After instructing her on what was wanted, they watched as she lugged
over a battered, bulky crime scene kit, opened it and began preparations
to perform a gunshot residue test, a GSR. However, time was running
out: Samples optimally had to be collected within six hours of the gun
having been fired, and Sawyer was afraid they were about to miss that
deadline.
The tech dipped a number of cotton swabs in a diluted nitric acid
solution. Separate swabs were rubbed over the front and back of each
corpse’s hands. If any of them had fired a gun recently, then testing
would reveal deposits of barium and antimony, primer charge components
used in the manufacture of virtually all ammo. It wasn’t conclusive. If
a positive result came back, it wouldn’t necessarily mean any of them
had fired the murder weapon, only some firearm within the last six
hours. In addition, they could have merely han died the firearm after
it had been fired–for instance, in a struggle-and gotten the residue
from the exterior of the weapon after it had just been fired. But a
positive GSR result could conceivably help Sidney Archer’s cause, Sawyer
figured. Even though all the evidence seemingly pointed to her
involvement in the homicides, Sawyer was dead certain she hadn’t pulled
the trigger.
“One more favor?” Sawyer asked Detective Royce. Royce’s eye brows shot
up. “I’d like a copy of that tape.”
“Sure. Whatever.”
Sawyer rode the elevator back up to the lobby, walked to his car and
phoned in for the FBI’s forensics team. While he waited for them to
arrive, one thought beat relentlessly through Sawyer’s head.
Where the hell was Sidney Archer?
CHAPTER FIFTY
Usually eschewing any except the most modest makeup, Sidney now took
great pains to stencil in her face with considerable detail, holding up
her compact as she stood in the stall in the women’s rest room at Penn
Station. She had concluded that the man pursuing her wouldn’t have
figured her to come back here. She then put on a tan leather cowboy
hat, pulling the brim down low over her forehead.
With enough artificial color on her face to almost qualify for hooker
status and her bloody clothes in a shopping bag destined for a Dumpster,
she walked out of the rest room attired in an assortment of garments she
had spent the better part of the day acquiring: tight stone-washed blue
jeans, pointy beige cowboy boots, thick white cotton shirt and a heavily
insulated black leather bomber jacket. She looked nothing like the
conservative Washington, D.C., attorney she had recently been and whom
the police would soon be hunting down for murder. She made certain the
.32 was carefully hidden away in an inner pocket. New York’s gun laws
were among the stiffest in the country.
A half-hour ride northeast on the commuter train took her to Stamford,
Connecticut, one of a string of bedroom communities feeding the working
New Yorker’s desire to live outside the hyper-kinetic metropolis. A
taxicab ride of twenty minutes took her to a lovely white brick home
with black shutters nestled in a quiet neighborhood of similarly
high-priced residences. The name PATTERSON was stenciled on the
mailbox. Sidney paid the cabdriver, but instead of going to the front
door she walked around back to the garage area. Next to the garage door
hung a large, ornate wooden bird feeder. Sidney looked around and then
stuck her hand into the feed, pushing through the rough particles until
she got to the bottom of the feeder. She pulled out the set of keys
buried there, went over to the back door, put a key in the lock and the
door opened. Her brother, Kenny, and his family were in France. He was
incredibly bright, ran a very successful independent publishing
business, but was also absentminded as hell. He had locked himself out
of every home he had ever owned, hence the keys in the bird feeder, a
fact well known to every member of his family.
The home was old, solidly built and beautifully decorated, with large
rooms and comfortable furnishings. Sidney did not have time to enjoy
the surroundings. She went into a small study. Against one wall was a