Piper dropped her hand and suppressed a laugh as she watched ada Kim go back and sit down. “She’s a kick in the pants, as my grandmother would say.”
“You almost sound like you admire her,” Fenway said.
“Well, I mean, I don’t agree with her, but you’ve got to admire someone who can be that brazen.”
“I suppose.” Like my father.
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Piper said in a low voice. “We’ve got everyone’s fingerprints now. If the print from that gun is from someone in the courtroom, we’ll find it.”
“Well—not necessarily, Piper. What if the print on the gun is from someone’s left hand, but they only held their water bottle with their right hand?”
“Yeah—okay, but it does significantly increase our probability, right?”
Fenway nodded. “Sure. Most people would both grab a gun and drink from a water bottle with their dominant hand.”
“Great. So let’s get to work.”
Fenway dug in the kit and handed Piper a pair of blue nitrile gloves, and took out a pair for herself. “Move your laptop,” she said. “The fingerprint dust gets everywhere.”
“Okay. How do you want to do this?”
“The bottles are round, so they’d roll if I put them on the table. You hold them for me, and rotate them.” Fenway paused.
“One thing,” Piper said. “How will we know whose is whose?”
Fenway grinned, getting the old receipt with the letters and numbers. “I numbered the bottles.”
“Really?”
“Yes. One through twelve—well, eleven. I used Roman numerals, though. I could make the marks less noticeable if they were straight lines. No real way to hide viii, but i, ii, and iii were easy.”
Piper bent down and retrieved an empty water bottle from under the desk. She stared at the label for a moment. “Where?”
“Under the bottling information on the back of the label. I tried to make it look like a stamp.”
“There it is. I’ll be damned.”
“That’s three,” Fenway said. “And who does iii correlate with?”
Piper checked the receipt. “That’s B. Bryce Heissner?”
Fenway nodded. “All right. I’ll get the tape, and hopefully we’ll get this done in no time.”
“Who’s W?”
“Oh, those are all first names except for Judith, Jennifer, Cynthia, and Charlotte—W is for widow, K is for Kim, S is for Schimmelhorn, and M is for—”
“Mom? Like stepmom?” Piper guessed.
Fenway snorted. “Monster. Like stepmonster.”
There were only nine bottles to test. Xavier and Amanda hadn’t taken water, and Fenway and Piper hadn’t taken any either. Fenway was most concerned about the fingerprints on Rose Morgan’s water bottle.
Piper stopped. “Do you hear that?”
Fenway listened. “Rain,” she said. The patter on the roof grew louder as the rain intensified.
Piper nodded and held the plastic bottle as Fenway brushed the fingerprint dust on the surfaces and tried to collect as much as possible that had fallen onto the table. Piper rotated the bottle a few times, and by the time they were finished, Fenway had been able to lift nine distinct prints off Rose’s bottle. Jackpot—three of Rose’s fingerprints had tented arches, and the one partial didn’t have a tented arch.
As soon as she transferred all of Rose’s prints to a card, Fenway’s heart raced as she pushed the cards next to each other.
She stared at the them, willing one of the prints to match.
But no luck.
None of the tented arch prints matched the one on the gun. One was close, but a notch just below the tent and a more tightly packed swirl pattern above the tent meant that Rose hadn’t had the gun in her hand.
Fenway didn’t believe it. She looked again.
No.
She wanted to scream in frustration, but that might have alerted the others in the courtroom to what she was doing.
“Is Rose a match?” Piper asked.
Fenway shook her head. “I would have put money on it. A lot of money.”
“We’ve got two more to compare. Let’s not give up hope yet.”
Fenway’s throat was dry, but she swallowed and nodded. “Right.”
She tried to work just as quickly when Fenway enthusiastically held the plastic bottle in front of her, but she didn’t have her heart in it. Evans Dahl didn’t have any arches at all—though Fenway only got five useable prints from him. The ada’s fingerprints made up for it, though—all ten of hers were on the bottle. But she only had two arches out of the ten fingers.
Something itched at the back of Fenway’s brain.
Had she seen these fingerprints before?
No—that was silly. Even if she had, how could she remember them?
“Piper,” Fenway murmured, “we didn’t take Jennifer Kim’s fingerprints earlier, did we?”
“I don’t think so. You’re the one who compared all the cards.”
