Dead Guilty

bedroom. ‘‘I need to turn the lights out,’’ he said. He was carrying a filter and black light to check for fingerprints.
‘‘You’re going to like this, Boss,’’ said Jin. ‘‘I found the infamous bloody glove in the bedroom—at least its print. It looks like the index finger on the glove had a tear on the surface of the leather.’’
‘‘Leather?’’ asked Diane.
‘‘Looks like it. We can ID this baby if we find it. There’s a lot of prints on the coffee table here, but I bet they belong to the victim and his girlfriend. You think maybe they were involved in some kind of kinky stuff that got out of hand? I heard what you guys said about the time of death.’’
‘‘You think she also hit him with a hand weight?’’
‘‘I did a crime scene in New York where the victim suffered an astounding amount of consensual abuse. What is it that happens to a person in childhood that wires the brain to like that kind of stuff?’’
‘‘I don’t know, and we don’t know what happened here.’’
They worked all night and into the morning— searching, dusting, collecting. The smell of fingerprint powders and reagents mixed with the smell of death that always lingered.
‘‘Heard we have a mummy.’’
Despite the fact that the crime unit wasn’t techni cally connected to the museum, David and Jin claimed the museum as theirs. So did the technicians Diane had hired to work in the lab. Neva was the only one who didn’t appear to feel any connection with the mu seum yet. Diane didn’t know if that was good or bad.
‘‘We apparently inherited one while my back was turned.’’
‘‘Know anything about it?’’ asked Jin.
‘‘Kendel said the mummy case appears to be from the twelfth dynasty. But that doesn’t mean the occu pant is from that time. From what Kendel and Jonas have told us, there was a flourishing trade in mummies in the 1800s, and European adventurers and Egyptian entrepreneurs were eager to supply the tourist trade. That included taking stray mummies and playing musi cal mummy case.’’
‘‘They also made new mummies for customers,’’ said David. ‘‘Are you sure it’s even ancient? It could be just a couple hundred years old.’’
‘‘Right now, we don’t know anything about it.’’ Diane found a smear of blood on the metal base of the desk lamp. ‘‘I need a photograph in here, David. I believe it’s Jin’s bloody glove.’’
David took several shots of the smear using lighting in various positions to enhance the pattern.
‘‘What are you going to do with the mummy?’’ said Jin, who was waiting to lift the print when David finished the photographs and Diane collected the sample.
‘‘After Korey cleans it up, it goes for a CT scan,’’ said Diane.
‘‘Cool. I’d like to see that.’’
Most of the night they worked in silence, occasion ally interrupted by small bits of conversation about the museum, Jin’s music, and David’s bird photo graphs. Neva said very little, and Diane realized that they didn’t know much about what she did outside of work. They did discover that she liked to model small animals from polymer clay.
Just before dawn the radio came on in the bedroom and startled everyone.
‘‘That got the old heart pumping, didn’t it?’’ Jin laughed.
‘‘I think I wet my pants,’’ David said. ‘‘Must have been set by the victim. Time to get up.’’
‘‘Won’t be getting up this time,’’ Jin said.
Diane went to the kitchen to check on Neva. She found her in the pantry picking up and shaking cans of food. Neva looked up sheepishly.
‘‘I, uh, just... you know how some people keep their valuables in fake cans of soup? Whoever it was apparently checked out the kitchen drawers, and I just thought...’’
‘‘Good idea. I wouldn’t have thought of that. Find anything?’’
Neva looked relieved. Her whole body relaxed and she smiled. ‘‘Nothing in the groceries. Jin found plenty of prints, but they were in places you’d expect in a kitchen that’s used for cooking. He said they were probably from exemplars. I’ve collected some fibers from the doorjamb. That’s one good thing about these old houses: The door frames are apt to be splintered— good for grabbing at clothing.’’
‘‘It looks like the perp wore gloves,’’ said Diane. ‘‘I don’t think we’ll be getting any of his prints.’’ She looked out the kitchen window and down at her watch. ‘‘It’s getting to be daylight. When you