Gretchen laughed. “You’re welcome.”
“Thanks for the meal. If you couldn’t figure it out, I was starving. It hit the spot. Now, what do you want?”
“Something we can use to find whoever took Turner’s family,” Josie said.
While she slept, Noah, Gretchen, and a half dozen of their colleagues had continued to work, running down leads, interviewing people who had known all four women, and following up on whatever came in through the tip line. Nothing had panned out so far. The tips were useless. Noah had tracked down Cassidy’s friend, Toni, from art class, and she had confirmed the conversation that Wren had overheard between her and Cassidy. The only new information that came from the interview was that Cassidy had seen the guy outside Turner’s building and Dani’s house and that she’d seen him there forabout a week before he disappeared. She hadn’t been able to sneak a photo of him. Without a better description than man in ballcap, it didn’t help at all. All it told them was that Cassidy or Dani—or both—may have had a stalker in Denton.
Hummel sighed as he gathered up the remains of his lunch and threw them into a trash bin in the corner of the room. “I’ve got nothing, unfortunately. Well, almost nothing.”
That explained why he was so irritable. Hummel was very good at his job, and he took pride in it. Often, he refused to delegate important tasks because he was too worried someone else might get it wrong. Like Josie, he was a bit of a control freak when it came to work.
“Touch DNA?” asked Gretchen.
“Couldn’t get anything from the flower stems at either scene.”
“What about Maxine and Haven Barnes?” said Josie. “DNA on their bodies? Under their nails?”
“There were no skin cells under Maxine Barnes’s fingernails.”
Maxine had had bruising on her arm but given the condition of her body, she hadn’t had time to fight back against the killer. Her hands had likely been trapped at her sides the entire time.
“But Haven would have had something under her nails,” Josie said. “Given how hard she fought.”
Hummel shook his head. “No skin cells. I did find fibers, though.”
Josie frowned. “Just fibers?”
The killer had to have had some exposed skin. Haven had clearly awakened before the killer could get into the burking position, straddling her chest with her arms trapped between his legs and a pillow over her face. Given her injuries, he had struggled to subdue her.
“Maybe he had long sleeves and pants on like he did when he arrived at the Schwarber scene,” Hummel suggested. “I’m just telling you what I found. I examined the fibers under the microscope. There were a few different kinds. One was a type of cotton. Dyed indigo. It may be consistent with fibers found in denim.”
“May be?” Gretchen echoed.
“I’m only looking at these fibers using a microscope. There’s a lot I can tell you just from that. Whether they’re natural or synthetic; the general category of the synthetic fibers, like if they’re acrylic, nylon, polyester, that sort of thing; dye properties. What I can’t tell you is the chemical makeup of these fibers, what kind of fabric or item of clothing they came from, the brand, anything like that. I can guess, hence the ‘may be consistent with,’ but even my guesses are very limited without more information. That’s why I sent them off to the state police lab. They can do things like scanning electron microscopy, microspectrophotometry, infrared microspectrometry, micro-X-ray fluorescence spectrometry.”
Gretchen held up a palm. “I’m going to stop you right there because you lost me at electron something, but tell me if I have this right. You’re saying that those other tests that the state lab can do will tell you a lot more information about the fibers you found?”
Hummel nodded.
Josie rubbed her temples, feeling just as overwhelmed by the barrage of enormously long words and the frustration that there hadn’t been any actual DNA under Haven Barnes’s fingernails.
“Were there other fibers besides the denim—I’m sorry, possible denim?”
“A couple,” Hummel answered. “They were synthetic, looked like polyester to me. Continuous filaments with a round cross-section and medium diameter. Uniform gray color, meaning thefibers were the same color their entire lengths. No variations. That’s without fluorescence, meaning they didn’t glow when I applied UV light.”
Wishing she had another coffee, Josie said, “Is that important?”
“In this case, it could be. When a fiber doesn’t fluoresce, it can indicate that there were no optical brighteners added to the fabric it came from. Those are chemicals that companies put into stuff like curtains, clothes, bedding to make them look brighter. The other possibility is that the fabric it came from was dyed with a non-fluorescent dye. Those are often used in workwear. The fibers also have some characteristics that are consistent with machine-knit fabrics.”
Instead of asking what those characteristics were, Gretchen said, “What are machine-knit fabrics?”
“My money is on work gloves.”
“Like the kind you wear while doing construction?” asked Josie.
“Could be. Depends on what kind of glove. Some of the ones used on construction sites may be higher-quality and sturdier than something you’d use for a home renovation. These fibers could also be from a multipurpose type of glove which could be used for anything, really. Like I said, home renos, assembly-line work, landscaping, gardening. I can’t tell which just from microscopy.”
“What makes you think the fibers are from work gloves?” Josie said.
