I had collected body parts of people blown up by bombs made with duct tape.
I had removed it from the bound victims of sadistic killers and from bodies weighted with cinder blocks and dumped into rivers and lakes. I could not count the times I had peeled it from the mouths of people who were not allowed to scream until they were wheeled into my morgue. For it was only there the body could speak freely. It was only there someone cared about every awful thing that had been done.
“I’ve never seen duct tape like this before,” Richards was saying.
“And due to its high yarn count I can also say with confidence that whoever bought the tape did not get it from a store.”
“How can you be so sure of that?” Wesley asked, “This is industrial grade, with a yarn count of sixty-two warp and a fifty-six woof, versus your typical economy grade of twenty ten that you might pick up at Walmart or Safeway for a couple of bucks. The industrial grade can cost as much as ten bucks a roll.”
“Do you know where the tape was manufactured?” I asked.
“Shuford Mills of Hickory, North Carolina. They’re one of the biggest duct tape manufacturers in the country. Their best-known brand is Shurtape.”
“Hickory is only sixty miles or so east of Black Mountain,” I said.
“Have you talked to anyone at Shuford Mills?” Wesley asked Richards.
“Yes. They’re still trying to track down information for me. But this much we already know. The blaze orange tape was a specialty item that Shuford Mills manufactured solely for a private label customer in the late eighties.”
“What is a private label customer?” I asked.
“Someone who wants a special tape and orders maybe a minimum of five hundred cases of it. So there could be hundreds of tapes out there we’re never going to see, unless it turns up like this blaze orange tape did.”
“Can you give me an example of what sort of person might design his own duct tape?” I inquired further.
“I know some stock car racers do,” Richards replied.
“For example, the duct tape Richard Petty has made for his pit crew is red and blue, while Daryl Waltrip’s is yellow. Shuford Mills also had a contractor some years back who was sick of his workers walking off the job with his expensive tape. So he had his own bright purple tape made. You know, you got purple tape repairing your ductwork at home or fixing the leak in your kid’s wading pool, and it’s pretty obvious you stole it.”
“Could that be the purpose of the blaze orange tape? To prevent workers from stealing it?” I asked.
“Possibly,” said Richards.
“And by the way, it’s also flame retardant.”
“Is that unusual?” Wesley asked.
“Very much so,” Richards replied.
“I associate flame- retardant duct tapes with aircraft and submarines, neither of which would have any need of a tape that’s blaze orange, or at least I wouldn’t think so.”
“Why would anyone need a tape that is blaze orange?” I asked.
“The million-dollar question,” Cartright said.
“When I think of blaze orange, I think of hunting and traffic cones.”
“Let’s get back to the killer taping up Mrs. Steiner and her daughter,” Wesley suggested.
“What else can you tell us about the mechanics of that?”
“We found traces of what appears to be furniture varnish on some of the tape ends,” Richards said.
“Also, the sequence the tape was torn from the roll is inconsistent with the sequence it was applied to the mother’s wrists and ankles. All this means is that the assailant tore off as many segments of tape as he thought he would need, and probably stuck them to the edge of a piece of furniture. When he began binding Mrs. Steiner, the tape was ready and waiting for him to use, one piece at a time.”
“Only he got them out of order,” Wesley said.
“Yes,” said Richards.
“I have them numbered according to the sequence they were used to bind the mother and her daughter. Would you like to look?” We said that we would. Wesley and I spent the rest of the afternoon in the Materials Analysis Unit, with its gas chromatographs, mass spectrometers, differential scanning calorimeters, and other intimidating instruments for determining materials and melting points. I parked myself near a portable explosive detector while Richards went on about the weird duct tape used to bind Emily and her mother. He explained that when he had used hot blowing air to open the tape receipted to him by the Black Mountain police, he counted seventeen pieces ranging from eight to nineteen inches in length. Mounting them on sheets of thick transparent vinyl, he had numbered the segments two different ways–to show the sequence the tape had been torn from the roll and the sequence the assailant had used when he taped his victims.