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By Root 388 0

who asked what it was for), the idea of a spray bottle quickly replaced that of the complex machinery, and within a week he had cut the time it took to remove fingerprints by more than half. A liberal spray of rubbing alcohol (more effective at removing fingerprints than water), followed by a vigorous wipe-down, would remove all evidence that the item had been handled by anyone. He tested his method early on using a fingerprint kit, which he purchased with a Stop & Shop money order and had shipped to clients who were staying with their daughter in Iowa during the birth of their first grandchild. After a month of testing on random acquisitions, Martin found that with a diligent cleaning, the spray-bottle method was 100 percent effective in removing fingerprints. In all, it took Martin seventeen minutes to cleanse his latest acquisitions of evidence, produce included, and with this finally accomplished, the actual processing could begin.

Thankfully, he hadn’t thought of the Claytons once during the cleaning.

Martin’s laptop was attached to an external hard drive, in which all his business data was stored. This hard drive, which no one knew existed, was stored in a concealed section of his basement wall behind the sump pump when not in use, leaving his laptop free of all incriminating evidence. Using Excel, Martin opened the spreadsheet in which he tracked his large acquisitions and logged in Donna Gardner’s pendant, indicating the date of acquisition but leaving the “Profit” column empty. Once entered, Martin proceeded to hide the pendant in the location he had predetermined earlier that day.

Hiding small items like jewelry had always been easy for Martin, and he could never quite fathom why someone would use a safe, lockbox, or safety deposit box when so many secure locations could be found around the average home. The insides of large household appliances were some of Martin’s favorite locations, because they were easily accessible, plentiful, and extremely secure. The back panel of a refrigerator, for example, could quickly be removed with a screwdriver, and a pendant, earring, or even necklace could be well concealed among the various wires or nonmoving parts therein. In Martin’s mind, the chances of anyone, including law enforcement officials, looking inside the compressor of his refrigerator for a recently acquired diamond earring were nil. In fact, a safe or lockbox almost implied guilt, or at the very least acknowledged the presence of valuables to anyone searching his home. His refrigerator, on the other hand, only acknowledged the likely presence of bologna, lettuce, and milk, making it much less conspicuous and therefore much more secure. In the past, Martin had hidden his small but valuable acquisitions inside his refrigerator, dishwasher, television, VCR, electric can opener, air conditioner, and stereo, to name just a few places, and once they were hidden, he never gave a second thought to their safety.

Martin had predetermined that he would hide the pendant within the metallic casing that protected the snowblower’s motor, and in less than five minutes it was concealed between several braids of cord within the machine.

With the pendant hidden, Martin started logging in the other items that he had positioned in his staging area, beginning with the frozen and refrigerated goods. In a database specifically designed for groceries, Martin entered the name of each item, indicating where it was acquired, how much of it was acquired, and what it was worth. Thanks to the same Peapod website that Emma and Max Reed used to purchase their groceries each week, Martin had access to an online database that contained the current market price of almost every grocery item that he had ever acquired, so it was easy to calculate his daily profit. Martin also assigned each item a code that indicated from which “grocery family” the item came (meat, produce, dry goods, etc.), and he would later use this information to analyze the history of his acquisitions from each client. His goal was to ensure that he was acquiring a proportionate