Something Missing_ A Novel - Matthew Dicks [49]
Martin now removed the gloves from their hiding spot, placed them atop the shredder, and then moved to the rear of the car and detached the Hide-a-Key from the inside bumper. Earlier that day, he had acquired a diamond and silver pendant from the home of Ron and Donna Gardner, a middle-aged couple whose three children had flown the coop years ago for exciting and exotic careers. As he’d done with Sophie Pearl’s earring, Martin had secured the pendant in the Hide-a-Key box for transport to his home. As he removed the pendant from the box, he made sure that the black ignition key to a Subaru Legacy that he had owned more than five years ago remained behind. Though he would never be foolish enough to hide a key to his car on his car, he wanted to maintain proper appearances, and if ever questioned about the hidden key he would explain that he had moved the Hide-a-Key from his old car to the new, forgetting to exchange the actual keys in the process. The pendant was placed on the laptop’s mouse pad for immediate processing. This would be the most damaging item if law enforcement suddenly arrived, so Martin wanted to process it first.
Lastly, Martin removed Cindy Clayton’s toothbrush from the floor of his car (vowing to purchase new floor mats as soon as possible) and placed it into the garbage bin in the rear of the garage. Fortunately, the trash was scheduled for pickup the next day. Had it been a longer wait, Martin might have been forced to dispose of the toothbrush on his own. Just the thought of it lying at the bottom of his garbage bin for more than a day might have been too much of a reminder of what had just happened in the Claytons’ home.
Once his car had been completely emptied, Martin removed a large spray bottle containing rubbing alcohol and several clean rags from a cabinet over his worktable and began lightly spraying and wiping down each item on the table, removing all fingerprint evidence. This was a process that he had begun following the latex scare and his horrifying realization about the mountain of physical evidence that he was carrying into his home each week. Every item that he acquired had at one point been handled by its previous owner, and it likely contained dozens of incriminating fingerprints. In putting together a case against Martin, the police could seize items from his home and test them for fingerprints. Finding the print of a different homeowner on items within his cupboards could provide enough evidence for a conviction.
Initially, Martin’s attempts at removing fingerprints had been amateurish. Using a bucket of soapy water, he would wash the cereal boxes, milk containers, cans of soup, and jars of spaghetti sauce much the same way one might wash a dog or a car, by scrubbing and rinsing. But this process was time consuming and often left cardboard containers moist and labels peeling. After several attempts at altering this method, the spray-bottle technique finally came to mind after driving his car through an automated car wash one day. As the large rollers scrubbed the pollen and bird excrement from his hood, the blueprint of a fingerprint removal device suddenly entered his mind, complete with a moving conveyor belt, spray nozzles, and drying fans, very much resembling the machinery in the automatic car wash, only reduced in scale. By the time his Subaru was rolling back onto the street, the entire sketch of his machine was complete in his mind, and he was certain that if it were given to an engineer and built to his specifications, he would never have to worry about a fingerprint again. In a way, Martin felt like he understood the plight of Leonardo da Vinci, a man who could envision the plans for the first helicopter but lacked the tools, materials, and technology to fabricate one. He felt a great deal of frustration and pride in this realization.
While the machine would be impossible to build (and even more impossible to explain to anyone