Catch Me (Detective D.D. Warren, #6)(26)

D.D.’s eyes widened. She glanced over to Alex, who shrugged, equally perplexed.

“Exemplars?” she ventured.

“Other handwriting samples to be used for comparison. For example, if you suspect this note was written by subject A, you would submit three other handwriting exhibits from suspect A to serve as exemplars for my analysis.”

“Ummm…I don’t have subject A,” D.D. volunteered. “In fact, I was hoping to work the other way—you could analyze the handwriting on this note to help me find subject A.”

“You mean, judging purely by the script, I would provide age, gender, and probable occupation of subject A?”

“That would be perfect,” D.D. assured him.

In the silence that ensued, it occurred to her she might have taken a misstep. “Ummm…assuming such an analysis is possible?” she asked belatedly.

“No,” Dembowski said.

“No?”

“That’s called graphology, a pseudoscience if you will, where experts claim to read subconscious clues buried in a person’s handwriting. I am not a graphologist. I am a forensic handwriting expert, meaning I scientifically compare documents to determine if the same person authored all the exhibits or not.”

D.D. didn’t know what to say. She glanced across the table at Alex, who shrugged as if to say, Who knew?

“I’m sorry, Ray,” D.D. attempted at last. “I only wish I was far enough along in the investigation to bring you multiple samples. Where things stand right now, however, I have one dead body and this note, left on the windshield of my car outside the shooting. Now, we have reason to believe the shooter is not yet done, so any insights would be greatly appreciated.”

On the other end of the phone line, Dembowski sighed heavily. “You understand, we’re moving beyond the field of science into the realm of conjecture?”

“You prefer to speak off the record?”

“Have to. I’m a forensic handwriting expert, not a graphologist, meaning even if a court of law were willing to entertain the notion of graphology, my analysis still wouldn’t meet standards.”

“Okay.” D.D. nodded, starting to understand how her expert wanted to play it. “Let’s call this a chat between colleagues. I got this fascinating note. Say, what do you make of it?”

Another pause, a deep breath, then Dembowski got down to basics. “As someone who studies handwriting, there are several aspects of this note that strike me. First off, the note is written in cursive, versus the more commonly used print. Furthermore, the letters are fairly large in scale, and looping, with the exception of the bottom of each letter, which has been flattened, as if the writer used a straight edge for guidance.”

“I noticed that myself,” D.D. said. Across from her, Alex craned his neck, reexamining the plastic-covered note. Everyone has to die sometime. Be brave.

“Few other anomalies—the average person creates letters of uneven size. For example, common letters, particularly vowels, have a tendency to be smaller in scale, more rushed in execution. In your exhibit, however, each letter is nearly identical in size and scale. Notice the crossbars on the two t’s. They are exactly the same width, down to the millimeter. This indicates someone with a high degree of attention to detail. The use of a straight edge to set the bottom line further supports a writer with a high need for precision. From a graphology point of view, the author of this note is most likely someone with a significant need for control in every aspect of life, a type A personality, a tightly wound anal-retentive, my first ex-wife,” Dembowski laughed hollowly, “etc., etc.”

D.D. pursed her lips, made a note. Given the scene, that made sense to her. The wiped down kitchen, the two mugs carefully placed in the sink. Even the shooting was direct and clean, double shot to the forehead, precisely placed to ensure instant fatality. So a murderer who possessed above average attention to detail and was a neat freak. Interesting.

“When analyzing handwriting, one of the things I always look for is letter slant. A left-handed person almost always has a backward slant to the letters, a right-handed person a forward slant. These letters are nearly perfectly perpendicular. To play the odds, I’d theorize your letter writer is right-handed, but again, exercising rigid precision in the formation of each letter.”

D.D. made another note.

“Next up, let’s examine the open parts of letters such as m, n, y, h. Some people scrawl with a tight, cramped script that closes up these spaces. But your letter writer has produced full, open shapes, very elegant. Also, looking at the m’s and n’s, each hump is fully formed and rounded on top, while in contrast, the v in the word ‘everyone’ is sharply angled. This level of precision, each letter being fully and accurately formed, doesn’t just imply control, but also a great deal of practice, someone well schooled in penmanship.”

“You mean someone of higher education? Above average intelligence?” D.D. asked.

“I mean Catholic school,” Dembowski said bluntly. “I mean no one learns to write this beautifully without wearing a plaid uniform and being beaten by a nun.”

“Makes sense to me,” said D.D., who was the product of public education and wrote with a tight, cramped scrawl only a doctor could love. Across from her, Alex, who had attended a private Catholic school and regularly teased her about her illegible handwriting, grinned.