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I watched Claudel’s gaze take in the glass-fronted cabinets with their stock of clear plastic containers, the steel countertops, the hanging scale, the tile floor. Everything but the man lying at center stage.
I’d seen seasoned cops react the same way. Crime scene photos were no threat. The blood and gore were elsewhere. Distant. The murder scene was a clinical exercise. A puzzle to be solved. No problem. But cut aYincision in flesh and it was sayonara.
Claudel put his face into neutral, striving for cool.
“Thank you for coming. We’re lifting prints now.”
Claude said nothing.
LaManche remained riveted on whatever had caught his attention.
“Perhaps you could steady the wrist?” Lisa was requesting my help.
“Of course.”
Puzzled by LaManche’s fascination with the man’s upper thorax, I grasped the lifeless arm and lifted the shriveled hand from the table.
Using a pair of curved rib shears, Lisa severed the digits at their bases. Eachcrunchmimicked the sound of a chicken bone breaking.
I glanced over my shoulder. Claudel’s color had gone from pasty to ash.
Knowing the next steps, I said, “Perhaps you’d prefer to wait in the corridor?”
Swallowing, Claudel retreated.
Lisa teased the skin from each fingertip and placed it in a beaker containing a formaldehyde solution. The specimens sank, limp and translucent into the clear liquid.
A few minutes of soaking, then Lisa removed the first limp rectangle, wrapped it around her own gloved finger and gently dried its surface. A roll on the ink pad, then she pressed an oval of fuzzy loops and swirls onto the proper square on an old-fashioned print collection card.
It took several minutes to repeat the process with the other four digits. When she’d finished, we both looked at the results.
“Not great,” she said. “But they’re worth a try.”
“Definitely,” I said.
I crossed to the door and stepped into the hall. Claudel was pacing, hands clasped behind his pricey Italian knit blazer. Today’s was a shade of tan probably called flax.
I held up the card.
He hurried over and took it from me. Frowned. Maybe nodded. Beelined to the elevator.
Resisting the urge to offer a one finger salute to his retreating back, I returned to room four.
LaManche was now studying the man’s chest through a magnifier. He was bent close, unfazed by the noxious smell of putrefaction.
“Temperance. Please look at this.”
“What is it?” I asked hurrying to his side.
Taking the lens, I adjusted the focus as I’d done when viewing the spider/octopus tattoo.
The object of LaManche’s interest crystallized into sharp detail.
I studied it.
Raised my gaze to his.
The hound-dog eyes mirrored my own dismay.
