Page 31 of Her Last Whisper

You’re on the right track.

Nineteen

Friday 1300 hours

Katie returned to the office with more questions than answers. Pulling up a chair in front of her computer, she rebooted it to search for anything related to Jane Doe. Even with no ID, there had to be a police report. She quickly keyed in the search parameters from two months ago for a person who had been picked up and transported to the psychiatric hospital.

Her first computer search was unsuccessful.

Damn…

Katie tried again and this time used “Jane Doe” as part of the search parameters and opening out the date bracket. There was a hit. A Deputy Curtis had picked up a woman near South Lincoln and Second Street at 0200 hours a little over two months ago.

That was on the southern edge of the Basin Woods Development, which was the same approximate area where Amanda had been found. There wasn’t much written in the report, so she would have to speak with the deputy. It was unclear from the report if fingerprints had been taken at that time. And if they were, the results were not in the file.

Katie printed out the report, firing off an email to arrange at least a phone meeting with Deputy Curtis as soon as it was convenient.

She stood up and walked to the counter, where she laid out her watch and the anonymous letter from her car next to the box of Amanda’s clothes. She quickly filled out a chain of custody report and made sure that the new evidence was bagged properly. Everything was to be done by the book and she wanted to deliver these items to John in the forensics lab in person.

Katie watched intentlyas John’s steady hands first removed the watch and laid it on an exam table, careful not to touch the band. He then opened a small round container with dark fingerprint dusting powder and swirled his circular brush into the mixture before dusting the watch all over.

“Is that a full print?” she asked, amazed by John’s expert handling.

“It’s a good clear image, but it’s about sixty percent of the entire print of what looks like the left index finger.” He prepared the sticky tape to transfer the print to an index card.

Katie was a bit disappointed. “Oh,” was all she could say.

“Not to worry, Detective. There’s more than enough to search the databases. Have patience.” He smiled.

“That’s great.” She glanced at her copy of the short report filed for Jane Doe to make sure she hadn’t missed anything.

“It may take a while. And there’s no guarantee we’ll find a hit if she hasn’t been arrested or fingerprinted before.” He finished the transfer and admired the print like a piece of art.

“I’ll take anything I can get,” said Katie, meaning it.

“This was no accident. Your Jane Doe knew what she was doing. It’s not the natural angle of a finger when grabbing someone’s wrist,” he said. “You see, it would be like this if it was a normal grab.” He took Katie’s wrist and demonstrated, then turned his grip, pressing his index finger on the top of her wrist where her watch face would be. “And not like this.” It showed Katie that Jane did indeed understand that she was leaving a print, just as she had suspected.

“That helps a lot—thank you.”

“The result time will vary. It could be a few hours or days, and in some instances weeks.”

“Would you know why her prints weren’t originally processed?”

John went to his computer. “When was she picked up?”

“A little over two months ago.”

“Jane Doe was the victim’s name on record?”

“Yes.”

John clicked through several layers of software until he found what he was looking for. “Oh, I see what happened.”

Katie waited for his explanation.

“We unfortunately have a backlog for fingerprints. I’m embarrassed to say that they are a couple of months behind. It’s the hazards of having a small forensic department with two employees—not enough hours in the day.”

“That’s only two months. She was picked up more than two months ago.”