The Darkness of Evil (Karen Vail #7)(7)
Vail gestured at the paper. “This was sent by Roscoe Lee Marcks. To his daughter.”
“And why are we handling this without gloves?”
“There’s no case.”
“You sure of that?” He lifted an eyebrow.
Vail felt perspiration beading on her forehead. “No. But I can track the letter in other ways. Through the prison. They scan incoming and outgoing mail unless it’s from, or going to, an inmate’s attorney.”
“Let’s first see if we’ve got something to be concerned about. What do you want to know?”
“It appeared to be a blank piece of paper. But now it looks like there’s something written there.”
“Hmm. You can see that through the mess you made scribbling with that crayon?”
“Pencil.”
“Whatever.” He shooed her away and hit “play” on his iPod. “Now go and leave me for an hour. I’ll do my thing and text you when I’ve got something.”
Vail was gone only twenty minutes—she had run into a friend on her way down the stairs and never made it out of the building—when Meadows’s message came through:
you shoulda worn gloves
5
Vail ran up the steps and jogged into the lab. The music was off. Meadows had a stern face.
“You were able to get something?” she asked, pushing her shoulders back to force air into her lungs.
“No thanks to you. Not only did I use ALS,” he said, referring to Alternative Light Source, “I used oblique lighting. But the pièce de résistance was ESDA.”
“ESDA?”
Meadows grinned. “Another thing up my sleeve. Electrostatic Detection Apparatus. It creates an invisible electrostatic image that becomes visible when I apply charge-sensitive toners.”
“Impressive.”
“Except now you’re gonna have to explain to your ASAC how you screwed this one up,” he said, referring to her Assistant Special Agent in Charge. “Not to mention your unit chief. You’ve got a new one, I hear. Some … goddess named Di—”
“Yeah, just my luck.” Vail drew in another deep breath and gestured to the LCD screen in front of them. “What’d you find?”
“A message. If it really came from Roscoe Lee Marcks, you’re going to have to get some answers to figure out what it means. And verify that he actually sent this. Because there aren’t any latents worth talking about other than yours and Jasmine Marcks’s. We’ve got hers on file from when we had to rule hers out in the house when Fairfax County PD was drafting the arrest warrant for her father.”
“What’d the message say? How long are you planning to keep me in suspense?”
Meadows made a point of checking his watch. “I guess this is long enough.” He turned an LCD screen toward her and she saw the words:
Remember what happened to Sparky?
“Do we know what happened to Sparky?”
Vail swallowed. “Yeah. And it wasn’t good.”
“Do we have known handwriting samples on file for Marcks?”
“I—I don’t know.” She turned to Meadows. “I’m sure we do. But I came into the case after all the work had been done. I studied Underwood’s behavioral assessment, read through the file to see if I could reconstruct his thought process, follow how he arrived at his conclusions. I didn’t worry about the physical evidence too much because Curtis, the Fairfax detective, was dealing with that. Of course, in retrospect that seems ridiculous. But back then I was a rookie. What the hell did I know?”
“I suggest you find out. And you may want to pay Roscoe Lee Marcks a visit.”
He may be in more of a mood to meet with me now. She smiled inwardly. Thing is, even if he’s not, he may have no choice.
6
POTTER CORRECTIONAL FACILITY
HARDY COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
Potter Correctional Facility was a prison that exemplified punishment not merely by its strict rules and regulations but by its rustic building: over a hundred years old, its walls were roughhewn from stone, the mortar cracking and crumbling, moss coating its northern surfaces and weeds taking root just about everywhere.
It was cold in winter and, because of its West Virginia location and poor air circulation, hot and humid in the summer. For thirteen years there had been talk of closing it and relocating the inmates, but for various reasons the plans never moved beyond discussion and debate, cost projections and the politics of every special interest that had a hand in the pie. Litigation was tied up in the courts. The status quo continued—as did the complaints.
Potter was filled with murderers, rapists, arsonists, and child molesters. Truth be told, the prisoner rights groups and their paid legal counsel were the only ones who cared about the subpar conditions. Everyone else seemed to adhere to the sense that maximum crimes brought maximum security, which in this case begat maximum suffering. Or close to it.
After leaving the lab, Vail phoned Frank Del Monaco, another profiler in her unit, and asked him to locate handwriting samples for Roscoe Lee Marcks that they had on file and to scan and email them to Meadows.
Del Monaco was less than pleased to be given the unscheduled task, but Vail had done her share of favors for him over the years.