Blood Will Tell (6 page)

Once Nick started carrying a knife, it turned out you could use it surprisingly often. No need to look for scissors when you had to cut something. And he
had
used it in SAR for less dramatic things, like cutting parachute cord for shelters, cutting the string that marked out grid searches, and breaking down wood to build a fire.

Dressed in his outdoor gear, Nick hoisted his helmet and backpack. He felt kind of silly carrying his full SAR backpack to a vacant lot in the middle of a city, but Jon said you never knew when you might be called to deploy straight to a trailhead to search for a missing person. Saving a life trumped finding crime scene evidence.

When he came out of his room, Kyle was waiting for him. “So what's happening? What were all the sirens about?”

“I guess some girl got stabbed up the street.” Nick put on a nonchalant expression. “SAR got tapped to do the evidence search.” Students were allowed to take part in searches during the day, as long as they maintained a certain grade level.

Kyle's eyes actually widened.

For once, his brother was impressed.

 

CHAPTER 16

NICK

MONDAY

DROVE RIGHT BY

With every step Nick got closer to the scene, his heart rate sped up. He counted eight—no, nine—cop cars. A fire truck sat at the curb. Its ladder had been extended high over the site. At the top, a man was taking pictures, getting an aerial view. Yellow crime scene tape had been looped around trees and signposts and even the antenna of a parked car. A lady cop was stringing up more tape, creating a second perimeter that was probably thirty feet farther out than the first.

Nick wasn't the only one drawn by the sirens. People clutching mugs of coffee stood in their driveways, gawking. Some gathered in groups of two or three, pointing and talking in low but excited voices. And some were already bellying up against the new crime scene tape.

A block from the site, he buckled on his red climbing helmet. The helmet was part of SAR protocol, even if they were in no danger of being bonked by falling rocks. He felt ridiculous wearing it. Bad enough to wear the helmet when you were surrounded by people wearing helmets. Far worse if it was just you. What if someone thought he was some mentally disabled kid, the kind who had seizures?

But since his orange SAR shirt was covered by his coat, he needed to wear the helmet if he wanted to get on the other side of those two lines of yellow tape. It was like a secret signal that he belonged.

When Nick came up to the crime scene tape, he picked a spot that wasn't yet lined with people. He felt their eyes on him. He wiped all expression from his face as he cut between an old man and a woman wearing a coat over pajamas. He was a professional.

But to get under the tape he had to bend so low the weight of his pack made him stagger. He almost fell. And when he straightened up, a uniformed cop holding a clipboard was glaring at him.

“Just what do you think you're doing? Don't you see that tape?”

Nick was still fumbling for an answer when a man's voice broke in.

“Hey, it's okay, Rob.” It was Detective Harriman. They had met when Nick, Alexis, and Ruby had found a girl's body in Forest Park when they were looking for a missing autistic man. “He's with Search and Rescue. They're gonna do our evidence search today.” He looked past Nick, and his wrinkles got even deeper as he squinted. “Where's the rest of your crew?”

“They're still coming. I got permission to walk over since I only live about six blocks away.” Nick took in the scene. Two cops were talking to the people lined up along the tape. Two more were taking photos of a narrow trail of flattened weeds. And, with a little thrill, he saw a fifth cop using gloved hands to put what looked like a brick into a brown paper bag preprinted with the word
Evidence
. Most of the cops, like Harriman, wore paper booties, but no one was wearing a full-on white suit as Nick had seen on TV shows. He was kind of disappointed.

“How come they're not wearing bunny suits?” Nick asked.

Harriman rolled his eyes. “Think about it. Nearly one hundred percent of the time, if you've got someone in a Tyvek suit, they're standing right next to someone who is not in Tyvek. Our uniforms don't shed. There's no point in suiting up.”

“Then why are you wearing booties?”

“Because I don't want to haul back biohazards on the soles of my shoes.”

