Chapter 9
2 months previous: Preston case, LVPD crime lab
The light under the layout table seemed to be driving daggers into Sara's eyes. She pinched the bridge of her nose, closing her eyes. When that didn't seem to help, she used the first two fingers of both hands to massage her temples.
"Headache?" Nick asked from behind her, making her jump.
"The worst," Sara agreed, turning to see the tall Texan poking his head in the door of the layout room.
"I just spent hours at the scene with Ray," she told him, as his eyes quickly browsed the items set out on the table.
"Preston case, right?" he asked. After she nodded, he said, "I've got some Tylenol in my locker, if you want me to go grab you some."
"Thanks, Nicky!" she responded gratefully. "I just took some Midol, though," she gave him a wicked grin as he groaned, raised his hands, and backed away.
She heard him mutter, "TMI! Got my own case to work," as he fled.
Ray chose that moment to walk back in. He gestured toward the direction Nick had gone, saying, "What's wrong with him?"
"I gave him too much information," she smiled benignly at Ray. "Find out anything about those shoe prints?"
"I ran it through the sole database," he began, handing her a photo of the shoe the database had given him. "Men's size eleven, Faded Glory work boot. Sold at all Wal-Mart stores nationwide."
"In other words, no help there," Sara sighed. "Here, you can help me process the clothes we found." Sara handed Ray a paper bag.
Ray took it and walked around to the other side of the table. He opened the bag and carefully took out each article of clothing. With meticulous care, he laid them out on the table.
Sara was carefully looking over a woman's blouse. It was a canary yellow, button down. On close inspection, she could see that several of the buttons were missing, and decided they had probably popped off when the killer ripped the shirt open.
She swabbed a few areas of the shirt that she thought the killer might have handled roughly enough to leave epithelials behind.
Next, she looked for any hair or fibers that might have stuck to the material. She lifted these with evidence tape and set them aside for careful inspection later. Fibers would go to Hodges, in Trace and hairs would go to Wendy, in DNA.
Finally, Sara sprayed a small amount of luminol on the shirt and used her small black light to look for signs of biologicals on the shirt.
Later, after she and Ray finished processing the clothes, Sara took their gathered evidence down the hall. She stopped at DNA first.
"Hey, Wendy!" she greeted the other woman with a tired smile.
"Hey, Sara! Is that the evidence for the Preston case?" Wendy was being her usual happy self, and it kind of disgusted Sara that the woman could be so upbeat this late in a shift. But then, Wendy didn't have to see the dead bodies. She saw cotton swabs and pieces of hair all shift long.
Sighing, Sara said, "Yeah. Just finished processing the clothes." To herself, she thought, I really need to take a vacation. Maybe take a week or two off and go see Gil in France.
"You're in luck, you've only got one case ahead of yours, and it's got very little DNA I have to run," Wendy replied.
"Thanks, call when it's ready, please," Sara said, already turning to walk across the hall to Trace. She could see Hodges, studying something under the microscope. Greg stood nearby, tapping his foot, impatiently.
"Hey, Sara," Greg greeted her, still tapping his foot.
Looking up, Hodges said, "Ah, Sara! I have the results on the wine from your case."
"Oh, come on, Hodges!" Greg broke in irritably. "I've been standing her for ten minutes waiting, and you're going to give Sara her results first?"
"Yours aren't done yet," Hodges smirked at the other man, as he handed apiece of paper to Sara. "I ran your sample through GCMS," Hodges continued. He rattled off several chemical compounds that had been found in the sample, then went on, "The wine was spiked with Ambian. Enough to knock out your vics after just a few swallows. They had to be feeling it after just a couple of small sips."
"Thanks, Hodges. Here's some more trace for you to run. I'd suggest finishing Greg's up first, though," Sara replied.
Greg shot a grateful smile Sara's way, then went back to tapping his foot and glaring at Hodges.
"Glaring at me like that won't speed the machine up," Hodges laughed. "You know, if you got laid more often, you'd be in a better mood."
"As if you'd know!" Greg scoffed at the Trace tech who was even more of a geek than he was.
