Miracle Creek(43)

“Yes.”

“How many overlapping fingerprint marks did your office find on either item?”

His nostrils flared. He swallowed and stretched his lips as if pretending to smile. “None.”

“Only five prints on the matches and ten on the cigarettes, all belonging to Elizabeth, no overlapping prints, and not a smudge from anyone else. Pretty clean, wouldn’t you say?”

He looked to the side. After a moment, he licked his lips and said, “I suppose so.”

“And since at least one other person, a store clerk, must’ve handled these items, the lack of other prints must mean they’ve been wiped off at some point, isn’t that right?”

“I suppose, but—”

“And any number of people, including Pak Yoo, could’ve handled the items prior to them being wiped off, and there’s no way to know, isn’t that right?”

“No, there’s no way to know,” he said, narrowing his eyes into slits. As Shannon wrote Any number of people (incl. P. YOO) on the chart next to Suspect ownership/possession, he said, “Don’t forget, though, it’s the defendant who wiped them off in the first place.”

“Why, Detective,” Shannon said, her eyes widening, “I thought you didn’t believe she wiped them. I’m glad you finally changed your mind.” She smiled—no, beamed—at him like a mother proud of her toddler for finally learning to color inside the lines, and stepped back to reveal the finished chart.




“Thank you for your illuminating testimony, Detective,” Shannon said. “I have nothing further.”





MATT





HE DROVE TO THE 7-ELEVEN thinking about fingerprints—the arches, loops, and whorls bifurcated by lines and wrinkles, sweat and oil soaked in the curved grooves leaving near-invisible traces on cups, spoons, flush handles, and steering wheels, smudging and covering up other prints left seconds or days or years before, the prints of each person different, each finger of each person different, the dizzyingly high number—billions? trillions?—of unique fingerprints in existence, each one unchanging even as a person grows from a six-month fetus to a full-sized adult and then shrinks back into old age.

He’d had ten, like everyone else. The same ten patterns for thirty-three years, from the time he’d been the size of a foot-long sub in his mother’s womb and his finger pads were the size of peas. And now they were all gone. Burned and sliced away. His right index and middle fingers amputated under the OR’s bright lights, then discarded, prints and all, the medical waste incinerator finishing the flesh-to-dust job the fire started. And the pads of his eight remaining fingers melted into ridgeless, glossy pink scars. Almost as if the slick-smooth plastic of Henry’s helmet were still clinging to his fingers, refusing to let go.

As far as he could remember, he’d never been fingerprinted, unless you counted the kindergarten Thanksgiving project with his handprint decorated like a turkey. Which meant there was no record of his fingerprints. Gone, with no way to know which of the gazillions of latent prints on walls, doorknobs, and X-ray films in the world belonged to him.

Right after the amputation, when he’d been glum with self-pity, his favorite burn-ward nurse had said, “Look on the bright side. Some people actually want their fingerprints taken off.” “Yeah, mobsters and drug lords,” he said, and she laughed and said, “I’m just saying, you managed to do what some people dream of, and you got insurance to pay for it!” He laughed with her—not out loud, more of a smile, really, but still, the first time he’d done anything but grimace since the amputation—and said, “Yup, now I never have to worry about some cop using my prints to tie me to some murder somewhere.”

Matt thought about this often. The transformation of his statement—the random joke he’d cracked for a tired nurse’s benefit—from idiotic to downright prescient a week later, when Detective Pierson said they found out a cigarette started the fire and were combing the woods for discarded butts and packs. Matt thought of the hollow tree stump by the creek he’d used for trash and panicked—not that he thought for a second he’d be implicated in the fire, but still, there’d be hell to pay with Janine, not to mention public humiliation, if the whole business with Mary came out—but when Pierson said not to worry, they’d find the culprit, fingerprints never lied, Matt remembered his joke and had to cough to cover his relief. There could be a lab-ready set of his prints on every cigarette in the woods, and no one would know. No problem.

But 7-Eleven: that could be a problem, one he hadn’t seen coming. This morning in court was the first he’d heard that both the fire-starting and Elizabeth-picnic cigarettes were Camels from 7-Eleven—the same brand and store Matt used all last summer. It hadn’t occurred to him before, but was it possible that those were his? Had he dropped them somewhere, and had Elizabeth or Pak or God knows who else found and used them to set the fire, rendering Matt the unwitting provider of the murder weapon? And now, after the way Shannon had badgered Pierson about his lame-ass “investigation,” wouldn’t the cops go to every 7-Eleven in the area flashing pictures of Pak and, for good measure, the others, maybe even Matt?

And the note—what did it mean that Elizabeth claimed she’d found what was undoubtedly his note next to the cigarettes? He’d written This needs to end. We need to meet, 8:15 tonight. By the creek on H-Mart paper and left it for Mary on her windshield the morning of the explosion. Mary had added Yes, then left it on his windshield. Matt got it after the morning dive, and he’d crumpled it up and put it in his pocket, but had he dropped it and it blew away and, in a huge coincidence, ended up near the cigarettes?