Total Control (53 page)

She turned off the sophisticated car security system by punching the tiny button on the car key, slightly wincing at the weird birdlike sound made by the deactivation. She was careful to place the shotgun on the floorboard of the backseat with a heavy blanket over it. The pistols were placed in the ammo bag, which was shoved under the front seat.

The V-8 engine roared to life. Sidney hit the door opener that was clipped to the visor and backed the Land Rover out of the garage.

Carefully searching the street for any people or vehicles and finding none, Sidney eased the two-ton truck out of the driveway and onto the road, rapidly gathering speed as she left the quiet Stamford neighborhood.

Within twenty minutes she had reached Interstate 95. Traffic was heavy and it took her a while before she left Connecticut{ behind. She sliced her way through Rhode Island and made the loop around Boston by one in the morning. The Land Rover was equipped with a cellular phone; however, after her informative talk with Jeff Fisher, Sidney was reluctant to use it. Besides, who would she call? She stopped once, in New Hampshire, to grab some coffee and a candy bar and to fill the gas tank. The snow was now coming down full-tilt, but the Land Rover easily plowed through it, and the flapping sound of the windshield wipers at least was keeping her awake. By three in the morning, however, she was nodding off at the wheel so frequently that she had to pull over finally at a truck stop. She wedged the Land Rover in between two Peterbilt OTR semis, locked the doors, slid into the backseat, gripped the loaded 9mm with one hand and fell asleep. The sun was well up by the time she awoke. She grabbed a quick breakfast at the truck stop and within a few hours was well past Portsmouth, Maine. Two hours later she saw the exit she was seeking and turned off the highway. She was now on U.S. Route 1. At this time of year, Sidney had the road pretty much to herself.

In the blur of heavy snow she passed the small sign announcing her arrival into the town of Bell Harbor, population !,650. While she was growing up, her family had spent many wonderful summers in the peaceful town: private, wide beaches, ice-cream sundaes and juicy sandwiches at the innumerable eateries in the resort town, a show at the town's very own playhouse, long bike rides and walks along Granite Point, where one could observe, up close, the ominous power of the Atlantic on a windy afternoon. She and Jason had planned one day to buy a beach house near her parents. They both had looked forward to spending summers up here, watching Amy run along the beach and dig pools in the sand much as Sidney had done twenty-five years before. It was a nice thought. She hoped it was still capable of becoming reality. Right now none of it seemed even remotely possible.

Sidney made her way toward the ocean, finally turning south onto Beach Street, where she slowed down. Her parents' house was a large, two-story affair of gray weathered board with dormer windows and a deck running the Width of the house on both the upper-level ocean side and the street side. A garage occupied the basement level of the house. The ocean wind funneling in between the close-together beach houses managed to rock even the tanklike Land Rover. Sidney could not remember ever being in Maine at this time of year. The sky looked particularly unfriendly. When she glimpsed the endless darkness of the Atlantic, it occurred to her that she had never seen snow falling into the ocean before.

She slowed down slightly as her parents' house came into view.

All of the other beach homes on the street were uninhabited. In winter, Bell Harbor was akin to a ghost town. Added to that, the Bell Harbor Police Department numbered all of one during off-season months. If the man who had calmly killed in a stretch limo in Washington and tracked her to New York decided to come after her again, he would be more than a match for Bell Harbor's finest of one. She grabbed the ammo bag from under the seat and put a clip in her 9mm. She pulled into her parents' snow-covered drive and got out.

There was no sign that her parents had arrived. They must have stopped along the way because of the weather. She pulled the Land Rover into the garage and shut the door. She unloaded it and carried the items up the interior stairs leading from the garage to the house.

She had no way of knowing that the heavy snow had covered up very recent tire tracks in her parent's yard. Nor did she venture into the back bedroom, where numerous pieces of luggage were neatly stacked. As she entered the kitchen, she couldn't see the car passing slowly by the house and then continuing on.

