Autopsy (Kay Scarpetta, #25)(73)

No one’s home on the range, Faye’s colleagues gone for the day, and I find her alone at her workstation, staring through the binocular lenses of a comparison microscope. She has on a lab coat over her sweater and jeans, and her usual high-tops and loud socks. Her pink and purple highlighted hair is pushed back with a beaded headband, bringing to mind Cyndi Lauper.

Leaving my scene case by the door, I walk through a vast space of black countertops, and microscopes synced with video screens. Walls are crowded with poster-size photographic court displays of lands and grooves, and the marks left by firing pins. On shelves and tables are small scales for testing the pounds of pressure required to pull a trigger. Also calipers and other measuring devices for determining a bullet’s weight and caliber.

There are stacks of bullet-riddled targets used in distance testing. Piled about are tire tracks and footwear impressions cast in dental stone and silicone, and the ATM parked in a corner was brazenly stolen from a kiosk. The quadcopter drone inside a cardboard box leaning against a wall is rigged with a pistol that one angry neighbor fired remotely at another, blowing a hole in the screen door.

Wherever I look I see the ingenuity of modern inventions that can be customized to destroy and kill. Spread over a tabletop are an assortment of 3-D-printed knives, guns, bullets, shotgun slugs, assault rifle parts, and suppressors. Soon enough there won’t be much people can’t print at home, spinning whatever they like from a range of media such as plastics, carbon fiber, resin, Kevlar, and metals like steel and titanium.

“Knock knock.” I announce myself as I approach, not wishing to startle Faye, and she looks up, blinking several times. “I tried to reach you earlier.” It’s my diplomatic way of saying it would be nice if she’d call me back for once.

“Hi, sorry about that.” She leans back in her chair, putting on her glasses. “As you can imagine, I’ve been tied up with that attempted break-in at Dana Diletti’s house earlier today.”

“I was hearing about that while stuck in bad traffic, listening to her press conference,” I reply. Faye and I have worked several cases together since I took over as chief, most recently a suicide committed with an antique rifle.

Ironically, she isn’t into guns even if she’s a savant with them and almost any weapon you can think of. They’re simply what she works with for a living. When she relentlessly visits gun shows and stores, it’s not because she’s an enthusiast or a collector.

Her passion is the prizewinning cakes she bakes, and around her workstation are framed photographs of her imaginatively decorated confections. A mint and chocolate jungle with dinosaurs, rocks and caves. A butterscotch moonscape with astronaut footprints, a flag, a lunar lander. Children ice-skating on a blue candy pond in a winter wonderland of marshmallow snowmen.

I don’t know much about her, only that she’s in her late thirties, single, no pets, just a saltwater aquarium. But I have the sneaking suspicion she and Fabian might have something going. Now and then they arrive at work together, and the other day I noticed them in the parking lot squabbling inside his vintage El Camino.

“A BIG STINK IS what we’re talking about.” Faye sums up the alleged break-in. “Hold on to your hat because it’s coming.”

“It’s already a big stink. There’s a protest in her neighborhood.” I take a close look at the large window, the screen draped in torn brown paper propped against a countertop.

I can see black smudges left from fingerprint powder, also the tube of polyvinyl siloxane used for making dental impressions, and there are several cameras nearby. I imagine Faye’s been swamped ever since the evidence was brought in, taking photographs and making casts in red orthodontic wax of any defects that need to be magnified.

“I’ve been making comparisons,” she says. “And there’s no question someone tried to pry open her window.”

“Comparisons?” I puzzle. “Comparing the tool marks to what? I wasn’t aware there was a suspect.”

“The tools the investigators brought in for me to examine are from Dana Diletti’s own house I’m sorry to say because I’m a fan,” Faye explains as I look at the screen, the window still in its white-painted frame.

On a paper-covered countertop are a variety of tools including screwdrivers, a hammer and a pry bar, all tagged as evidence.

“I can tell you already that one of the screwdrivers looks like it might have been used,” Faye lets me know. “In fact, I’m pretty close to calling it a match.”

Opening files on the computer display synced to her comparison microscope, she shows me images of defects on the flat steel blade that were transferred to the window’s bent metal latch.

“This screwdriver definitely was found inside her house?” I ask, and Dana Diletti’s got real trouble on her hands.

“That’s the story,” Faye says. “Not that it’s up to me but it’s looking like she intended to give the appearance that someone was out to get her. In other words, she staged everything, and talk about fake news.”

“If that’s what happened, she’s going to find she’s created quite a problem for herself.” I think of the helicopters hovering overhead while Benton and I were stuck in traffic. “Falsifying reports and evidence are criminal offenses.” Then I bring up the real reason for my impromptu visit. “I’ve been consulted about another matter that I can address only in generalities, and I could use your help, Faye.”