. ‘Speckles are delusterants used in manufacturing so the material isn’t shiny. I also think there’s some rayon mixed in, and based on all this would have decided what you’ve got here is a very common fabric that could be used in almost anything. Anything from blouses to bedspreads. But there’s one big problem.’
He opened a bottle of liquid solvent used for temporary mountings, and with tweezers, removed the cover slide and carefully turned the fragment over. Dripping xylene, he covered the slide again and motioned for me to bend close.