“I’ll try. Always happy to help, if I can.”
Kittredge leaned across the table and picked up a flat plastic sleeve, holding it up to display one side. Inside the sleeve was a sheet of what had been crisp white paper in a past life, but was now stained and smeared and wrinkled. In addition to what appeared to be random blotches, the sheet bore numerous fingerprints, these etched in bright purple, a hue somewhere between raspberry and grape jelly. I turned to Art. “You got prints off that wad of paper? Damn, you’re good.”
Art shrugged modestly. “Ninhydrin. Binds to the amino acids in proteins. Any time you handle something, you leave behind a few skin cells, and there’s protein in those cells. A quick spritz”—he nodded toward a spray bottle on the table—“and presto.”
“Presto indeed,” I said. “That’s a lot of prints.”
“At least three different sets,” he said. “Two men and one woman, looks like.”
“And good enough to run through AFIS?” I was proud that I knew the acronym for the Automated Fingerprint Identification System.
“Good enough to give us a match already,” Kittredge interjected. “One of the men.”
“You’re kidding.”
The detective shook his head. “Nope. Dead serious.”
“Amazing.”
“What’s even more amazing,” said Kittredge, “is that the guy’s name is right here on the page.”
“His name?”
“Yep. Full name. Signature, too.”
“He wrote a note and actually signed it?”
“Not a note, exactly. Take a look, tell me what you think.” The detective handed me the plastic sleeve.
I flipped it over, and my heart nearly stopped.
Neatly typed on a sheet of UT letterhead, the name—and the scrawled but familiar signature beside it—read “William M. Brockton.”
I stared at the stained and rumpled piece of paper—the first page of a forensic report I’d written and submitted—its edges thick with purple fingerprints. My fingerprints. I looked from Kittredge’s face to Art Bohanan’s and back again. “How the hell,” I finally said, “did that end up in the mouth of a dead woman?”
Art said nothing; Kittredge said, “My question exactly, Doc. I was hoping you might be able to answer it for me.” Still reeling from shock, I nodded numbly, then drew a deep breath and took another, longer look.
I had recognized the format the moment I’d glimpsed the page. It was a forensic report, the kind I’d written and signed dozens of times, in dozens of cases. This particular report, I saw upon closer inspection, was addressed to a state trooper in Alaska—Corp. Byron Keller—and the subject line read “Re: Forensic case 90-02.”
I remembered the case well; in fact, I’d mentioned it to Tyler, though not by number, less than twenty-four hours before, as we’d driven back to the morgue with the two bodies from the woods. Keller’s case had begun when a pair of Alaska hunters had found a skeleton, half buried in a gravel bar at the shore of a river. Keller had initially thought the skeleton might be that of a hiker who’d gotten lost and starved to death, or perhaps been killed by a bear. But there’d been no reports of missing hikers in the area; in addition, there were no traces of backpacking equipment or apparel: no boots, and in fact, no clothing of any kind.