Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [610]
He didn’t mind. He had the family room to himself. Even better, he had the TV remote to himself. He clicked the TV on, switching channels, and leaving it on Fox News for background noise while he pulled out the file folders he had brought home. He didn’t usually bring home files, but something about this one bugged him and Weston’s taunt only made him anxious.
He pulled out crime scene and autopsy photos along with the reports he had downloaded from the Minneapolis Police Department. With no leads in their investigation they seemed to welcome his inquiries. Right now Minneapolis considered it random, but Pakula wondered if the killer knew that his victim was an ex-priest.
The Douglas County Crime Lab hadn’t much for him yet. It was too early. Medina had, however, tagged and labeled some of the trace she had collected. Locard’s Principle had come through for him many times in the past. No matter how careful a killer was, there was an exchange of debris that took place between the killer and the victim. It was inevitable. Unless the killer came to the scene in a sterilized suit he was bound to leave something—mud from his shoes, fibers from his shirt or if they were really lucky, hairs from his head.
Pakula looked over the plastic evidence bags Medina had included. The first one looked like bread crumbs. He held up the bag to read Medina’s note on the back label:
Location: Front of victim’s shirt.
Lab Test Conclusive—white unleavened bread.
Pakula scratched his head. He still couldn’t figure this one out. Why the hell would there be bread crumbs on the front of the victim’s shirt? No way could he have picked them up from the floor. Did one of the voyeurs who trampled in on the scene have a sandwich? Nothing had been left behind, so it wasn’t like the monsignor had put aside his dinner. Or if he did, was it possible one of the assholes who came in to take a piss, decided to help himself to a half-eaten sandwich? Sounded ridiculous, but he had seen stranger things.
Pakula picked up the next plastic evidence bag. This time he started to get excited when he noticed the short strands of hair. Hair wasn’t always a guarantee for DNA extraction. You needed the root or bulb or a part of it to get anything credible. Even two strands from the same person weren’t always conclusive. Right now with no evidence Pakula would take a single nose hair if it proved to be the killer’s. He read Medina’s label and let out a disappointed sigh. He wanted to toss the bag across the room:
Location: Strands taken from back of victim’s shirt.
Lab Test Conclusive—Canine hair. Breed Unknown at this time.
All his excitement and it was a fucking dog the monsignor had encountered, not the killer.
He glanced out the window. Clare and the girls were still under the canopy, laughing. No serious debates or arguments to bring one of them in, at least not for a while, so the coast was clear. He sorted through the photos and selected several to lay out on the cocktail table in front of him.
One from the crime scene showed Monsignor O’Sullivan crumpled on the floor, lying on his side, his legs twisted, and his crushed eyeglasses beside him. Pakula looked for a close-up of the glasses and quickly found it. They hadn’t broken like that from the fall. Someone had stepped on them. Maybe the killer. Possibly on purpose. He made a mental note to see if Medina had been able to pull a shoe print from either the lenses or from somewhere beside the eyeglasses.
He flipped through Medina’s notes on other traces collected: a stray French fry, a breath mint, several fibers, some tramped in clay and a couple of blades of some kind of weed. Could be all from the floor and have nothing to do with the crime scene. What would you expect from a commercial rest-room floor? Not much to go on. It was as if the killer walked in, stabbed the monsignor and walked back out without even washing his hands. There wasn’t a single