Add to this Maddocks’s Gordian knot of conflicts over Angie and his problems on the home front with Ginny, and he was not a happy camper when he entered the forensics lab late on Friday evening. Head forensic technician Dr.Sunni Padachaya had agreed to meet with him at this late hour to discuss the forensics results that had come in for the hair trace found primarily in the ropes on Thetisby Island.
Maddocks pushed open the door. The place was empty at this hour, apart from a slight, dark-skinned woman in a lab coat hunched over a microscope at a bench on the far end of the room. She looked up as he entered, and smiled.
“Detective Maddocks,” she said, coming to her feet and making her way over to him. And yeah, maybe it was because of her sunshiny-sounding name, or because of the genuineness in her smile and the subsequent light it put into her liquid black eyes, or how comical the scientist looked in the translucent blue shower-cap-style protection covering her black hair, but he felt himself returning her smile. This little scientist came with a sterling rep and was far younger than he’d expected.
“Thank you for staying late to walk me through the analysis,” he said. “I’d shake your hand, but—” He nodded to her latex gloves.
“No worries. I always stay late. No life, obviously.” She peeled off the gloves as she spoke and dumped them in a bin. “Come take a look.”
She led him over to a light board onto which had been mounted enlarged images of hair shafts taken under the microscope.
She clicked on the light, bringing the images to vivid life.
“Since there is such a wide range of interpersonal variation in head and pubic hairs,” she said, “most of the work in forensics to date has been in that area.” She picked up a pointer. “However, we can also tell which parts of the body other hairs originated from, using general morphology—length, shape, size, color, stiffness, curliness, and microscopic appearance all contribute to the determination of body area. So does pigmentation and medullar appearance.
“So, here we’ve grouped the various sets of hair evidence underBlack-Haired Male One—” She pointed. “Black-Haired Male Two. AndBlond Malethere.”
“And that grouping over there?” Maddocks pointed to slides showing reddish-brown shafts.
“That’sFemale Brunette. She’s a DNA match to Faith Hocking—so we’ll just refer to her grouping asHocking.”
“Gotcha. And these are all from the Thetisby scene?”
“I’ll get to that.” She grinned like a little Cheshire cat, and he sensed she was going to save the prize for last. Maddocks liked her on the spot.
“’Kay,Black-Haired Male One—” She indicated the first set of images with her stick. “We’ve got head hair, body hair, pubic hair.Black-Haired Male Two. Similar set—pubic, head, body.BlondMale. Head only.”
“All Caucasoid?”
“Correct.”
“Now, these are the head hairs—usually the longest hairs on the human body.” She motioned to the head hairs in all the groupings. “See how they’re characterized as having a uniform diameter and, in these images over here, a cut tip?”
Maddocks nodded.
“Most of these head hairs have been forcibly removed. Hair that falls out naturally has a club-shaped root, like this one, here. But these others are stretched at the root area and have follicular tissue attached.”
Which could indicate an altercation, Maddocks thought, or perhaps just hair getting caught up in rough rope strands while tying knots.
“These are the body hairs.” She tapped the various slides in theBlack-Haired Male OneandBlack-Haired Male Twogroupings. “And these are pubic—generally coarse and wiry in appearance. They exhibit considerable diameter variation, or buckling, and often have a continuous to discontinuous medulla, which is the type of hair core. All of these pubic hairs have been forcibly removed and have follicular tissue attached.”
“As in, from friction during rough sexual intercourse.”
“That would have to be your determination, Detective. I’m just the scientist telling you what I see.”
Yeah, he liked this little Sunni scientist. She was making his crap day feel just a tad brighter, and scientist or not, she was building his anticipation like a master storyteller.
“Hocking.Pubic trace from the floor in the cellar, here.” She tapped her pointer on the slides. “Head hair evidence from the ropes, here. All forcibly removed. Evidence of chemical treatment on the head hair—she colored her hair a slightly darker shade.”
Padachaya moved to the adjacent light board and clicked that one on, too. “So here we have the DNA profile ofBlack-Haired Male OneandBlack-Haired Male Two.”
“Bottom line?”
“Lay speak, bottom line—bothBlack-Haired Male OneandBlack-Haired Male TwoDNA are a match to the two sets of postmortem hair trace found on Hocking’s body—from pubic combings and from inside her tarp wrapping.” She glanced up at Maddocks, a glint in her dark eyes. “And the DNA profile ofBlack-Haired Male Oneis a match to several hairs found on Gracie Drummond’s clothing.”
He whistled softly. “Nice work, Dr.Padachaya. You’ve just linkedBlack-Haired Male Oneto both homicide victims.”
She laughed. “Please, call me Sunni. Everyone does. And it’s my team you can thank—just doing their jobs.”