Biohazards
was what they called all the stuff that leaked out of dead people. Nick only now registered that the bottoms of Harriman's booties were stained reddish-brown. He swallowed hard and looked away. “This is so weird. I drove right by here last night.”

Harriman stepped closer. “What?”

“We had a callout last night near Gresham. Little girl who disappeared. Turned out she had chased after a kitten and gotten lost.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Harriman waved his hand impatiently. “But what about here? When did you drive by here? What did you see?”

Nick tried to remember what he had seen. Parts of last night were a blur. What had happened after he left the sheriff's office? He remembered being angry at Alexis and Bran, feeling left out and lonely. He remembered punching the buttons on his mom's car radio, trying to find some music to match his mood. But the drive? That part he didn't really remember. Something about someone driving too slow?

“It was around eleven. I don't think there was anything out of the ordinary. Otherwise, I would have remembered it.”

Harriman took out his phone, clicked a few buttons, and then held it out to Nick. A dark-haired young woman stared back at him with a half smile. She had a heart-shaped face, high cheekbones, and a pointed chin. “Have you seen this woman?”

“Last night?”

“Ever. She lives in some apartments a few blocks from you.”

Something about her was familiar. Wasn't it?

 

CHAPTER 17

RUBY

MONDAY

JUST LOGICAL

Ruby regarded the two rows of yellow crime scene tape, one inside the other. On three sides of the vacant lot, there was only one length of tape, but on the side where the van had let them out, two lengths of tape ran parallel to each other, about thirty feet apart. Why? Part of the space between had been portioned off into a large square that held three adults: a man with a notebook, a woman with a microphone, and another man with a TV camera.

Nick was already here, talking to Detective Harriman. Ruby had felt a pinch of jealousy when he had texted her that he had persuaded Mitch to let him walk to the scene. Shoot, she could have driven here in half the time it had taken her to get to the sheriff's office and then take the van. It could have been her talking to Detective Harriman.

“Put your packs over there.” Mitchell lifted the first row of tape for them and pointed at a spot that already held Nick's pack. “Next to the box for the media.” Ruby, Alexis, and the eight other teens who had been in the van set down their backpacks. The female reporter, who was wearing a long red quilted coat, pointed at them. “Get some footage of the kids, Frank. It'll be good B-roll.”

Mitchell led them to the far side of the square, where Detective Harriman and Nick waited with Jon. “Okay,” Detective Harriman said without preamble once they had joined him. “Before seven this morning, a guy was biking to work down this street. He saw a boot near those blackberry bushes behind me. When he went to check it out, he found a girl. She'd been stabbed once in the back. We believe the stabbing occurred near that evidence marker”—he pointed at a plastic placard marked with the number seven—“and then she ran, fell, and was bashed in the back of the head and dragged to the spot where she was found. We've already located the brick we believe was used, but we haven't located the knife.”

Ruby listened to him as she watched a crime scene detective measure and photograph the drag marks. The trail of laid-down weeds was skinny, about forty feet long and a little over a foot wide. It started near one blackberry bush and ended near another on ground that sloped steeply to a tiny creek.

“When the passerby found her, she was still alive, although unconscious. 9-1-1 dispatched an ambulance, and an officer rode with her in case she said something.” Harriman sighed. “But we got word a little bit ago that she died without ever regaining consciousness.”

Ruby knew that if the victim had said anything, it would have been a dying declaration, one of the few times hearsay was allowed in court.

“If the knife was discarded in this lot, we need to find it. That's where you guys come in.”

“Why can't we just get a metal detector?” Nick asked.

Ruby rolled her eyes. Nick was standing next to her, but she didn't care if he saw. Sure, he was her friend, but his question was uninformed.

It was Mitchell who answered. “A metal detector would just distract us. A knife is a big enough target that if it's here, we should have no problem spotting it by eye. This lot used to hold an apartment complex, so there're still pipes and gas lines underground, as well as whatever garbage has been dumped or buried here over the years. If we used a metal detector, we'd get hundreds of hits that would end up meaning nothing.”

