Blunt Impact by Lisa Black

one end of the device and inserted a jump drive into the other side. The device would then take all the information on the phone and write it to the jump drive, from which it could be viewed, printed, copied or written to CD.
    But again, the market supplied an ever-increasing variety of products, so until the phone had been connected to the device Theresa never knew whether it would be possible to download all the phone’s information, including ring tones and text messages, or none. Often it would be some combination in-between. She might be able to get the contact list and photographs but not text messages. Or call history but no photos. Or texts but not videos.
    ‘Why not?’ Ghost asked.
    ‘Even with the amazing advances in technology – when I was your age no one had ever heard of a cell phone – there’s still a lot of hit and miss. We can only do what we can do. It’s never –’ Theresa sighed – ‘as easy as it looks on TV.’
    Samantha’s phone proved relatively cooperative and Theresa downloaded the call history, contact list and text messages, both incoming and outgoing. She had already reviewed them before the autopsy and knew there were none that seemed distinctly relevant to the crime, and nothing unsuitable for viewing by an eleven-year-old.
    Next she settled the child in front of the comparison microscope, adjusting a task chair to the correct height. Then she provided a short introduction to the basics of microscopy, as Ghost stared down the oculars in fascination. They had to slide back and forth a few times so Theresa could adjust the focus, but Ghost showed surprising patience, waiting to see the brightly colored shapes of the hairs and fibers retrieved from her mother’s clothing.
    ‘On the left here is a blue fiber from her shirt. See? It’s kind of wide and looks like it has a channel running through it.’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Any idea where that might have come from? Her shirt wasn’t blue.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘What about your shirt? The one you were wearing – at the time.’
    The girl paled a bit, but then said, ‘It was blue.’
    ‘So let’s compare the fibers from that shirt.’ Theresa placed a slide on the other stage, adjusted the focus.
    ‘You have fibers from my shirt?’
    ‘Yes. I took it out of your bathroom, remember? I told you.’
    ‘Oh yeah.’
    ‘That’s what we call a reference sample – your shirt, because we know where it came from and we’re using it only to try to identify some of the unknown fibers in this case. Now take a look.’
    She squinted down the lenses for a while before saying, ‘They’re not the same. The one from my shirt doesn’t have that channel in it, and has little bubbly things through it.’
    ‘Very good. Those bubbly things are probably titanium dioxide, added to make the color brighter. You’re right, it doesn’t match. So our blue fiber didn’t come from your shirt. Do we have anything else that’s blue?’
    Ghost shrugged.
    ‘What about her car?’
    A wrinkle appeared between the girl’s eyebrows. ‘But that’s painted.’
    ‘Yes, you’re right, the outside is painted. But the seats are fabric. And the carpeting is composed of fibers. Let’s take a look at the carpeting.’
    ‘It’s the same!’ Ghost said after a moment.
    ‘Yes, it looks the same. We can analyze the samples in this machine here, too, to make sure that they’re both made of the same stuff. So that eliminates that blue fiber that we found on your mom because now we’re pretty sure where it came from.’
    The wrinkle returned. ‘But then – how does that tell us who—?’
    ‘It doesn’t really tell us anything helpful about what happened to your mom, no. But it tells us what isn’t relevant. Then when we find a hair or a fiber we can’t explain, maybe that will be a clue to – what happened.’
    The girl sighed.
    ‘A lot of this work is like that. It’s not always how it is on TV. We have to go through all the pieces that tell us stuff we