Postmortem(8)

I had promised to take Lucy to Monticello today.


On a nearby surgical cart was the blue power unit, smaller than a microwave oven, with a row of bright green lights across the front. It was suspended in the pitch darkness of the X-ray room like a satellite in empty space, a spiral cord running from it to a pencilsized wand filled with seawater.

The laser we acquired last winter was a relatively simple device.

In ordinary light sources, atoms and molecules emit light independently and in many different wavelengths. But if an atom is excited by heat, and if light of a certain wavelength is impinged upon it, an atom can be stimulated to emit light in phase.

“Give me just another minute.” Neils Vander was working various knobs and switches, his back to me. “She’s slow to warm up this morning . . .” Adding in a despondent mumble, “So am I, for that matter.”

I was standing on the other side of the X-ray table, watching his shadow through a pair of amber-tinted goggles. Directly below me was the dark shape of Lori Petersen’s remains, the covers from her bed open but still underneath her. I stood in the darkness waiting for what seemed a very long time, my thoughts undistracted, my hands perfectly still, my senses undisturbed. Her body was warm, her life so recently ended it seemed to linger about her like an odor.

Vander announced “Ready” and flipped a switch. Instantly spitting from the wand was a rapidly flashing synchronized light as brilliant as liquid chrysoberyl. It did not dispel darkness but seemed to absorb it. It did not glow but rather flowed over a small surface area. He was a flickering lab coat across the table as he began by directing the wand at her head.

We explored inches of the suffused flesh at a time. Tiny fibers lit up like hot wires and I began collecting them with forceps, my movements staccato in the strobe, creating the illusion of slow motion as I went from her body on the X-ray table to the evidence buttons and envelopes on a cart. Back and forth. Everything was disconnected. The laser’s bombardment illuminated a corner of a lip, a rash of pinpoint hemorrhages on the cheekbone, or a wing of the nose, isolating each feature. My gloved fingers working the forceps seemed to belong to somebody else.

The rapidly alternating darkness and light were dizzying, and the only way I could maintain my equilibrium was to channel my concentration into one thought at a time, as if I, like the laser beam, was in phase, too—all of me in sync with what I was doing, the sum of my mental energy coalesced into a single wavelength.

“One of the guys who brought her in,” Vander remarked, “told me she was a surgical resident at VMC.”

I barely responded.

“Did you know her?”

The question took me by surprise. Something inside me tightened like a fist. I was on the faculty of VMC, where there were hundreds of medical students and residents. There was no reason I should have known her.

I didn’t answer except to give directions such as “A little to the right,” or “Hold it there for a minute.” Vander was slow and deliberate and tense, as was I. A feeling of helplessness and frustration was getting to us. So far the laser had proven to be no better than a Hoover vacuum cleaner that collected miscellaneous debris.

We’d tried it on maybe twenty cases by now, only a few of which actually merited its use. In addition to its usefulness in finding fibers and other trace evidence, it reveals various components of perspiration that fluoresce like a neon sign when stimulated by a laser. Theoretically, a fingerprint left on human skin can emit light and may be identified in cases where traditional powder and chemical methods will fail. I knew of only one case where prints on skin were found, in south Florida, where a woman was murdered inside a health spa and the assailant had tanning oil on his hands. Neither Vander nor I was expecting our luck to be any better than it had been in the past.

What we saw didn’t register at first.

The wand was probing several inches of Lori Petersen’s right shoulder when directly over her right clavicle three irregular smudges suddenly leapt out as if they were painted with phosphorus. We both stood still and stared. Then he whistled through his teeth as a faint chill ran up my spine.

Retrieving a jar of powder and a Magna brush, Vander delicately dusted what appeared to be three latent fingerprints left on Lori Petersen’s skin.

I dared to hope. “Any good?”

“They’re partials,” he said abstractedly as he began taking photographs with an MP-4 Polaroid camera. “The ridge detail’s damn good. Good enough to classify, I think. I’ll run these babes through the computer right away.”

“Looks like the same residue,” I thought out loud. “The same stuff on his hands.” The monster had signed his work again. It was too good to be true. The fingerprints were too good to be true.