“Right.” She looked through the cards again. Schimmelhorn, Heissner, Ferris, Ferris, Kohl, Gonsalves, Nedermeyer—the one with all the accidental whorls, she remembered—and Judith Cygnus. And then the duplicate cards for the two Ferrises, then Fenway’s own card, then Piper.
I’m missing something.
She compared the prints that she pulled off Kim’s water bottle and held them up to the others.
They perfectly matched the cards labeled Cynthia Schimmelhorn.
Fenway cursed under her breath.
“What is it?” Piper asked.
“I think I messed up. Look—ada Kim and Cynthia Schimmelhorn’s prints.”
Piper looked. “Oh no.”
“Yeah. I thought Kim’s prints looked familiar. So I compared them to everyone else’s—and they match Cynthia Schimmelhorn’s.” Fenway’s lip curled. “I—I can’t believe I did that. I was extremely careful.”
“Maybe they switched bottles.”
“But then both of their prints would be on the bottle, right?”
“Hey,” Piper said, “we all make mistakes.”
“Yeah, well, this isn’t like making a typo. Because of my screw-up, we might not catch a killer.” Fenway pulled the cards toward Piper. “Take a look, Piper.” She tapped the card on the left. “These are the ones we just pulled off the bottle.” Then she tapped the two cards on the right, labeled cynthia schimmelhorn. “These are an exact match. Can you explain it any other way than a massive fuck-up on my part?”
Piper shifted her weight in her chair uncomfortably. “I—uh….You’re right, I guess.” She set her jaw. “What about with the Roman numerals? Maybe you wrote a vi when you meant to put in a iv or something like that? Or maybe something upside down? An ix that should be an xi?”
Fenway closed her eyes. “I don’t—I don’t see any way I could have done something like that. But now you’ve got me doubting my memory.”
“Don’t beat yourself up, Fenway.”
“No—it’s—it’s not that. See, in my head I know I’m right. I either made a huge mistake, or someone outsmarted me.” Fenway gave Piper a pained smile. “And frankly, neither of those choices are acceptable.” Fenway threw up her hands. “What I want to know is, if Cynthia Schimmelhorn’s fingerprints are on Kim’s bottle, then whose fingerprints are on her bottle?”
“You’re not suggesting that you screwed up more than one bottle, are you?”
“I—I don’t know what I’m suggesting. Maybe we should check all the other bottles just to make sure that the fingerprints all match the cards we think they match with.”
“Yeah, okay. Let’s check.”
“I’m sorry, Piper.” Fenway smacked her hand on the counter. “I’m so angry with myself for screwing this up.”
Piper put a hand on Fenway’s shoulder. “It’s possible that the killer was way ahead of us. When we handed out those water bottles—maybe they changed some of the Roman numerals. It’s easy to change a vii into a viii.”
Fenway grunted. “Yes. You’re right. Maybe that’s what happened.”
“That makes you feel better? That the killer knows we’re onto them?”
Fenway leaned forward in her chair. “Not when you put it like that.”
“All right, let’s just work through these. It’s like a logic puzzle, right?”
Fenway nodded. “Right. We’ve got ten sets of prints we know for sure are accurately matched with their owners. We’ve got eight water bottles we don’t know for sure are matched with their owners, but we can match the bottles with the prints we can identify, right?”
“Right. But we have three bottles with prints we hadn’t taken before—Rose Morgan, Evans Dahl, and Jennifer Kim.”
“And we know Jennifer’s is wrong.”
“So maybe someone switched the bottles around, or changed the labels. Or something.”
Fenway nodded. “Great. Let’s get cracking.”
The two of them worked steadily for the next forty-five minutes. As Fenway expected, Cynthia Schimmelhorn’s bottle didn’t match any of the existing prints. Neither did Evans Dahl’s bottle.
Piper checked the internet again. Still no connectivity.
The other water bottles all matched their respective fingerprint cards, however.
Fenway had fingerprint powder all over her gloves, and she was relieved to take them off. A bit of powder got on her slacks, but they were black anyway. Piper had a hard time taking hers off, so Fenway helped her.
“And now the moment of truth,” Fenway said.
She pulled the card with the print from the gun toward her and compared them to Evans Dahl. A single arch, and the rest loops and whorls. Then she took a deep breath and slid the prints from bottle labeled for Cynthia Schimmelhorn next to the gun card.
One tented arch.
And it was a perfect match.