“But, Simon, if there was only a sliver to work with—”
“That's all a good forensic botanist would need.” St. James went on to explain. Even a fragment of wood, he told her, bore the pattern of tubes and vessels that transported fluids from the bottom to the top of a tree. Soft-wood trees—and all conifers, he told her, are among the soft woods—are less developed evolutionary and consequently easier to identify. Placed under microscopic analysis, a sliver would reveal a number of key features that distinguish its species from all other species. A forensic botanist would catalogue these features, plug them into a key—or a computer identification system, for that matter—and derive from the information and the key an exact identification of the tree. It was a faultlessly accurate process, or at least as accurate as any other identification made from microscopic, human, and computer analysis.
“All right,” Deborah said slowly and with some apparent doubt. “So it's cedar, yes?”
“Port Orford cedar. I think we can depend on that.”
“And it's a piece of cedar that's not from a tree growing in the area, yes?”
“Yes as well. So we're left with asking where that piece of cedar came from and how it came to be on the boy's body.”
“They were camping, weren't they?”
“The girl was, yes.”
“In a tent? Well, what about a tent peg from the tent? What if the peg was made from cedar?”
“She was hiking. I doubt it was that kind of tent.”
Deborah crossed her arms and leaned against the desk, considering this. “What about a camp stool, then? The legs, for instance.”
“Possibly. If a stool was among the items at the site.”
“Or tools. She would have had camping tools with her. An axe for wood, a trowel, something like that. The sliver could be from one of the handles.”
“Tools would have to be lightweight, though, if she was carrying them in a rucksack.”
“What about cooking utensils? Wooden spoons?”
St. James smiled. “Gourmets in the wilderness?”
“Don't laugh at me,” she said, laughing herself. “I'm trying to help.”
“I've a better idea,” he told her. “Come along.”
He led her upstairs to the laboratory, where his computer hummed quietly in a corner near the window. There he sat down and, with Deborah at his shoulder, he accessed the Internet, saying, “Let's consult the Great Intelligence on-line.”
“Computers always make my palms sweat.”
St. James took her palm, unsweaty, and kissed it. “Your secret's safe with me.”
In a moment the computer screen came to life, and St. James selected the search engine he generally used. He typed the word cedar into the search field and blinked with consternation when the result was some six hundred thousand entries.
“Good Lord,” Deborah said. “That's not very helpful, is it?”
“Let's narrow our options.” St. James altered his selection to Port Oxford cedar. The result was an immediate change to one hundred and eighty-three. But when he began to scroll through the listing, he saw he'd come up with everything from an article written about Port Or-ford, Oregon, to a treatise on wood rot. He sat back, reflected for a moment, and typed in the word usage after cedar, adding the appropriate inverted commas and addition signs. That gleaned him absolutely nothing at all. He switched from usage to market and hit the return. The screen altered and gave him his answer.
He read the very first listing and said, “Good God,” when he saw what it was.
Deborah, whose attention had drifted towards her darkroom, came back to him. “What?” she said. “What?”
“It's the weapon,” he said, and pointed to the screen.
Deborah read for herself and drew in a sharp breath. “Shall I get in touch with Tommy?”
St. James considered. But the request to study the post-mortem reports had been relayed to him from Lynley via Barbara. And that served as sufficient indication of a chain of command, which gave him the excuse he needed in order to attempt to make peace where there was strife.
“Let's track down Barbara,” he told his wife. “She can be the one to take the news to Tommy.”