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“Yeah, Hastings,” he said. “I saw his name in the murder book. Maybe this will shut him up.”
“Harry, thank you,” Ballard said. “This is why I brought you on the team. And you already came through.”
“Not yet. Let’s see what the lab says.”
“Well, I think you can move on to the Gallagher case if you want now.”
“Okay. I’ll start on it.”
“Let me guess, you already copied the files you didn’t already have?”
“Not yet.”
“Then I’ll see you tomorrow at Ahmanson?”
“See you tomorrow.”
Ballard hung up, then punched in the combo on the gate and entered her building.
After feeding the dog and changing into sweats, Ballard called in a pickup order of cacio e pepe pasta to Little Dom’s down the street. She had a half hour before pickup, so sheopened her laptop on the kitchen table and went to work, trying to find a case where DNA had been extracted from fingerprints.
A basic search turned up nothing and she grew frustrated. She grabbed her phone off the counter and called the cell phone of Darcy Troy, the DNA tech assigned to handle cases from the Open-Unsolved Unit.
“Hey, girl.”
“Darcy, how’s it going?”
“Can’t complain unless you’re going to hit me up with something.”
“I just have a question for the moment.”
“Shoot.”
“Have you ever heard of DNA being pulled off a fingerprint or a palm print?”
“I’ve heard it talked about at the forensic conferences, but are you talking about case law sanctioning it?”
“No, more like whether you can get DNA from prints.”
“Fingerprints are made from the oils on your fingers. It’s still bodily fluid.”
“Palm prints, too?”
“Sure. And if you get people with sweaty palms, then you probably stand a better chance.”
“Sweaty like from being about to commit a crime like rape and murder?”
“There you go.”
“How would you like to be the first at the LAPD to try it?”
“I could use the change of pace. Whaddaya got?”
“I’m not sure I’ve got anything yet. But one of my guys is looking at a case from ’94—home invasion, rape, and murder—andthey pulled half a palm print off the windowsill on the suspected entry point.”
“How was it collected?”
“Dusted with gray powder and taped to a white card.”
