THIRTY-TWO

“Just fill in the file number, Mr. Monk,” Alicia Donaldson told him the next morning, from behind her counter in the 1B vault on the second floor at WFO.

More commonly known as the bulky-exhibit room, the 1B vault was the field office storage locker for evidence too large to be kept in the manilla 1A envelopes attached to the case files themselves. It was also the most important room in the office. The bureau in Washington had hundreds of cases in court at any one time, virtually every one of which would be dismissed immediately should something happen to the evidence locked up in here.

Monk wrote the Lyman Davidson robbery file number on the form Alicia gave him, and handed it back to the gray-haired lady with the long yellow pencil stuck behind her ear.

“Give me a second,” she said, and hustled away into the long rows of government-gray metal shelving behind her.

The bulky-exhibit room looked more like a humongous garage sale than anything connected with the somber business of the federal judiciary. Evidence too big to fit between the stiff cardboard file covers tended to run a gamut you’d have to see to believe. As a matter of fact, the black Lincoln Navigator the thief had used was currently a 1B exhibit, although it was being kept downstairs in the basement garage: Some things were too big even for this room. Looking around—without half trying—Monk could see dozens of computers and monitors, two old-fashioned floor safes that looked heavier than elephants, and a bicycle built for two. A bicycle built for two? He shook his head, then turned to Alicia as she came back with a cardboard box slightly larger than a case of wine.

“You taking this back to your desk?” she wanted to know. “Or looking at it here?” As long as he’d signed for the stuff, he could take it anywhere he wanted.

“Here’s fine.” He glanced to his left and felt a jolt of pain from his still-aching back. “I’ll use the table for a few minutes.”

Alicia carried the box around the end of her counter and took it to the library table in the corner near the door. Monk joined her, and she handed him the green sheet, the long green 1B form. He checked it over. The form served as a chain of custody log as well as the document to input the evidence into the filing system, and chain of custody was taken very seriously around these parts. When you got to court, you had better be able to prove not only where the evidence had been when you seized it, but where it had been every single moment since that time. In some cases it could be years before the start of a trial, but that didn’t make any difference. Every moment the evidence was in FBI custody had to be accounted for, and there were no exceptions. Ever.

Monk saw from the form that the office crime-scene specialists had recovered the evidence from two places: from Lyman Davidson’s house and from the rented Navigator that had been left behind at the curb outside the house.

The evidence people had signed the stuff in the box into the bulky vault at three-thirty-seven in the morning, about four hours after the robbery. He saw from the form that nobody but him had looked at it since. He took the pen Alicia offered and bent to sign his name. In the blank entitled OUT, he wrote the date and the time of day. He would repeat the process when he was finished, when he left the box for Alicia to put away until next time. When he finished his entry, she took the form and went back to her desk behind the counter.

At the table, Monk began to remove items from the box. The first and biggest was the portable makeup kit, a box about six inches high and fifteen inches long. It opened like a tool box or a fisherman’s tackle box. He glanced at the contents. Makeup, costume jewelry—fake pearls, five or six pairs of earrings, a few fake diamond rings—and an assortment of brushes, sponges, and small square wiping cloths. He examined the makeup in the various containers: a little heavy duty for his taste, but perfect for disguise.

Obviously the woman Davidson had known as Sarah Freed was not what she’d appeared to be, but Monk already knew that. He was neither surprised by anything in here nor hopeful that it would help find her. He put the kit aside and pawed through the box for the hairs and fibers, found them in a large glassine envelope sealed with white tape on which the word EVIDENCE was printed in brilliant red lettering. He didn’t need to look at the individual specimens, so he grabbed the attached paperwork, the sheets of paper detailing what was inside the envelope.

The searchers had found all kinds of hair, both in the front seats and in the rear compartment of the SUV, not surprising in a rental car that probably didn’t get much more than a wipe-down and quick vacuuming between uses. Monk read the list, and shook his head. Christ, it couldn’t be much worse. Black hairs—some from wigs, some from still-living heads—blond hairs, ditto. Same with brown, same with red. “No help,” as a poker dealer might say when he threw you the wrong card.

There was one wig in there, too. Blond, with a ponytail. No label, no way to use it to find a trail leading back to her. The hairs in the glassine envelope did contain DNA, of course—the non-wig hairs—but that didn’t mean shit either. There was no national DNA database—not yet anyway—and without a suspect in hand for comparison purposes, the DNA was useless. Sure as hell wouldn’t lead him to Sung Kim. Monk looked at the green sheet again. The evidence techs had lifted a bunch of latent prints, but who knew which were hers and which had come from previous renters? And again there was the problem of using prints to catch her. One thing Monk knew as well as he knew the feel of a deck of cards in his hands was that Sung Kim’s fingerprints wouldn’t be on file at the bureau’s identification division.

The fibers the techs had collected were pretty much useless as well. Plain cotton strands, polyester tufts, common stuff from clothing you could buy anywhere, recovered from a car that had been used by multiple renters.

But it didn’t mean that what the specialists had gathered wouldn’t one day be used. Despite the fact that all Monk cared about was catching Sung Kim before she struck again, he still had to observe every last detail of evidence gathering, analysis, and preservation. The case could end up in court—it damned well better end up in court—and when the time came, all the seemingly useless minutiae would come into play.

Monk turned and called to Alicia. She smiled and started toward him with the chain of custody log in hand. He glanced back at the box. He’d been hoping for something here, for inspiration if nothing else. Monk chewed the inside of his cheek. He wasn’t sure what inspiration was supposed to feel like, but he was pretty sure this wasn’t it.