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Mel Cooper reported: “Silica, alumina and magnesia, iron, potassium, sodium, and calcium. Alkaline earth. Decaying organic material. Hydrous aluminum phyllosilicates.”
“Really? Interesting.”
Sellitto’s eyes made a wide and sarcastic circuit of the ceiling. Rhyme ignored it.
He asked, “Where was it collected?”
“On the victim’s shoes and footprints where he and the shooter walked. Most abundant under the passenger’s and driver’s doors, and the car’s front seat carpet, both sides.”
“Ah, excellent! They picked it upbeforethey got in the car. But where? That’s what we want to know. The shooter’s hideout? Maybe the house of some OC head? I want to know more. Mel, ’scope a sample. Optical.”
Another basic tool in crime labs, a compound microscope—so named because it had multiple lenses—was nothing fancy. Its job was simple: to make little things look bigger.
A moment later, images of particles appeared on one of the monitors near Rhyme, mirroring what Cooper was looking at through the eyepiece of the Mitutoyo microscope, a precision instrument that came in at $10K.
“Put a scale up,” Rhyme instructed.
A grid appeared. The smaller particles, tan in color, were about .002mm or smaller.
He said, “All right. With particles that small, and those ingredients? It’s clay.”
One of the six basic categories of earth soils, along with shale, loam, silt, peat and chalk.
Cooper continued, “Ground calcium, consistent with shellfish shells, very old.”
“Clay and shells?” Sellitto mused. “Narrows it to near a shoreline, right? Why the sour face, Linc?”
“Because, yes, you’re right. Shoreline. And New York City has more than five hundred miles of it. More than Boston, Miami, L.A. and San Francisco combined. What else? I want somethingunique.”
Cooper went on, “Charcoal. Decaying bits of wood coated with varnish, fibers from deteriorating leather and wool. Copper, iron. Then isoamyl alcohol, n-propyl alcohol, epicatechin and vanillin. Everything’s old, very old.”
Rhyme regarded the results as Sellitto wrote in his C– hand-writing. “The last? Some kind of liquor. Antique. Hm. All right. Now, that trace came from a different location. Where …?” He drew the word out. “Pulaski, did you—?”
“No GPS in Gilligan’s car. Disabled. Was that what you were going to ask?”
“It was. His other phone? His main one?”
“Wasn’t there. Assume the shooter took it.”
After writing this down, Sellitto offered, “Man is getting guiltier by the minute.”
Pulaski got a text. He read it, and his face tightened with minor disgust.
Sellitto lifted an inquiring eyebrow.
“I had to shepherd a dep inspector out of the way.”
“So? It’s your scene.”
“Yeah, well, I kind of threatened him with obstruction. In front of the press. Nearly cuffed and detained him.”
Rhyme’s reaction was amusement and a bit of pride. He’d done the same thing on several occasions and actually put an NYPD captain in the back of a blue-and-white for an hour.
“Who?” Sellitto asked.
“Burdick.”
Sellitto said, “Oh him. Yeah, well, he’s got an excuse.”
