from the earthquake,” said Rook.
Detective Heat put on a pair of blue gloves. Raley handed him a pair and said, “Not unless the earthquake walked around crushing everything under size eleven work boots.”
Touring the ransacked town house shrouded Nikki in yet another suffocating cloud of deja vu. Her own apartment—once the scene of her mother’s murder—had also been tossed back then, although not so thoroughly violated. Detective Damon had called that an interrupted search. This one clearly went on nonstop until the perp either found what he was looking for or was satisfied he never would.
Ochoa met her in the doorway as she entered the upstairs master bedroom. As they stepped around the fingerprint technician who was dusting the cut glass knob, she asked her detective, “Any sign of blood anywhere?”
He shook no and said, “No obvious sign of struggle, either. Although I don’t know how you’d ever be able to sort that out a hundred percent in all this mess.”
“I can give you about ninety-nine-point-nine percent, if that’s helpful,” said the lead for the Evidence Collection Unit, Benigno DeJesus, as he rose up from kneeling on the rug behind a tossed mattress. Nikki’s shoulders immediately relaxed when she saw him. The crime scene was in excellent hands.
“Detective DeJesus,” she said. “To what do we owe this honor on a Sunday?”
He pulled down his surgical mask and smiled. “I don’t know. I had an uneventful day planned when Detective Ochoa called to tell me about this case of …,” he paused and then, in his typically understated fashion, continued, “some interest. So here I am.” She gave Ochoa a quick study, wondering what favor Miguel had traded for pulling in the best evidence man in the department on a day off, but Oach’s stoic face gave nothing away.
DeJesus gave her and Rook an overview tour of the town house, with his preliminary assessment being that the disarray constituted a property search without an assault associated with it. He pointed to the second bedroom, which Nicole Bernardin had set up as a home office. That had received the brunt of the rummaging. He used a penlight to indicate four tiny circular marks where the rubber feet of her laptop had lived before it got taken. The charger cord as well as the USB cable to her missing external hard drive all remained where they had once connected to the computer. Desk drawers and files all sat open and empty, except for stationery odds and ends. “The level of meticulousness here tells me whoever searched the residence focused most of his attention and care in here,” he said.
Back in the bedroom, the ECU detective said the owner of this place wasn’t sharing it with a spouse. All the toiletries, clothing, foods in the kitchen, and other tells suggested a mature woman living alone, although she had kept a supply of condoms in the nightstand and a new toothbrush, shaving cream, and a package of disposable razors in a bathroom cabinet. Hearing that, Nikki and Rook side-glanced each other, each tentatively ticking one unspoken thought off a mental list about Cynthia Trope Heat and Nicole Aimee Bernardin. The prescriptions in the medicine cabinet all matched Nicole’s name, and the few pictures in broken frames on the floor showed the victim in Europe at various ages with people resembling parents and siblings. Nikki crouched over, curious to see if her mother appeared in any of them, but she did not. She stood up and observed Rook doing the same thing in the next room.
Roach had already briefed Detective DeJesus about the traces of lab solvent and the railroad grime found on her body, and he promised to be on the lookout, as well as to coordinate with Lauren Parry at OCME on Nicole Bernardin’s toxicology to match prescription use and any other findings she learned in her postmortem. Heat was content to leave it in the capable hands of ECU, but she indulged herself in a solitary, sense-of-the-house tour before
Detective Heat put on a pair of blue gloves. Raley handed him a pair and said, “Not unless the earthquake walked around crushing everything under size eleven work boots.”
Touring the ransacked town house shrouded Nikki in yet another suffocating cloud of deja vu. Her own apartment—once the scene of her mother’s murder—had also been tossed back then, although not so thoroughly violated. Detective Damon had called that an interrupted search. This one clearly went on nonstop until the perp either found what he was looking for or was satisfied he never would.
Ochoa met her in the doorway as she entered the upstairs master bedroom. As they stepped around the fingerprint technician who was dusting the cut glass knob, she asked her detective, “Any sign of blood anywhere?”
He shook no and said, “No obvious sign of struggle, either. Although I don’t know how you’d ever be able to sort that out a hundred percent in all this mess.”
“I can give you about ninety-nine-point-nine percent, if that’s helpful,” said the lead for the Evidence Collection Unit, Benigno DeJesus, as he rose up from kneeling on the rug behind a tossed mattress. Nikki’s shoulders immediately relaxed when she saw him. The crime scene was in excellent hands.
“Detective DeJesus,” she said. “To what do we owe this honor on a Sunday?”
He pulled down his surgical mask and smiled. “I don’t know. I had an uneventful day planned when Detective Ochoa called to tell me about this case of …,” he paused and then, in his typically understated fashion, continued, “some interest. So here I am.” She gave Ochoa a quick study, wondering what favor Miguel had traded for pulling in the best evidence man in the department on a day off, but Oach’s stoic face gave nothing away.
DeJesus gave her and Rook an overview tour of the town house, with his preliminary assessment being that the disarray constituted a property search without an assault associated with it. He pointed to the second bedroom, which Nicole Bernardin had set up as a home office. That had received the brunt of the rummaging. He used a penlight to indicate four tiny circular marks where the rubber feet of her laptop had lived before it got taken. The charger cord as well as the USB cable to her missing external hard drive all remained where they had once connected to the computer. Desk drawers and files all sat open and empty, except for stationery odds and ends. “The level of meticulousness here tells me whoever searched the residence focused most of his attention and care in here,” he said.
Back in the bedroom, the ECU detective said the owner of this place wasn’t sharing it with a spouse. All the toiletries, clothing, foods in the kitchen, and other tells suggested a mature woman living alone, although she had kept a supply of condoms in the nightstand and a new toothbrush, shaving cream, and a package of disposable razors in a bathroom cabinet. Hearing that, Nikki and Rook side-glanced each other, each tentatively ticking one unspoken thought off a mental list about Cynthia Trope Heat and Nicole Aimee Bernardin. The prescriptions in the medicine cabinet all matched Nicole’s name, and the few pictures in broken frames on the floor showed the victim in Europe at various ages with people resembling parents and siblings. Nikki crouched over, curious to see if her mother appeared in any of them, but she did not. She stood up and observed Rook doing the same thing in the next room.
Roach had already briefed Detective DeJesus about the traces of lab solvent and the railroad grime found on her body, and he promised to be on the lookout, as well as to coordinate with Lauren Parry at OCME on Nicole Bernardin’s toxicology to match prescription use and any other findings she learned in her postmortem. Heat was content to leave it in the capable hands of ECU, but she indulged herself in a solitary, sense-of-the-house tour before
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