The Kill Room

analyzed the shoes and clothing of the three victims who’d been in suite 1200 on the morning of May 9. Each plastic bag was opened over a large sheet of sterile newsprint, and each item of clothing and the shoes were picked over and scraped for trace.
    The shoes of Moreno, his guard and de la Rua produced fibers identical to those in the hotel carpet and dirt that matched samples taken from the sidewalk and grounds in front of the inn. Their clothing contained similar trace as well as elements of recent meals, presumably breakfast; they died before lunch. Cooper found pastry flakes, jam and bits of bacon in the case of Moreno and his guard, and allspice and some indeterminate type of pepper sauce on the reporter’s jacket. Moreno and his guard also had traces of crude oil on their shoes, cuffs and sleeves, probably from their meeting on Monday out of the hotel; there weren’t many refineries in New Providence so maybe they had eaten dinner by the docks. The guard had some trace of cigarette ash on his shirt.
    This information went up on the board and Rhyme noted but didn’t dwell on any of it; after all, their killer had been a mile away when he’d fired the bullet. Unsub 516 had been in the hotel but even if he’d snuck into the Kill Room itself, none of that trace remained.
    He said, “Now. The autopsy report.”
    No surprises here either. Moreno had been killed by a massive gunshot trauma to the chest, and the others by blood loss due to multiple lacerations from the flying glass, of varying sizes, mostly three or four millimeters wide, two to three centimeters long.
    Cooper looked over the cigarette butts and the candy wrapper that Poitier’s original crime scene searchers had found in the Kill Room but these yielded nothing helpful. The butts were the same brand as the pack of Marlboros found on the guard’s body, the candy had come from a gift basket for Moreno when he arrived. The fingerprints that Pulaski had lifted, not surprisingly, were negative for hits in any database.
    “Let’s move on to the prostitute’s apartment. Annette Bodel.”
    Pulaski’d done a good job, collecting plenty of trace from near where the killer had searched, along with samplars to eliminate any that was probably not from him. Cooper examined the items and, occasionally, ran samples through the gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer. He finally announced, “First, we’ve got two-stroke fuel.”
    These were smaller engines, two-strokes, like those in snowmobiles and chain saws, in which the lubricating oil is mixed directly with gasoline.
    “Jet Ski maybe,” Rhyme said. “She worked in a dive shop part-time. Might not be from our perp but we’ll keep it in mind.”
    “And sand,” the tech announced. “Along with seawater residue.” He compared the chemical breakdown of these items with what was on the board for two of the prior scenes. “Yep, it’s virtually the same as what Amelia found at Java Hut.”
    Rhyme lifted an eyebrow at this. “Ah, a definitive link between Unsub Five Sixteen and the Bahamas. We know he was in Annette’s apartment and I’m ninety-nine percent sure he was the one in the South Cove on May eighth. Now, anything linking him to Lydia Foster?”
    Pulaski pointed out, “The brown hair, which is what Corporal Poitier said the man in the South Cove Inn had, the one who was there just before Moreno was killed.”
    “It suggests ; it doesn’t prove. Keep going, Mel.”
    The tech was staring into the eyepiece of a microscope. “Something odd here. Some membrane, orange. I’ll run part of it through the GC/MS.”
    Some minutes later he had the results from the gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer.
    Cooper read, “DHA, C22:6n-3—docosahexaenoic acid.”
    “Fish oil,” Rhyme said, looking at the screen on which the microscopic image was being projected. “And with that membrane, see in the upper right corner? I’d say fish eggs: Roe. Or caviar.”
    “Also some C 8 H 8 O 3 ,” Cooper said.
    “You’ve got me,” Rhyme muttered.
    The lookup took thirty seconds. “Vanillin.”
    “As in vanilla extract?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Thom! Thom, get in here. Where the hell are you?”
    The aide’s voice drifted into the room. “What do you need?”
    “You. Present. Here. In the room.”
    Rolling down his sleeves, the aide joined them. “How could I resist such a polite summons?”
    Sachs laughed.
    Rhyme frowned. “Look over those charts, Thom. Put your culinary skills to work.