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“I didn’t promise a smoking barrel,” Ed chortles. Swiping a card across a reader by the door, he buzzes us in and reveals a room of bright white. Tiles from the floor to the ceiling and stainless-steel counters line three of the four walls inside. A large, steel island counter takes up the bulk of the middle of the room, LED lights built-in beneath the sheet of glass settled on top, to illuminate whatever a tech might wish to place there.
In our case for today, that thing is a set of bloody clothes, laid out the way some moms would present tomorrow’s outfit for their child. Black sweatpants take up most of the space, with holey knees and frayed cuffs at the ends. Pockets, one on each side, and if we were to turn the pants over, I suspect there would be more on the back. Next to those lies a shirt wide enough to fit Adrianna four or five times. The Aguero insignia, old and tattered, so the ‘e’ and the ‘r’ are all but scratched away. Similarly to the sweatpants, the cuffs are frayed, and the fabric is torn.
But these aren’t defensive tears. Rather, natural breakdown after years of being worn, washed, and worn again.
“I pulled samples from the fabric the moment we had these in-house,” Cardine declares. While Archer and Fletch meander closer, the tech stands back and rocks on his heels. “I ran them myself.”
“Blood belongs to William Alves?” Archer drops his hands into his pockets, almost as though to stop himself from touching, but he leans closer to the clothes on the table and studies them. “Right?”
“Yep. A certain match.”
“Find anyone else’s DNA?” Fletch wanders closer and peers at a pair of men’s flip-flops. They, too, are black. Completely nondescript. “Hair? Skin? Anything?”
“Nothing.” Cardine heads to one of the side tables and picks up a file he obviously prepared in the time it took us to come from Robert Jones’ home to here. Flipping it open, he reads from his reports. “The clothes provide us with no additional specimens except for those that belong to your victim. The fraying of the fabric, in my opinion, is not a result of a tussle between your victim and your killer, but rather, from wear and tear over the life of ownership. I do have something you may like, though. Something that seems a little…” He glances up when Archer and Fletch look across. “Well, paint by numbers, if you will.”
“How so?” Archer’s eyes swing to me, then back to his friend. “Paint me a picture, Ed.”
“Well…” Setting his file down and crossing the room, Cardine picks up a long pair of steel tweezers, then he comes to the illuminated table and rests one elbow on top. “See the insignia here? Aguero’s Auto Body?” He uses the very tip of the tweezers to gently pull at a little of the peeling lettering. “The logo on this shirt, much like many shirts similar, is held down by a polyvinyl acetate and cyanoacrylate adhesive.”
“Which is…” Curious, Archer glances over his shoulder at me. “In cop words?”
“Glue.” I fold my arms and smirk. “It’s glue, Archer.”
“Gold star for the doctor,” the tech exclaims. “Now, many lower-income businesses who opt for vinyl lettering, as opposed to the costlier embroidery, end up with a similar product. The vinyl is glued down, the product is used, and over time, the glue deteriorates, resulting in the letters peeling away. As has occurred with this shirt.” He glances up to make certain the detectives are paying attention. “The glue has broken down and our logo is falling away. Lucky for us, we have ways of knowing that glue existed and touched this fabric.”
“And your point being?” Fletch studies the tech, his brows pinching tighter together. “We know Aguero’s name was there. Doesn’t change anything.”
“You think so.” Turning his back on the detectives and taking a special kind of penlight from the counter, Cardine spins back again and offers the device to Archer. “Aguero’s business name, for the most part, remains. But the owner of the shirt… well, their name was once glued beneath.”
“No shit?” Energized, Archer flicks the light on and reveals a mess of blood on the black fabric. That, I expected. But since I know what will help, I reach back and flick the main lights out, so the room drops into muted darkness.
Three men fold over the steel table.
“A…” Archer slowly runs the pen over the breast section of the fabric. “R. M. A.”
“No fucking way,” Fletch breathes. “Armando?” He straightens again, his eyes wide. “Armando Aguero? This is the boss’ shirt?”
“Like I said,” Cardine preens. “Seems a little on the nose. But it could be a smoking barrel, I suppose. Depends how easy you want this case to be.”
“Easy?” Archer flicks the pen light off and straightens his back, chuckling as his friend saunters across the room and flips the overhead lights back on again. “This shit has been nothing but a mind fuck from the start. It’s about time we caught a break like this.”
“Well… there you have it then.” Cardine stills beside me and grins when our eyes meet. “You like working with the dead, Chief Mayet?”
“They rarely make me participate in small talk. And they never complain.” I fold my arms and smile in response. “You enjoy working at the crime lab?”
“Makes me feel smart when I tell the chicks I work in forensic science. They have no clue I was studying the crotch of a dead man’s underwear last week.”
“Some things are best left unsaid,” I murmur. Though I’ll be damned if he isn’t a little charming. “I have to scrub poop off of dead bodies daily. It’s a thankless job.”
“Wait?” Archer’s face screws up in distaste. “You wash them, Mayet? You’re up in the George Stanley building, day after day, in your sparkling white coat, and you’re scrubbing shit off a body?”
“Not such a sexy job now, is it?” I turn to Cardine and offer him my hand. “Thank you for being available to us on a Sunday.”
“For Archer Malone?” He shakes my hand, pumping just hard enough to get my pulse jumping. “Anytime.”
“I stopped thinking your job was sexy the first time you pulled a man’s tongue out through his throat,” Archer rumbles, oblivious to Fletch’s laughter and Cardine’s curious stare. “Shit, Mayet. I stopped thinking your job was sexy that time you were catching brain juice in a bucket. And sawing a skull open.” With a slight tinge of green to his skin, he looks back at the clothes on the steel table. “I stopped thinking your job was sexy when you pulled maggots from a dead man’s body in an alleyway and placed them in a pee jar to keep for pets.”
“They weren’t pets.” I step to the side as Cardine opens the lab door, then leave my husband behind to give him a chance to collect himself again. “And we solved that murder, Detective. In one day.”
