“Of course not,” he replied with a roll of his eyes. “Come on in and let me take a look at what you have.”
We dutifully followed him through the lab and, much like my first tour of the coroner’s office, I was disappointed to see that there was no neon or chrome or anything else cool and slick. Nothing but cramped offices and aging lab equipment. We eventually came to a large room that had four large tables in it, all covered with a ridiculous number of bags or boxes with “Evidence” stickers on them. Sean stopped at a table that actually had some clear space on it, then yanked a pair of latex gloves from a box near the edge and tugged them on. Ben set the bag with the watch in front of him, and I watched impatiently as Sean carefully opened the bag and peered inside.
“Okay, I’ll stick it in the fuming chamber, and we’ll see what we come up with,” he said.
“Fuming chamber? What’s that?” I asked. I knew I risked looking like an idiot, but I was also wildly curious about how all of this forensic stuff worked. Even if there wasn’t any chrome or neon.
Luckily Sean didn’t seem to think it was a dumb question. “Superglue fuming. All you need is an airtight tank, some heat, and a few drops of Superglue.” He lifted the watch with a gloved hand. “See, fingerprints leave stuff behind—traces of amino acids, proteins, fatty acids. That stuff reacts to the fumes produced when Superglue is heated, and a sticky, white material forms that clings to the ridges of fingerprints, making them visible.” He turned and started walking. “Here, I’ll show you.”
I followed him eagerly into an adjacent room. A metal table dominated the center of the room and along one wall were a series of glass-doored chambers of varying sizes, from about a foot high to stretching from floor to ceiling.
“These are fuming chambers,” he explained, carefully opening the door of one that was only about a foot high. He carefully hung the watch from a metal hook, then opened a small plastic tube and squeezed the contents into a metal tray at the bottom of the chamber. After closing the door of the chamber and locking it, he punched some buttons on the front. “Now the chamber will heat up to release the fumes, which will settle on any fingerprints that might be on the watch,” he explained. “And when it’s done the chamber will vent the fumes safely away.” He gave me a wry smile. “That’s a vast improvement over the technique we used to have to use, which was basically a fish tank.”
I watched, fascinated as a mist slowly filled the chamber. “How long does it take?”
“About five minutes, but then you have to wait for it to vent. Like I said, much better than the fish tank method, where we basically had to yank the cover off and run to keep from inhaling toxic fumes.”
A short while later the lights turned green, and Sean carefully removed the watch. He peered at it through a magnifying glass, nodding.
“Well, there’s a beautiful print on the watch,” he said, to my delight. “I can definitely run that through AFIS.”
I watched in rapt fascination as Sean proceeded to powder the print, pull it off with a piece of sticky paper that I learned was called a lifter, photograph the print that came off onto the lifter, and then transfer the digital image into a computer. From there he pulled the image of the print up on the screen and began marking the enlarged print with red dots—which he explained were “points”; places where ridges ended, came together, separated, or simply made dots.
It looked awesome and, at the same time, tedious as hell.
“Who is this guy supposed to be again?” Sean asked as he submitted the fingerprint with all its marked points into the database.
Ben glanced down at the file. “Norman Kearny.” He rattled off the date of birth and social security number. “He should have prints in the system since all employees at NuQuesCor have to get a background check.”
Sean tapped a few more keys. “Yeah, here are his prints.” His eyes flicked back and forth on the screen, then his forehead puckered in a frown. “But the print on the watch doesn’t match them.”
An electric thrill ran through me as Ben let out a low whistle. “Angel,” he said, “I’m damn glad I humored you.”
I managed a weak smile.
Sean glanced over his shoulder. “Now we simply have to find out who it does match.”
“And where’s the real Norman Kearny?” I added.
Ben grimaced. “Damn good question.”
My patience had a hard time enduring all the waiting that was apparently a big factor in crime scene forensics. I fidgeted while things flashed on the computer screen. I could only assume something was happening.
After about ten minutes my wait paid off. “Well, that’s odd,” I heard Sean murmur.
“You got something?” Ben asked, leaning forward to peer at the monitor. I did too, though all I saw was two big fingerprints with a bunch of dots all over them. I had no idea what any of it meant.
“Well, I think so,” said Sean. “I mean, this sure as hell looks like a match.” He continued to click things. “I have well over ten points matched already. As far as I can tell this is your guy.”
“Great!” Ben said. “What’s so odd about it?”
Sean leaned back in the chair and shoved both hands through his hair. “I saw the body on the scene. He looked like he was in his sixties at least, right?”
We both nodded, but a knot began to form in my gut.
“Well, just for starters, the guy who matches that print would be forty-three years old.”
Ben shook his head. “That has to be a typo.”