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AFTER A QUICK stop at One Police Plaza so Rob Trilling could pick up a piece of fingerprinting equipment from a forensics tech friend of his, we found ourselves back on Staten Island in front of Roger Dzoriack’s apartment. Crime-scene tape still hung across his doorway in a giant X.

I considered knocking on Lesa Holstine’s door but didn’t want to disturb the cats. I noticed my business card was still stuck in the other neighbor’s door—strange that she hadn’t been home since we were here the last time. But we were working against the clock. I wanted this done as soon as possible.

Once we were inside the apartment, Trilling showed me the high-tech camera he’d borrowed. Trilling said, “I can take a photo of the print with some oblique light and load it directly into the database from this camera. I told Walter to be on the lookout and I’ll send him an email so he can start working his magic if we find a usable print.”

I broke out my old-school fingerprint kit with a brush. I don’t know why I thought this might lead somewhere. Only about a quarter of crime scenes have usable prints connected to the crime. But everything about this apartment seemed to say we had a chance. One resident. Few visitors. Many possibilities. I had hope.

I checked the table near the bed. There were several fingerprints on the lacquered wood, but I easily eliminated them all as Roger Dzoriack’s. Same in the bathroom and on the bedroom doorknob.

Trilling called to me from the kitchen. “It looks like there’s a decent thumbprint on the kitchen faucet. It’s flat and shiny. And it looks a little different from the others. We could have a winner.”

I took my little kit into the kitchen, to the area Trilling pointed out. He was right. There seemed to be a perfect, complete thumbprint. Trilling used a flashlight and took a digital photo of the print. I checked it against both thumbprints of Roger Dzoriack. Neither matched. The victim had a big loop, and this print had a whorl in the same place. In the olden days, or what I call my earlier career, we would lift prints with tape. Just to be cautious, I ran the light brush of my kit over the print and captured it on adhesive tape as well.

I checked a few more places without luck and decided I had to be satisfied with this print. I turned to Trilling and said, “How long before we can get that thumbprint in the system?”

“Already done. I texted Walter to forward the print to all of his ‘posse.’” We both had a laugh at that.

Walter was hard at work by the time we returned to the office. As soon as he saw us, he jumped from his desk and rushed forward with a sheet of paper in his hand.

“We need to buy the guys at the Department of Defense a big cake or something. They got this back to me unbelievably fast.” He handed me the photograph of a young Army officer. Walter said, “His name is Kevin Doyle. He was a Green Beret. He’s also applied to several high-tech firms over the years.”

I stared at the photo of the handsome young man. “You think this could be our killer?”

“I’ve just started running a background on him. I don’t see any connection to Roger Dzoriack in any way. It’s not like he was a nephew who came to visit. I’d say this is a pretty good suspect.”