The interior of the FBI testing facility was going full steam. The white-coated FBI technician walked around the exterior of the limo, motioning Sawyer and Jackson to follow her. The left-side rear passenger door was open. Fortunately, the limo's recent occupants had been since transported to the morgue. Set up next to the limo was a PC with a screen a full twenty-one inches across. The tech stepped in front of it and began keying in commands as she was speaking.

Wide of hip, with lovely olive skin and a mouth that showed many smile lines, Liz Martin was one of the bureau's best and hardest-working lab rats.

"Before we physically removed any trace, we hit the entire interior, both front and back, with the Luma-lite, as you requested, Lee.

We found some things of interest. We also videotaped the interior of the vehicle while we were conducting the exam and fed that video into the system. Makes it a lot easier for you to follow along." She handed each of the two agents a pair of goggles while she donned a pair herself. "Welcome to the theater; these are for your viewing pleasure." She smiled. "Actually, they block out different wavelengths that may have occurred during the exam and which may otherwise obscure what was captured on the film." As she spoke, the screen came alive. They were looking at the inside of the limo. It was very dark, the conditions under which a Luma-lite exam was conducted.

Using a powerful laser of particularly high wattage, the test was designed to make a wide range of otherwise invisible items lurking at a crime scene visible.

Liz manipulated a mouse connected to the PC and the two agents watched as a large white arrow made its way across the screen. "We started out using a single light source, no chemicals applied. We were looking for inherent fluorescence, then we moved on to a series of dyes and powders."

"You said you found some items of interest, Liz?" Sawyer's tone was a touch impatient, his eyes glued to the screen even as he asked the question.

"Hard not to in such a contained space as that, considering what happened there." Her eyes flickered briefly over at the limo. As her fingers expertly manipulated the mouse, the white arrow came to rest on what looked to be the rear seat of the limo. Liz hit some additional keys and the area was blocked off on a series of grids appearing on the screen and magnified until it was readily visible.

However, being readily discernible to the human eye and being readily identifiable were not the same thing.

Sawyer turned to Liz. "What the hell is that?" It looked like a string of some kind, but magnified and enlarged as it was, it had taken on the thickness of a pencil.

"Simply speaking, a fiber." Liz pressed another key on the computer and the fiber took on a three-dimensional shape. "From the looks of it, I'd say wool, animal, the real thing, not synthetic, gray in color. Sound familiar to either of you?"

Jackson snapped his fingers. "Sidney Archer was wearing a blazer that morning. It was gray."

Sawyer was already nodding. "That's right."

Liz looked back at the screen and nodded thoughtfully. "Wool blazer. That would fit the bill."

"Where exactly did you find it, Liz?" Sawyer asked.

"Left rear seat, more towards the middle really." Using the mouse, Liz drew a line across the screen measuring from the spot the fiber was found to the far left side of the rear seat. "Twenty-seven inches from the end of the left-side rear seat, seven inches up from the seat.

With that location it would seem logical that it came from a coat.

We also picked up some synthetic cloth fibers right next to the left-side door. They matched the clothing found on the deceased male sitting in that position."

She turned back to the screen. "We didn't need the laser to find these next samples. They were plainly visible." The screen changed and Liz used the arrow to point out several single strands of hair.

"Let me guess," Sawyer said. "Long and blond. Natural, not bleached. Found very near the fiber."

"Very good, Lee, we'll make a scientist out of you yet." Liz smiled pleasantly. "Next we used leucocrystal violet to test for blood. Found a ton of it, as you can imagine. Spray patterns are pretty evident and actually very demonstrative in this case, again probably due to the tight parameters of the crime scene." They looked at the computer screen, where the interior of the limo was now glowing brightly in numerous places. For a moment it looked like they were deep in a mine and bits of gold blazed out at them from every nook and cranny. Liz marked several spots with the pointer. "My conclusion is that the gentleman found on the floor of the backseat was either sitting facing the rear or with his face partially toward the right-hand side window. Gunshot wound was near the right temple. Blood, bone and tissue throw-off was considerable. You can see the rear seat is covered with the debris."

