In Her Tracks (Tracy Crosswhite #8)(38)
Wright held yellow flags and occasionally stopped to put one in the ground. Over her shoulder, she carried a satchel with blue index cards she used to draw the sole patterns of each shoeprint she found, and to record each print’s size and depth. She also carried a camera, though she relied more heavily on her eyes. Wright had located some of the Green River Killer’s victims. She operated under Locard’s principle that a person cannot move in or out of an environment without disturbing, taking, or leaving behind evidence. In a world of ever-evolving DNA and high-tech forensics, Wright was a throwback to a science that evolved two hundred years ago. She looked for footprints, kicked-over rocks, broken branches of plants, trees, and shrubs, changes to and trampled vegetation, blood, hair, and clothing fibers, and any other disturbance to the environment that most people, including some detectives, passed over. She could tell a person’s ingress and egress to a site, the number of people who had been present, provide roughly a four-to-six-hour window of when they had been there, and a strong assessment of what they had been doing.
As Wright approached, she studied the CSI team processing the site, then glanced at Tracy’s and Kins’s shoes. To her, shoeprints were like fingerprints. She would obtain the type of shoe and the sole pattern of everyone at the site so she could eliminate them. Neither Tracy nor Kins provided Wright any details of the investigation. They did not want to influence her findings and make her potentially vulnerable to cross-examination by a skilled criminal defense attorney.
While Wright went to work, Tracy and Kins stepped away to speak with Pinkney, who had just disconnected a call.
“We finished with the apartment,” Pinkney said. “A lot of fingerprints to analyze. We took the roommate’s elimination prints.”
“Anything?” Kins asked.
“From a superficial view, we didn’t find any bloodstains on the carpet, the walls, or in the bathroom drains. We’ll confirm that, of course. Also, no physical evidence of a struggle. The roommate had no physical bruising or scratches to indicate he’d been involved in a struggle.”
“What about the car?” Tracy asked.
“We’re still going over it for fingerprints and DNA, but I can tell you someone wiped down the interior.”
That got Tracy’s and Kins’s attention.
“The door handles, steering wheel, emergency brake, anything that someone would have naturally touched, were wiped with a disinfectant wipe. We found trace amounts of isopropyl alcohol and alkyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride. As in hand sanitizer.”
Tracy looked back to the scene, at Wright and the CSI detectives. “Have them check for dirt on the floorboards. If they find any, we’ll want to compare it to the dirt behind the stump where you found the cigarette butt.”
“Already noted it,” Pinkney said. “And Andrei Vilkotski is working on the phone and the laptop. I’d imagine he’ll have both unlocked and everything downloaded to us no later than first thing tomorrow morning.”
They spoke for another twenty minutes, then Tracy said to Kins, “Let’s go talk to the neighbors we missed last night while we’re waiting.”
The two detectives climbed back to the trailhead, which left them both winded. They walked around the block to the back side of the park and climbed the steps to Nancy Maxwell’s front door, hoping for her permission to go into the backyard. No one answered. They went around the side to an unfenced backyard. Roughly fifty feet of grass extended before the terrain sloped down to the ravine. Tracy looked to the right, two houses down, to the Sprague backyard, which appeared to be directly above where CSI had found the cigarette butt behind the stump.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Tracy asked.
“He did say to come by anytime,” Kins said.
“We need to make sure CSI checks the backyard lawns for any blood.”
“That too.”
They walked down the block and climbed to the Sprague porch. Tracy knocked three times. No one answered. She knocked again, but again got no answer.
“You’d think the one brother would be home,” she said.
“If he was that sick,” Kins said.
After leaving, Kins called into the North Precinct and put the duty sergeant on speakerphone so Tracy could participate. The sergeant said officers had spoken to more than seventy-five homeowners and business owners in the North Park area. None recalled Cole or her car. They had obtained video from residences with cameras and had sent the video data to the unit at Park 90/5 for analysis. He also said the dedicated tip line had received more than 150 tips, and he had officers following up on each, though none seemed particularly hopeful.
Kins disconnected. “Maybe Kaylee has better news.”
They made their way back down the trail. Wright stood speaking to Pinkney. “Just getting ready to wrap it up,” Pinkney said. “We’ll be running out of light down here soon, and what we have left to go over doesn’t justify generators.”
“Anything?” Tracy asked Wright.
“I was just explaining it to Dale.” Wright led them up the trail to a series of yellow flags, in a relatively straight line that demarcated a path.
“People walk this trail. Dogs also. I’ve marked those prints that are relatively fresh, made within the last few days.” She knelt. “These prints I’ve marked were made by someone who was running. The shoe impressions are consistent all the way down the trail.”