The Narrows - Michael Connelly [83]
However, scientific identification of the body was inconclusive. The remains were badly decomposed, leaving fingerprint analysis impossible. And parts of the body were even missing, initially presumed to have been taken by rats and other animals foraging in the tunnels. The entire lower mandible and upper bridge were missing, precluding a comparison to the dental records belonging to Robert Backus.
Cause of death could not be determined either, though a gunshot wound channel was found in the upper abdomen—the area Agent Walling reported seeing her bullet strike—and a rib was fractured, possibly by the force of a bullet. No bullet fragments were recovered, however, suggesting a through and through wound, and so no comparison to a bullet from Walling’s weapon was possible.
No DNA comparison or identification was ever made. After the shooting—when it was thought that Backus might still be alive and on the run—agents descended on the fugitive’s home and office. But they were in search of evidence to the crimes he had committed and clues as to why. They did not plan for the possibility that they might one day need to identify his putrefied remains. In a gaffe that would haunt the investigation and leave the bureau open later to charges of malfeasance and cover-up, no potential DNA receptors—hair and skin from the shower drain, saliva from the toothbrush, fingernail clippings from the waste cans, dandruff and hair from the back of the desk chair—were ever collected. And three months later, when the body was found in the storm water tunnel, it was too late. Those receptors were compromised or nonexistent. The building where Backus had owned a condo mysteriously burned to the ground three weeks after the bureau had finished with it. And Backus’s office had been taken over and completely renovated and redecorated by an agent named Randal Alpert, who took his place in the Behavioral Sciences unit.
A search for a blood sample from Backus proved futile and once again embarrassing for the bureau. When Agent Walling shot Backus in the house in Los Angeles a small amount of blood had spattered the floor. A sample was collected but then inadvertently destroyed in the lab in Los Angeles when medical waste was disposed of.
A search for blood that Backus may have given during personal medical examinations or as donations to blood banks proved fruitless. Through his own cunning planning, luck, and bureaucratic malfeasance, Backus had disappeared without leaving anything of himself behind.
The search for Backus officially ended with the discovery of the body in the drainage tunnel. Even though scientific confirmation of identity was never made, the credentials, badge and Italian suit were enough for bureau command to act swiftly in announcing closure to a case that had held wide sway in the media and had severely undercut the bureau’s already tarnished image.
But meantime a quiet investigation continued into the psychological backgrounding of the killer agent. These were the reports I now read. Led by the Behavioral Sciences section—the very unit in which Backus worked—this investigation seemed more concerned with the question of why he did what he did than with the question of how he was able to do it under the noses of the top experts in the killing field. This investigative direction was probably a protective measure. They looked at the suspect, not the system. The file was replete with reports of investigations into Agent Backus’s early nurturing, adolescence and upbringing. Despite the number of crisply written observations, speculations and summaries, there was very little there. Just a few threads unraveled from the full fabric of personality. Backus remained an enigma, his pathology a secret. He was the case that the best and brightest ultimately couldn’t crack.
I sorted through