The Alienist - Caleb Carr [57]
“Not yet,” Marcus answered. “It’s an ongoing fight. Even though the reliability of prints has been demonstrated, there’s a great deal of resistance.”
“The important thing to remember,” Sara added—and how very satisfying, to see her now lecturing Kreizler!—“is that fingerprints can show who has been in a given place. It’s ideal for our—” She caught herself, and calmed. “It has great potential.”
“And how are the prints taken?” Kreizler asked.
“There are three basic methods,” Marcus answered. “First, obviously, are visible prints—a hand that’s been dipped in paint, blood, ink, anything like that, and has then touched something else. Then there are plastic prints, left when someone touches putty, clay, wet plaster, and so on. Last, and the most difficult, are latent prints. If you pick up that glass in front of you, Doctor, your fingers will leave a residue of perspiration and body oil in the pattern of your fingerprint. If I suspect that you might have done so”—Marcus removed two small vials from his pockets, one containing a gray-white powder and one a black substance of similar consistency—“I will dust with either aluminum powder”—he held up the gray-white vial—“or with finely ground carbon”—he held up the black. “The choice depends on the color of the background object. White shows up against dark objects, black against light; either would be suitable for your glass. The powders are absorbed by the oils and perspiration, leaving a perfect image of your print.”
“Remarkable,” Kreizler said. “But if it is now scientifically accepted that a human being’s fingerprints never vary, how can this not be admitted as legal evidence in court?”
“Change isn’t something most people enjoy, even if it’s progressive change.” Marcus put the vials down on the table and smiled. “But I’m sure you’re aware of that, Dr. Kreizler.”
Kreizler nodded once in acknowledgment of this comment, then pushed his plate away and sat back again. “Grateful as I am for all of your instructive words,” he said, “I get the feeling, Detective Sergeant, that they have some more specific purpose.”
Marcus turned to Lucius yet again, but his brother only shrugged in resignation. With that, Marcus pulled something flat from the inner pocket of his jacket.
“Chances are,” he said, “no coroner would notice or care if they happened on something like this today, much less three years ago.” He dropped the sheet—actually a photograph—on the table in front of us, and our three heads went close together to view it. It was a detail of something, several white objects—bones, I soon determined, but I couldn’t be more specific.
“Fingers?” Sara wondered aloud.
“Fingers,” Kreizler answered.
“Specifically,” Marcus said, “the fingers of Sofia Zweig’s left hand. Note the nail on the tip of the thumb, the one you can see fully.” He took a magnifying lens from his pocket and handed it to us, then sat back to nibble foie gras.
“It seems,” Kreizler mused as Sara picked up the lens, “bruised. At least, there is discoloration of some kind.”
Marcus looked at Sara. “Miss Howard?”
She put the lens before her face, and brought the photograph closer. Her eyes struggled to focus, and then went wide in discovery. “I see…”
“See what?” I said, squirming like a four-year-old.
As Laszlo looked over Sara’s shoulder, his expression became even more astounded and impressed than hers. “Good lord, you don’t mean—”
“What, what, what?” I said, and Sara finally handed me the glass and the picture. I followed instructions and examined the nail at the tip of the thumb. Without the glass it looked, as Kreizler had said, discolored: Magnified, it clearly bore the mark of what I knew to be a fingerprint, left in some kind of dark substance. I was dumb with surprise.
“It’s a very lucky chance,” Marcus said. “Though partial, it’s sufficient for identification. Somehow, it managed to survive both the coroner and the mortician. The substance is blood, by the way. Probably the girl’s own, or her brother