‘What about the fingerprints?’
Bollinger took a breath. ‘McCabe, you’re an experienced homicide cop. You know better than I do that when you check somebody’s house for prints, you generally pick up a lot of extraneous prints from whoever’s been there. Not just the people who live there but others. Visitors, delivery people. Whoever. Well, in Kane’s apartment there was a lot of that. A lot of partials and smears, here, there, and everywhere, just like you’d expect.’
‘So what’s the problem?’
‘I have a good contact, a crime lab tech who examined the room where they found Kane’s body. He’s somebody I trust. According to my contact, none of those prints belonged to the victim.’
‘I thought the cops said there were a lot of Kane’s prints. That’s one of the ways they identified him.’
‘There were and it is. They found the victim’s prints all over the place. On the telephone. On the doorknobs. On tables. On the refrigerator. One on an empty beer bottle in the living room.’
‘But –’
‘Let me finish. These prints were all perfect. Nice fat plump perfect prints. Not a smear or partial among them. It was like somebody walked the victim around the apartment and planted his prints on things just before they shot him. Or maybe pressed his fingers against things just after.’
‘The FBI didn’t have a record of Kane’s prints?’
‘No. Kane was never fingerprinted while he was alive. Never arrested. Never served in the military, et cetera, et cetera. All they had for a comp was the victim himself.’
‘How about the DNA? Sessions said they were sure because of the DNA.’
‘Same sort of thing. The DNA they got was from hairs on the bed right where the techs would look. Saliva in the sink. A complete set of fingernail clippings in the wastebasket in the bathroom. Just seemed to me, and my pal in the crime lab, that it was all too perfect.’
‘There was no previous record of Kane’s DNA?’
‘Nope.’
‘So you’re saying the body wasn’t Kane’s?’
‘I’m saying it’s a definite maybe.’
‘So if it wasn’t Lucas Kane, who was it?’
‘I haven’t a clue. In those days South Beach was full of good-looking boys on the prowl. Some selling their bodies. Some just looking for a sugar daddy. If one of them happened to disappear, nobody would even notice.’
‘He’d have to be the same height and weight as Kane. Same hair color.’
‘Easy enough.’
‘How about the car?’
‘What about the car?’
‘You wrote that Kane’s prints – the corpse’s prints – matched the prints found in the car.’
‘They did.’
‘Same problem of perfection they found in the condo?’
‘No. The prints in the car were about what you’d expect. Partials from the victim on the door, the wheel, the gearshift lever, the seat belt lock, and so on. I don’t know about DNA.’
‘Anybody else’s prints anywhere in or on the car?’
‘Not that I’m aware of. I think it was clean.’
‘So maybe they wiped it down and then let the victim drive it around?’
‘That could be.’
‘Did you ever ask Allard or Sessions about any of this?’
‘Yeah. At first they pooh-poohed the whole thing, told me my imagination was working overtime, but I’m a persistent kind of gal, and I kept asking. After a while they just stonewalled me.’
‘Kane’s father came to the funeral, right?’ McCabe asked.
‘Yes. The famous pianist. I remember a sad old man. He came with a much younger woman who was supposedly his assistant. Maybe she was. Maybe she was more. I think the mother may be dead.’
‘Did anybody think to do a Y-chromosomal DNA match between father and son? That would have confirmed the body’s identity beyond a doubt.’
‘Wouldn’t have helped.’
‘Why not?’
‘Kane was adopted. On that note, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to take a short break and find the little girls’ room.’
Bollinger rose and wandered off. McCabe got them both another coffee and considered the possibilities. Suppose Bollinger was right and the body they buried wasn’t Lucas Kane. Pollock would have to have known. He ID’d the body. Said it was Kane. Hair, moles, and scars in all the right places, Sessions told him. Even made some jokes about the guy’s pecker. ‘I never forget a penis,’ he said.