She grabbed a roll of wide tape and pressed it on the top where she’d dusted it with some kind of white powder. Her eyes were narrowed in concentration, and she chewed on the cornerof her lip as she pressed the tape onto the box and then lifted to hold it up to the light. “Perfect. Just perfect. A latent print that every trace evidence expert dreams of finding. Now all we need to do is find a match.”
“And how do we do that?” Brooklyn asked.
Sierra pressed the tape on a white postcard-sized card and looked up. “I’ll submit it to AFIS—the national fingerprint database—to see if there’s a match in the system. If not, unless we have a suspect’s fingerprints on file, we won’t be able to match it to anything. Do you know if Tarver’s fingerprints are in the system?”
“He was arrested several years ago for internet crimes,” Brooklyn said. “But he was never tried due to lack of evidence, so would they have his fingerprints?”
“Depends on if he was actually booked,” Blake said.
“He spent a few weeks in jail, so he was booked,” she said, recalling his virulent email threatening retribution after he got out.
Blake gave a firm nod. “Then his prints should be there. Unless there was some glitch. Which you can never rule out when you’re dealing with humans who can make errors and electronics that can fail.”
Brooklyn didn’t like the sound of that. “Does it happen often?”
“No, but more often than we would like.”
Sierra held up the card. “If thisishis print, which we can surmise at this time it could be, it matches the prints I lifted from the weapon, doorknob, and shell casings I recovered.”
“So we have proof he fired a gun.”
“No,” Colin said. “If thesearehis prints, all the doorknob tells us is that he was at the house. And on the casings and gun, we can only infer that he touched them at some point. He could’ve loaded the weapon but not fired it.”
“In either event, he most likely touched them before discharge, but definitely before the fire,” Sierra said. “The prints were covered with soot, but he could’ve picked the items up to look at them before the fire started.”
Brooklyn suppressed a sigh. They seemed to have a lead but not really have a lead. “How does any of this help us, then?”
“If he’s arrested and charged with a crime,” Blake said, “the doorknob placing him at the house could be important for prosecuting him.”
“But not help in finding him,” she clarified. Right now she wanted to find him.
“Right,” Colin said. “Let’s hope the box’s contents will do that.”
Brooklyn stared at the sooty container and couldn’t help but compare it to Pandora’s box, waiting to unleash untold miseries. “Can you open it now?”
“Yes. Time to pick the lock.” Sierra took out a black leather pouch from under the table and removed a few slender metal tools. She inserted two of them into the lock and moved them around until it popped open, the sound reverberating around the quiet lab.
Brooklyn jumped. The sound felt almost like a gunshot to her. Surely not as loud, but as sharp and crisp, and it warned her to take care.
Sierra rested her fingers on the lid.
An ominous feeling settled deep into the pit of Brooklyn’s stomach. As Sierra slowly lifted up the top, Brooklyn had to fight not to look away from the lead she wanted, yet dreaded to see.
17
Colin couldn’t take his eyes from the box. Waiting. Time slowing down. Anticipating the lid to clear. Seeing the secrets a sociopath straddling the line of sanity might hide.
Sierra flipped the top all the way open, then jerked back. “Oh! Oh, my!”
What in the world could it contain to make a seasoned forensic expert have such a visceral reaction?
Colin pushed forward to the table. Took a long look inside.
And then he saw the horrific sight.
His stomach roiled. Not what he expected. Not at all.
The thing that had her taking a step back. A human finger. Shriveled. Dark and smelly. The bone sticking out the end, and the skin curling toward the tip.
