Memory in Death (In Death 22)

“Gimme data.”

“It’s always ‘gimme’ with you cops. Always think your shit’s the priority.”

“Where are my fibers?”

“In the fiber department.” He snorted, obviously amused with himself as he rolled on his stool to a screen, gave a few taps. “Harvo’s working on it. Go hound her. She did your hair already. Out of the drains, out of both the rooms. Must not clean out the pipes in that shithole but every decade. Got the vic’s, and other unidentified—for now—on crime scene. No Wood traces in the drains of the second room, just the vic’s on crime scene, bathroom sink. ID’d hair from vic, son of vic, daughter-in-law of vic, hotel maid, couple of former tenants already listed on your report. All the blood on crime scene was the vic’s. Surprise, surprise.”

“In other words you can’t tell me anything I don’t already know.”

“Not my fault. I can only work with what you give me.”

“Let me know when you’ve compared hair and prints from the hotel scene and the bar.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“Cheery today,” Peabody muttered as they headed through the glass-wall maze of the lab.

They found Harvo at her station studying the screen. Her red hair was stiff with spikes that contrasted with her pale, almost translucent skin. There were little Santas dangling from her ears.

“Yo,” she said.

“That my fiber?”

“One and the same. Hair’s turned in.”

“Yeah, I got that from Dickhead. I thought you were the Queen of Hair, not fiber.”

“Queen of Hair,” Harvo agreed with a snap of her chewing gum. “Goddess of Fiber. Fact of it is, I’m just fucking brilliant.”

“Good to know. What’ve we got?”

“Synthetic white poly with traces of elastizine. Same constitution as the particles found in the unfortunate vic’s bone and gray matter. What you’re looking for is either a sock or a tummy tamer. But I’d say not a girdle—not enough elastizine.”

“Sock,” Eve said.

“And you’d win the prize. Compared fibers to a lone white sock taken from the scene. You got your match. New sock, never worn, never washed. Still traces of gum on the lone one, from the tag, and I got me a tiny bit of plastic jammed in the toe. You know how they snap the socks together with thelittle plastic string?”

“Yeah, I hate those.”

“Everyone does. You got to cut them apart, and who’s got a knife or scissors handy when you want to wear your new socks?” Harvo snapped the gum in her mouth and circled a finger in the air. The nail was painted Christmas red with little green trees. “Freaking nobody. So you—” She fisted her hands together, twisted. “And half the time you snag the socks, or end up with a little bit of plastic inside that stabs you in the foot.”

“Pisser.”

“Yeah.”

“How about the tag?”

“It’s your lucky day—the sweepers were thorough and brought in the contents of the trash can. Came from the bathroom. I took it since I was doing the fibers anyway.”

She scooted, showed Eve the tag.

“It was balled up, like you do, and a piece of it torn. Fibers stuck to the gummy side. Anyways, got it straightened out, put together, and you can see our handy bar code, and the type.”

She tapped the protective shield over the evidence.

“Women’s athletic socks, size seven to nine. Which is another pisser on my personal bitch list. See I wear a seven myself, and when I buy socks like this, I always got too much length in the foot. Why can’t they just make them fit? We have the technology, we have the skill. We have the feet.”

“That’s a puzzler,” Eve agreed. “Prints?”