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Thirty minutes later, it was still downloading. He drank some coffee, did some paperwork, called Bernsen and told him he had the personnel files, drank some more coffee. Bernsen was on his way over to get a copy, and Sam hoped the damn thing finished downloading before he arrived.
Finally the screen cleared. He loaded the paper tray in the printer and set it to printing. When the tray was empty, he loaded it again. Damn it, going through this many files would take forever, even if he and Bernsen didn’t have other cases to work and could concentrate on this. It looked as if he would be doing a lot of night reading.
The printer ran out of toner. Cursing, Sam stopped the task, hunted down a toner cartridge, and was doing battle with it when one of the clerks took pity on him and popped it in place. The printer resumed spitting out pages.
Bernsen arrived, and they sat together watching the printer. “I’m tired just looking at this,” Bernsen said, eyeing the enormous stack of paper.
“You take half and I’ll take half. We’ll run the names, see what the computer spits out.”
“Thank God we only have to do the men.”
“Yeah, but the computer industry is heavily male. Most of these files are on men; it’s not a fifty-fifty split.”
Bernsen sighed. “I wanted to watch the ball game tonight.” He paused. “I got the M.E.’s report on Ms. Dean. No sperm.”
Sam wasn’t really surprised. In a lot of sexual abuse cases there weren’t any sperm present, either because the perpetrator used a condom—some actually did—or because he didn’t ejaculate. It would have been nice to have the DNA for positive identification, just in case they needed it.
“He did find a hair, though, that wasn’t Ms. Dean’s. I’m impressed he spotted it, because Ms. Dean was blond, and so is this guy.”
A wolfish smile spread across Sam’s face. A hair. Just a single hair, but it gave them the DNA they needed. The case was slowly coming together. A partial shoe print, a single hair; it wasn’t much to go on, but they were making progress.
twenty-four
When Sam got home that afternoon, both T.J. and Luna were just going in his front door. That meant Jaine was in his house, rather than hers. He liked that. He hoped she was making herself comfortable, because he didn’t intend to let her sleep in her own house until after he had caught Marci’s killer, and maybe not even then. Having her around was way too much fun to give up, even temporarily.
The day was miserably hot, and sweat crawled down his spine as he went inside. He put the heavy stack of paper, half of the printed-out personnel files from Hammerstead, on the coffee table, then stood for a minute inhaling the blessedly cool air. With his lungs rescued from heat damage, he shrugged out of his jacket and followed the noise into the kitchen.
Jaine was pouring four glasses of iced tea, which meant she had seen him drive up.
“You’re just in time,” she said.
He removed his pistol and badge and laid them on the counter next to the coffeemaker. “For what?” He took one of the glasses of tea and drank deeply, his throat working.
“We’re planning a wake for Marci. Her sister, Cheryl, is going to come.”
“Where and when?” he asked briefly.
“Tomorrow night, at my apartment,” said Luna.
“Okay. I can be there.”
Looking startled, Jaine said, “But if we’re all together, aren’t we safe?”
“Not necessarily. You could just be providing him with a golden opportunity to get all of you at once. I won’t intrude, but I’ll be there.”
Jaine snorted. If Sam was anywhere around, he intruded. He was one of those people you couldn’t ignore.
T.J. slanted a meaningful look at him. “Before we get started, I have news.”
“I have news,” said Jaine.
“So do I,” said Sam.
They all waited. No one said anything. Luna finally spoke up. “Since I’m the only one who doesn’t have news, I’ll direct this.” She pointed at T.J. “You go first. You’ve had my curiosity up since we talked on the phone.”
T.J. raised her eyebrows at Sam, and he knew she was asking if it was all right to tell the other two what she had been doing. Since she would have told them anyway if he hadn’t shown up, he said, “Go ahead.”
“I made copies of all the personnel files for Mr. Strawn,” she said. “He said a certain detective had asked to see them, and he was granting permission.”
