When I remained silent, Dominique shifted gears, motioning to the table. “I don’t have much time. Are we still doing this, or is it moot? Have you moved on from Fatemeh?”
“No. She’s still on my list. Let’s do it.”
We moved to the table.
“This is a comparison microscope,” Dominique explained. “It comprises two compound light microscopes, connected by an optical bridge. Using it, I can view both samples together.”
“And you’ll know if they match?”
“Yes.”
The already prepared slides sat next to the device. Dominique slid onto a high stool and eyed me once before carefullypositioning them on their separate shelves, one under each lens, and swiveled the clips to hold them in place.
He peered through the eyepiece, pulled back, rotated to a different lens, and looked again. Next, he adjusted the coarse focus knob in increments before turning the fine focus dial. The entire time, an expression of concentration remained stamped on his forehead.
“Well?” I asked impatiently.
“Give me a minute. I don’t even have it properly focused yet.”
The sharp edge of his tensed jaw stood out, and I caught myself staring, thrust back in time to the wild sex we’d shared Christmas morning, then to the soft lovemaking we’d explored later in the day. The snowball fights at the park. The laughter in the kitchen as I helped make princess pancakes.
In the few weeks we’d known each other, Dominique’s defenses had come down. The profound sadness he had once carried was less evident. He smiled and laughed. He was real and raw and present. I wasn’t always a good person. I wasn’t always an honest person, but I suspected Dominique saw through it all and accepted me for who I was. Not many people had done that.
I feared breaking his heart, doing wrong in his eyes. I never wanted him to look at me with disgust.
Was it love? My skin warmed at the thought, and I looked away, unwilling to contemplate something so terrifying.
Wiping my slick palms on my pants, I tried to calm my racing heart and focus on the task ahead. If the hair from the tassel matched Fatemeh’s, what was I going to do? My means of acquiring the hair was underhanded, making it inadmissible as evidence. Would I continue to pursue her as a suspect or push the investigation elsewhere? Would I approach her and tell her what I found? Demand the truth? And if the truth was murder, would I hide what I knew?
I didn’t like Fatemeh, but if her motives were meant to be a cure to the plague that had infiltrated the university on the day Jesse and his gang were enrolled, did I blame her? Could I arrest her?
I didn’t know how I would proceed, and that frightened me. Was I the kind of person who could turn their back on murder?
Dominique glanced up from the eyepiece, his expression unreadable.
I waited on pins and needles, wavering in my conviction.
“They are definitelynota match.”
I flinched, unsure what I had expected. I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or frustrated. I stared at Dominique for a long minute and suspected he was trying to figure out the same thing while studying me.
What now?the look said.
“You’re sure?”
“One hair has been chemically altered, and the other hasn’t.”
“Fatemeh dyes her hair.”
“Yes. Although that in itself isn’t my sole determining factor for obvious reasons, but the one collected from the scene is considerably thinner and more brittle. The composition is entirely different, and there is a distinct color variation. They are not from the same source.”
I sat with Dominique’s conclusion, rolling it over in my head, deciding how I felt. “Technically speaking, this doesn’t eliminate her, does it?”
“No.”
That was the thing about comparative evidence, like hair or DNA. If samples matched, it was incriminating. If they didn’t, itwas notexculpatory. The scarf could have been loaned to a friend. It could have belonged to one of the women Fatemeh was defending. Was there a group? Did they consult on the kills?Was the flower, the perfume, and the scarf meant to represent each victim individually?
Dominique tidied while my thoughts raced. He resealed the evidence taken from the scene and marked his initials on the tag. He sealed Fatemeh’s hair in another bag and handed it to me.
