“Agreed,” I said.
A little later I caught a taxi outside the Russell Building and found Benton Wesley where he said he would be at precisely two-fifteen. He was sitting on a bench in the amphitheater outside FBI headquarters, and though he seemed engrossed in a novel, he sensed me long before I was about to call his name.
A group taking a tour paid no attention to us as they walked past, and Wesley closed his book and slipped it into the pocket of his coat as he got up.
“How was your trip?” he asked.
“By the time I get to and from National, it takes as long to fly as it does to drive.”
“You flew?” He held the door to the lobby for me.
“I’m letting Lucy use my car.” He slipped off his sunglasses and got each of us a visitor’s pass.
“You know the director of the crime labs, Jack Cartwright?”
“We’ve met.”
“We’re going to his office for a quick and dirty briefing,” he said.
“Then there’s a place I want to take you.”
“Where might that be?”
“A place that’s difficult to go to.”
“Benton, if you’re going to be cryptic, then I’ll have no choice but to retaliate by speaking Latin.”
“And you know how much I hate it when you do that.” We inserted our visitor’s passes into a turnstile and followed a long corridor to an elevator. Every time I came to headquarters I was reminded of how much I did not like the place. People rarely gave me eye contact or smiled, and it seemed everything and everyone hid behind various shades of white and gray. Endless corridors connected a labyrinth of laboratories that I could never find when left to my own devices, and worse, people who worked here did not seem to know how to get anywhere, either. Jack Cartwright had an office with a view, and sunlight filled his windows, reminding me of the splendid days I missed when I was working hard and worried.
“Benton, Kay, good afternoon.” Cartwright shook our hands.
“Please have a seat. And this is George Kilby and Seth Richards from the labs. Have you met? ”
“No. How do you do?” I said to Kilby and Richards, who were young, serious, and soberly attired.
“Would anybody like coffee?” Nobody did, and Cartwright seemed eager to get on with our business. He was an attractive man whose formidable desk bore testimony to the way he got things done. Every document, envelope, and telephone message was in its proper place, and on top of a legal pad was an old silver Parker fountain pen that only a purist would use. I noticed he had plants in his windows and photographs of his wife and daughters on the sills. Outside sunlight winked on windshields as cars moved in congested herds, and vendors hawked T-shirts, ice cream, and drinks.
“We’ve been working on the Steiner case,” Cart- wright began, “and there are a number of interesting developments so far. I will start with what is probably most important, and that’s the typing of the skin found in the freezer.
“Although our DNA analysis is not finished, we can tell you with certainty that the tissue is human and the ABO grouping is 0-positive. As I’m sure you know, the victim, Emily Steiner, was also 0-positive. And the size and shape of the tissue are consistent with her wounds. ”
“I’m wondering if you’ve been able to determine what sort of cutting instrument was used to excise the tissue,” I said, taking notes.
“A sharp cutting instrument with a single edge.”
“Which could be just about any type of knife,” Wesley said. Cartwright went on.
“You can see where the point penetrated the flesh first as the assailant began to cut. So we’re talking about a knife with a point and a single edge. That’s as much as we can narrow it down. And by the way” –he looked at Wesley”–we’ve found no human blood on any of the knives you had sent in. Uh, the things from the Ferguson house.” Wesley nodded, his face impervious as he listened.
“Okay, trace evidence,” Cartwright resumed.
“And this is where it begins to get interesting. We have some unusual microscopic material that came from Emily Steiner’s body and hair, and also from the bottoms of her shoes. We’ve got several blue acrylic fibers consistent with the blanket from her bed, plus green cotton fibers consistent with the green corduroy coat she wore to the youth group meeting at her church.