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Unbelievable. . . .

“And all the suitcases and clothes?” Rapier asked.

“From home invasions,” Harris said. “Those wheeled suitcases make it easier to haul off all the loot. The clothes cover up whatever they stole, and they’re easy to sell, too.”

“They don’t sell the suitcases?”

“Some are sold, some reused. Who knows about the rest. Maybe it’s hard to hock them if they have someone’s name written on them in Magic Marker.” Harris shrugged. “Hell if I know. Hard to say what dopeheads think—or don’t think, as the case may be.”

Harris then pointed to a far corner of the basement. “Is that what I think it is?”

“A shit bucket,” Payne said disgustedly.

The first tech, who had carried the video camera down, came into the frame. He held a professional Nikon digital camera with a squat zoom lens and an enormous flash strobe.

They watched as he began putting out the four-inch-high inverted-V evidence markers. The first yellow plastic marker bore the black numeral “01.” It was placed in the middle of the bloody mattress, next to a pair of torn women’s panties. He then raised the Nikon to his eye and took a series of four photographs of the panties and marker, overlapping the angles of the shots so that later a computer could create a three-dimensional rendering of the evidence.

A couple minutes later, after repeating the process with three other markers, the tech bent over in a corner of the basement. He placed an inverted-V marker bearing the numeral “05” next to a shiny black metal object that was on a dirt-encrusted, sweat-stained T-shirt.

“It’s a pistol,” Kerry Rapier said.

The tech raised the camera and popped four overlapping images of the pistol.

Then he reached down with his gloved hand and carefully picked it up.

Now they had a better view of it on the TV monitor.

“A snub-nosed revolver,” Rapier added. “Looks like maybe an S&W Model 49?”

“Uh-uh,” Payne said, shaking his head. “The Bodyguard has a hammer shroud. And that hammer is not only exposed, it’s cocked back.”

“Then it’s a Chief’s Special,” Rapier said with more conviction. “At least both are .38 caliber.”

“Yeah,” Payne said absently.

They watched as the tech, with what obviously was practiced skill, put the thumb of his gloved right hand on the knurled back of the hammer and, keeping a steady pressure with the thumb, squeezed the trigger with his index finger. The released hammer rotated forward—but slowly, the pressure from the thumb preventing it from falling fast enough to fire off a possible live round.

Then he thumbed the release that allowed the cylinder to swing open and carefully removed the round that had been under the hammer. It was a live one. He shot another series of four photographs of the pistol in that position. Then he extracted all the bullets from the cylinder—three spent rounds and two live ones—and photographed them. He threaded a plastic zip tie through the barrel and clasped it in such a way that it was visually obvious that the gun could not be fired, either accidentally or on purpose. Finally, he put the fired and live rounds in a clear plastic evidence bag, put the pistol in a separate clear bag, and labeled both bags.

Payne sighed.

“Okay, I’ve seen enough,” he said. “It will take some time for them to process all of that hellhole.”

“And then even more time to begin updating these master case files with the information and images,” Rapier said.

After a moment, Rapier added, “What do you think are the odds of that being the doer’s weapon?”

Payne shrugged.

“Who the hell knows, Kerry. You heard Kendrik’s mother say in the interview that the gunshot made a big ‘boom.’ Arguably, a .45 is a helluva lot more of a ‘boom’ than a .38—a .38’s more like a ‘bang.’ But what does

she know? A damned cork popgun would probably sound like a boom to her.” He looked at the video feed of the basement. “Maybe there’s a .38 embedded in the wall there with Kendrik’s blood splatter. Or maybe it’s a .45-cal. round, which could bring us back to our mystery shooter”—he looked at his notes—“good ol’ SNU 2010-56-9280, who now has, at last known count, seven notches on his gun. But, if there is a .38 in the wall, maybe there’s another doer’s fingerprints on that snub-nosed Smith and Wesson. Which means another candidate for Task Force Operation Clean Sweep. And on and on. Until we get lab results, we’re basically in hurry-up-and-wait mode.”

“And we’re at least an hour away from getting a response from IAFIS on the two prints taken off Reggie Jones.”

As Payne looked at him and nodded, he felt his cell phone vibrating. He pulled it from his pants pocket, read the caller ID on the screen, and said aloud, “Wonder what’s on the Black Buddha’s mind?”

He put the phone to his head and said, “Boss, I sure as hell hope you’re not calling for a progress report on Task Force Operation Clean Sweep. Because we’ve yet to make any ground.”