“Besides,” Detective Harriman cut in, “it's not just the knife. There could even be another weapon, like a gun, that was used to get her to this point. We're also looking for anything the killer might have left behind in a struggle—a glove, a torn piece of clothing, even a clump of hair. We need you looking for anything and everything that can help us solve this murder, whether it's a cigarette, a discarded beer bottle, a piece of gum, or a footprint.”

“That's why we can't take any shortcuts,” Mitchell said, looking right at Nick. “I know a lot of you were on that search last night and are tired, but remember that we only get one chance to get this right. There are no do-overs. We can't put the evidence back in place and try again. Anything we don't discover today could be lost or damaged—which means it can't be used to get the person who did this.”

Even though the girl was past talking, Ruby knew her body and her belongings could still speak for her. The autopsy would reveal the cause of her death. The toxicology reports would show whether she had been drugged or drunk, although not whether it had been by her killer or by her own choice. There could be fingerprints on her purse, fingerprints that could not only be matched to the killer, but could also have enough DNA to link them to the person who had left them. The girl's clothes and even her skin might yield more DNA from her killer. Or a fiber or hair might be found on her that had actually started out on the killer.

“Locard's exchange principle,” Alexis murmured next to Ruby, startling her. Ruby loved to talk about Locard, but she was used to people not listening. Locard's exchange principle felt beautiful because it was so balanced. So logical.

A hundred years ago a French scientist named Edmond Locard had developed a theory that every criminal inadvertently left something at the scene of the crime, while at the same time taking something back with him. A criminal might leave all sorts of evidence, including fingerprints, footprints, even fragments of skin. And by coming into contact with things at a crime scene, Locard postulated, that criminal also took part of that scene with him when he left, in the form of dirt, hair, or other trace evidence.

In 1912 Frenchwoman Marie Latelle had been found strangled in her parents' home. Her boyfriend, Emile Gourbin, was questioned by police but claimed that at the time of the murder, he had been playing cards with friends. The friends backed up his story.

But Locard went to Emile's jail cell and scraped under his fingernails. Under the microscope, he saw skin cells, but in those days there was no DNA testing to show that they had come from Marie's neck. He also saw a pink dust, which he identified as rice starch, the main ingredient of face powder. There was bismuth, magnesium stearate, zinc oxide, and an iron oxide pigment called Venetian red.

And luckily for Locard, in 1912, makeup was not being mass-produced. Marie's face powder was prepared for her by a druggist in Lyon—using those exact ingredients.

Confronted by this evidence, Gourbin confessed to the murder. He also admitted that he had set the clock in his gaming room ahead and then gotten his friends drunk. Later, not realizing the time was wrong, they had provided him with an alibi.

Locard's exchange principle had worked.

Now Mitchell's radio crackled. After a short conversation, he looked up at them. “Okay, guys, we've got a few more members from Team Delta who were able to come out on the search. We're going to wait for them to get here.”

The other team members started talking to each other, but Ruby went straight up to Detective Harriman. “Why are there two perimeters on that one side, not one? There was only one perimeter when we did that evidence search in Forest Park.”

He sighed. “Aren't you guys on break?”

Ruby said nothing. Normal people were as uncomfortable with silence as she was with looking people in the eye. And after a while, they gave in to the urge to fill it.

Eventually, the same held true for Harriman. “That's because hardly anyone was going to hike all the way out to
that
crime scene. But this—it's in the middle of the city. We've already got gawkers.” He indicated the people lined up along the tape. “That outside perimeter is for the general public. The inside one, that's for the bigwigs and the press. They get to duck under the first crime scene tape. They feel special, like they're getting better access. But really, they're no closer than I would let them get if this crime scene were out in the middle of nowhere and no one wanted to see it. I set off the same initial perimeter. It's just for a case like this, a case where you know there's going to be a lot of demand to be treated special, I set up a second barrier outside the first one.”