The Watchmaker’s Hand

Cooper continued itemizing what Pulaski had found: A laptop. Trace from Gilligan’s shoes, from the corpse and around it, from the logical path the victim and the shooter had walked, from the street beneath the doors, from the Lexus. Fingernail scrapings too and several items from the car.

“Slugs?”

Pulaski said, “Still in him. I think the shooter had a suppressor.”

“Video?” Rhyme was looking at the SD card Pulaski was feeding into a computer.

“Found a receipt for a diner Gilligan ate at yesterday. I stopped by on the way here. They copied their security cam footage for me around the time he was there. Great baklava, by the way.” He called up a player program, loaded the security footage and began scrubbing.

While he searched, Rhyme said, “Mel, the trace. And, Lon, can you do the honors?” A nod at the whiteboard.

“Yeah, with my handwriting? Sister Mary Elizabeth didn’t give me rave reviews in grade school.” But he took the marker and smoothed the top sheet on the easel with his hand, like Picasso ready to draw.

Cooper began calling out the conclusions reached by that workhorse of all crime labs: the gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer, which isolates and identifies unknown substances.

The bulk of what Pulaski had collected near the body and in the field were sand and loam soil. This matched the control samples, which meant that they were of no probative value.

But then he discovered trace that did not match. It had come from a source other than the field where Gilligan died.

Mel Cooper reported: “Silica, alumina and magnesia, iron, potassium, sodium, and calcium. Alkaline earth. Decaying organic material. Hydrous aluminum phyllosilicates.”

“Really? Interesting.”

Sellitto’s eyes made a wide and sarcastic circuit of the ceiling. Rhyme ignored it.

He asked, “Where was it collected?”

“On the victim’s shoes and footprints where he and the shooter walked. Most abundant under the passenger’s and driver’s doors, and the car’s front seat carpet, both sides.”

“Ah, excellent! They picked it up before they got in the car. But where? That’s what we want to know. The shooter’s hideout? Maybe the house of some OC head? I want to know more. Mel, ’scope a sample. Optical.”

Another basic tool in crime labs, a compound microscope — so named because it had multiple lenses — was nothing fancy. Its job was simple: to make little things look bigger.

A moment later, images of particles appeared on one of the monitors near Rhyme, mirroring what Cooper was looking at through the eyepiece of the Mitutoyo microscope, a precision instrument that came in at $10K.

“Put a scale up,” Rhyme instructed.

A grid appeared. The smaller particles, tan in color, were about .002mm or smaller.

He said, “All right. With particles that small, and those ingredients? It’s clay.”

One of the six basic categories of earth soils, along with shale, loam, silt, peat and chalk.

Cooper continued, “Ground calcium, consistent with shellfish shells, very old.”

“Clay and shells?” Sellitto mused. “Narrows it to near a shoreline, right? Why the sour face, Linc?”

“Because, yes, you’re right. Shoreline. And New York City has more than five hundred miles of it. More than Boston, Miami, L.A. and San Francisco combined. What else? I want something unique.”

Cooper went on, “Charcoal. Decaying bits of wood coated with varnish, fibers from deteriorating leather and wool. Copper, iron. Then isoamyl alcohol, n-propyl alcohol, epicatechin and vanillin. Everything’s old, very old.”

Rhyme regarded the results as Sellitto wrote in his C— handwriting. “The last? Some kind of liquor. Antique. Hm. All right. Now, that trace came from a different location. Where...?” He drew the word out. “Pulaski, did you—?”

“No GPS in Gilligan’s car. Disabled. Was that what you were going to ask?”

“It was. His other phone? His main one?”

“Wasn’t there. Assume the shooter took it.”

After writing this down, Sellitto offered, “Man is getting guiltier by the minute.”

Pulaski got a text. He read it, and his face tightened with minor disgust.

Sellitto lifted an inquiring eyebrow.

“I had to shepherd a dep inspector out of the way.”

“So? It’s your scene.”

“Yeah, well, I kind of threatened him with obstruction. In front of the press. Nearly cuffed and detained him.”

Rhyme’s reaction was amusement and a bit of pride. He’d done the same thing on several occasions and actually put an NYPD captain in the back of a blue-and-white for an hour.

“Who?” Sellitto asked.

“Burdick.”

Sellitto said, “Oh him. Yeah, well, he’s got an excuse.”

Pulaski was frowning. “What’s that?”

“He’s a dick.”

Cooper called, “I’ve got the shoes. Both’re size eleven. Smooth soles. No manufacturer’s ID.”

Naturally, one of the most common. And shoe size has only a tangential correlation to height or build. “Wear patterns?” he called. Heels or tips worn down in certain ways can reveal professions.

“Gilligan’s’re worn more than the shooter’s, but neither of them tell us anything.”