As if choreographed, all their heads turned toward David, who sat with his hands folded across his chest, looking at his computer screen with the amount of satisfaction that Newton must have had when he discovered gravity, or college freshmen when they discover beer comes in a keg.
“You have something to share?” asked Diane.
“Sure, when I finish enjoying the moment,” said David.
Neva smiled at Jin, who shook his head.
“You’ve got to understand how difficult this was. You don’t just plug it into the software and ask it to make the picture clear. You have to work with it, tweak it, baby it-failing that, write your own algorithm.” He hit a key, which initiated the sound of the printer. “You see, the problem is, range between color values is different in, for example, the background and the foreground, so one-”
“David,” said Neva. “We really appreciate the level of intelligence and skill it takes for you to do what you do, but I for one don’t understand what the heck you are talking about. Bottom-line it for us. Let’s see the picture.”
“That would be the most impressive.” David scooped up the pages coming out of the printer and walked over to the table. “In case you have forgotten, here is the original.” He tossed it on the table.
“You mean to tell me you made something of this?” said the sheriff. “There’s nothing here.”
“It would seem not, but. . ” He made a flourish with his hand and began dealing the pictures like cards in a deck. “I printed one for each of you.”
“I’ll be damned,” said the sheriff. “This can’t be possible.”
“Wow,” said Neva. “Now, see, this is impressive.”
“I’ll say,” agreed Jin.
Diane examined the photograph. What was once a foggy blur was now something recognizable-not crystal-clear, but it didn’t have to be. It showed enough. It was an old car, the kind in old Eliot Ness gangster movies. What was so remarkable about the work that David had done was not that he brought out the car in the photo, but that, on the shelf of the backseat near the rear window, was unmistakably a human skull.
None of them said anything as they studied the photograph. Finally, Jin broke the silence. “How long you think that’s been down there?”
“I have to hand it to you and the lab here,” the sheriff said looking from the original photograph to David’s enhancement. “This is pretty amazing.” He laid the pictures down on the table. “So we know what our dead guys were looking for. What we don’t know is why anybody would care after all this time-if, of course, that’s why they were killed.” He shook his head. “Now I’ve got to figure out how I can get that thing up off the bottom.”
“I’d like to go down and photograph it first,” said Jin. “Maybe even work the crime scene from down there. I scuba-dive.”
The sheriff nodded. “How do you think we should go about this?”
“We can call a company,” said David. “They’ll probably do something like inflate a balloon inside the vehicle-or tie special balloons to it. That’s how they got those enormously heavy antique logs that Korey was talking about off the bottom of Lake Superior. Depending on what condition it’s in, they’ll try to contain it in some way. Jin can tell us how the process works.”
“Well,” the sheriff, said as he stood up. “thanks for finding me another crime scene-one that looks expensive.” He chuckled. Canfield went to the door and Diane buzzed him out.
“Good job, David,” said Diane. “You did good. More than good. I’m really impressed.”
“We all are,” said Jin. “I thought the sheriff’s eyes were going to drop out of his head.”
“All the praise is appreciated-and deserved.” He made a flourishing bow. “Thank you.” He turned to Neva. “So, Neva, what’s in the box?” said David.
“I found something at my house.”
“Something that I missed?” cried Jin.
“Sort of. In a way.”
Jin’s look was a mixture of amazement and horror.
“What is it?” said Diane.
“You know that the intruder destroyed all my polymer clay figures. He also got into my workplace and messed up my clay, mashing it all together.” She took a twisted and folded piece of red, blue and brown clay and set it on the table with a clunk. She had clearly baked the mass of clay.
“I went by my place before visiting Mike and sort of got to crying over my clay and looking at it. I think the intruder made a mistake. There was an imprint in the clay.”
“Fingerprints?” asked David.
“No, not fingerprints. I think he wore latex gloves.” She tapped the piece she had set on the table. “I found an imprint in here that looks like the folds of a glove. I baked this piece to make a mold. Then I put another piece of clay in the mold and made a cast. This is what I found.” She put another piece of baked clay on the table. This one was the color of terra-cotta pots.
Diane picked it up and looked at the form in the clay. “It’s an impression of his fingers.”
“I’m thinking that he took my clay and was mashing it together and made the impression with his four fingers. Look at the folds, kind of like the inside of a gloved hand, and the impression itself is sort of muted, as if it had something covering it. You can see the back side of a ring and fingernails. You can also see that one finger is badly damaged.”
“Very good, Neva,” said Jin. He grinned at her.
“I’ll put it in the evidence drawer for my house break-in,” said Neva.
“Call Garnett,” said Diane. “Tell him what you found.”
“Me?” said Neva.
Neva had always been a little intimidated by Garnett. “You found it,” said Diane. “And it’s an identifying characteristic.”
Neva nodded, then smiled. “Sure.”
Diane turned to Jin. “What did the two of you find at the Jane Doe crime scene?”
“A running shoe, a pair of socks, several small plastic buttons,” said Jin. “But I may have missed something.”
“Get over it, Jin,” said Diane.
“Yeah, Neva was there,” said David. “She would have found anything you didn’t.”
Jin shrugged and continued. “We found some of the bones of her hands and feet and a few others we couldn’t identify. We photographed the place, but didn’t find anything but the bones. The deputy did a number on the site. Oh, I did get a bug out of his car. It’s a dermestid, just like we figured.”
“Did you find a femur?” asked Diane. “Our Jane Doe is missing one.”
Jin and Neva looked at each other. “No,” they said, shaking their heads.
“Are there any nursing homes in the area?” Diane asked.
“The closest one is ten miles. Sheriff Burns said no one is missing that he’s aware of,” said Jin. “The sheriff took us to the site. He’s pretty steamed at Deputy Singer, especially when he saw all the shovel marks in the ground and we told him how the bones arrived. Singer was supposed to have called us to photograph the scene and collect the bones.”
“I got the impression,” said Neva, “that he won’t be having a job when he gets out of the hospital.”
“Whenever that is,” said Jin. “Sheriff Burns said that besides his injuries, he developed some kind of rash thing.”
“Urticaria, probably,” said David. He rubbed his arm unconsciously. “It’s a skin condition brought on by an allergic reaction to insect bites. He probably looks pretty bad about now.”
“Poor guy. Is that all the crime scenes we have at the moment?” said Diane. She hoped that the murderers in the area would hold off killing anyone until her team got caught up.
“I believe that’s it, Boss,” answered Jin. “Except Caver Doe.”
“Caver Doe has waited fifty years. He can wait a little longer. Let’s get the analysis of these cases done as quickly as we can. Neva, when you have time, I’d like to see some sketches of the faces of the victims. First up, get the autopsy photos of Quarry Doe and draw him a presentable face-preferably with his eyes open. We need to identify him. You okay with that?”
Neva wrinkled her nose. “Sure. If I can slip on their fingers to get a print, I can draw their decaying faces.”
“Jane Doe’s skull from the woods will be ready in a couple of days. It’s in with the dermestids now. And it looks like we’ll be getting another skeleton from the deep.”