"Yeah, but there's an evident gap there." Sawyer pointed to the left

side of the rear seat.

"Good eye, that's absolutely right," Liz said. She used her measuring device again. "We found samples pretty uniformly distributed on the rear seat. That's what makes me think the victim"--she glanced at some notes next to the computer--"Brophy, had turned away, toward his left. That would leave the area of the gunshot, the right temple, facing directly at the rear seat, which accounts for the considerable trace coverage on the rear seat."

"Sort of like a cannon firing," Sawyer said dryly.

"Not exactly a technical term, but not bad for a layman, Lee." Liz arched her eyebrows and then continued. "However, the left half of the rear seat is virtually absent of any trace, no blood, no tissue, no bone fragments for approximately forty-five inches, almost four feet.

Why is that?" She looked at the two agents like a schoolmarm waiting for her students to start waving their hands.

Sawyer answered. "We know one of the victims was sitting on the far left side: Philip Goldman. He was found there. But he was an average-size guy. There's no way he could account for that width.

From the size of the gap, and the hair and fiber trace you already picked up, another person was sitting right next to Goldman."

"That's how I read it," Liz answered. "Goldman's wound would have thrown off quite a bit of residue as well. Again, nothing on the seat next to him. That reinforces the conclusion that someone else was seated there and took the full brunt of it. Not a pleasant business, to say the least. I'd be soaking in a bath for a week if it had happened to me, knock on wood."

"Wool coat, long, blond hair--" Jackson began.

"And this," Liz broke in, and pointed at the screen. They all stared as the scene changed once more. It was the rear seat again.

The leather had been torn in several spots. Three parallel jagged lines ran from front to back at a spot very near where Goldman had been found. In the middle of the damage a solitary object rested.

The agents looked at Liz.

"That's part of a fingernail. We haven't had time to run a DNA

typing analysis, of course, but it's definitely female."

"How do you know that?" Jackson asked.

"It's not always so complicated, Ray. Long nail, professionally manicured, fingernail polish. Men rarely put themselves through that."

"Oh."

"The parallel lines on the leather--"

"Scratches," Sawyer said. "She scratched the seat and broke a nail."

"Right. She must've been really panicked," Liz noted.

"Not surprising, is it?" Jackson added.

"Anything else, Liz?" Sawyer queried her.

"Oh, yes. Lots of goodies. Prints. We used MDB, a compound which is particularly good at fluorescing latent prints under laser light. Also used a deep blue lens on the Luma-lite. Got really good results. We did elimination typing on the three victims. Their prints were everywhere. Understandably. Found a number of other partials, though, including one that coincided with those scratches, which seems natural enough. We also found one that was of particular interest."

"What's that?" Sawyer's nose was almost quivering with anticipation.

"Brophy's clothes were heavily spotted with blood and other human residue from his wound. His right shoulder, in particular, was covered in blood. Makes sense, since his right temple would have been bleeding heavily. We found a number of prints, thumb, index, pinkie, really examples of the entire hand, in the blood on his right shoulder."

"How do you account for that? Someone trying to turn him over?" Sawyer looked puzzled.

"No. I wouldn't say that, although I don't have firm evidence to support it. My gut is, judging from the palm print I was able to pull up, it was more like--and I know this sounds pretty bizarre under the circumstances--but it was like someone was trying to climb over him, or at least was straddling the guy. But the close placement of the fingers, the angle of the palm and so on, really strongly suggest that's what happened."

Sawyer looked highly skeptical. "Climb over him? That's kind of a stretch, isn't it, Liz? You can't really tell that from the prints, can you?"

"I'm not basing my conclusion simply on that. We also found this." She pointed at the screen again. A strange object appeared there. A shape or pattern of some sort. In fact, a couple of them. The dark background around the objects they were looking at made it difficult to understand what they were really observing.

"This was a shot taken of Brophy's body," Liz explained. "He's face down on the floorboard. We're looking at his back. You see in the middle of his back this shape pattern. Again, it's made possible by a patch of blood."