Justification for Murder by Elin Barnes

woman before him started ordering drinks for a full regiment. Then she decided she wanted food too. Darcy shifted the weight on his feet. He wasn’t in a hurry but felt uneasy wasting time with coffee. His phone vibrated with a new voice mail. He was annoyed he hadn’t heard it ring.
    “Detective Lynch, I think I found something interesting. Come by the lab when you have a moment.” Rachel’s voice was vibrant. It almost gave him hope.
    He was about to skip the coffee when the woman before him started to pay.
    A few minutes later he arrived at the lab’s reception area, where Mary greeted him from behind the desk.
    “Ah, you truly are the man of my dreams.”
    “No, I’m not,” Darcy said embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I brought this one for Rachel.”
    “You owe me one, then.” She raised her steaming mug and took a sip. When she saw Darcy’s relived expression, she winked. “Rachel’s in the garage.”
    “Thank you.”
    He turned around and headed back to the elevator. Once inside, he swiped his security badge by the electronic reader and pushed the button for the basement after the light turned green. When the doors opened, the temperature dropped at least ten degrees and the place was noisy, even though there weren’t that many people working this early.
    The garage looked exactly like a body shop. There were three frame racks, two of them occupied by different vehicles. There was a Kansas Jack Auto body-measuring machine on wheels, two pulling towers, chains and many tools worthy of any professional body shop. Between all the regular tools for vehicles, the wall shelves were also filled with typical CSI equipment: magnifiers, evidence bags, seals and labels, scales, luminol kits, and a couple serial-number restoration kits.
    “Excuse me, where can I find Rachel?” Darcy asked a young man in a lab coat testing a piece of gray carpet for blood.
    “She’s under number two,” he said, pointing to the left with his head.
    “Thanks.”
    When he reached the second frame rack, Darcy saw two tiny feet in white tennis shoes sticking out from under the car.
    “I got you a short caramel mocha with extra whipped cream.”
    Rachel rolled out from under the car, avoiding hitting him at the last second. “Yum.”
    She raised her arms so he could help her stand up. She had a grease smudge on her forehead and right cheek, and her lab coat was covered in soot.
    “You’ve got some good news for me?” Darcy asked, wanting to brush the spots off her face but refraining from doing so.
    “Well, I don’t know about that. I wouldn’t want to get your hopes up. But I did find something interesting.”
    She moved toward the table that stood by the frame rack and searched through the different evidence bags lying there. When she found what she was looking for, she handed it to Darcy.
    “A really tiny black…piece of fabric?” he asked after inspecting the content.
    “Rather, a plastic thread.”
    “I want my caramel mocha back,” he said, trying to exchange the baggie for the coffee.
    Rachel smiled. “I found it yesterday when I was inspecting the bottom of Pritchard’s car. I thought it odd that it would be lodged on the tie-down bracket holding the brake line. So I tested it.”
    She placed the baggie on the table and had a long sip of coffee while she stared at Darcy.
    “Rachel, you know you’re my favorite mad scientist, but if you don’t get to the point soon, I am taking my coffee back.”
    “This is not the type of thing that normally gets stuck to the bottom of cars, unless you drive over a Goodwill drop-off container full of clothes or something.”
    Darcy nodded, encouraging her to continue.
    “It’s pleather.”
    His face was blank.
    “Plastic leather. Fake leather. The material used in fake leather gloves, for example.”
    His face lit up, and a smile started growing, lining his eyes with tiny creases.
    “I’m not saying they’re from fake leather gloves, but with the theory that