Touch of Red (Tracers #12)(54)

He cast her a sideways look as they walked down a corridor with cinder-block walls. “Who told you that?”

“The evidence clerk who checked in my package the other day. Why? You’re not a knife expert?”

“Technically, I’m a tool-marks expert. Knives, hammers, bolt cutters, axes. Anything that leaves a mark.”

She stifled a shudder.

He glanced at her, apparently reading her mind. “Not all of my cases are homicides.”

“That’s . . . comforting to know, I guess.”

He opened a door and ushered her into a room with a worktable in the center. Atop it sat a crowbar and a piece of white wood, about two feet long.

She halted beside the table.

“That came in this morning. The detective wants to know whether that tool they recovered from a suspect’s car is responsible for the gouges on the windowsill.”

“So . . . a burglary?”

“Home invasion and sexual assault. That’s why it jumped to the front of my line.”

“It’s not ours, is it?”

“The case is out of Williamson County. Here, come on back.”

She followed him through the room and into a smaller one, this one lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves.

Callie stopped short. “Whoa.”

Every shelf was filled with all the tools he’d mentioned before—and then some. Her gaze settled on the nearest section, which held a vast array of saws.

“This is our collection.”

“Collection? Seriously?”

He nodded.

“That sounds extremely creepy.”

She walked up to a small table with a spotlight shining down on it. On a clean sheet of butcher paper was a knife with a long silver blade and a black handle. Callie stared down at it, at a loss for words. She glanced up to find him watching her. “This is it?”

He stepped up beside her. “You hadn’t seen it before?”

“One of our officers collected it. I was just the one who brought it in.”

“This isn’t actually your knife. It’s a sample. I wanted you to see it intact before I show you what I did.”

She looked at him expectantly.

“What you’re looking at here is a fixed-blade hunting knife, full tang. It has a four-inch serrated stainless-steel blade and a polymer handle.”

“And this is like the one I brought in?”

He nodded. “Except this one’s straight from the factory, never been used. It’s part of our reference collection.”

Collection. There was that word again, and it gave her the willies.

She glanced around at all the various knives and axes and other lethal weapons. Travis Cullen towered over her, and she knew he, too, was a lethal weapon—she could tell simply from the way he moved.

“You okay?”

She glanced at him. “Yeah. You were saying? About the knife? Any chance it’s unique?”

“No. Fact, far as hunting goes, it’s one of the most common knives out there. Sells for between forty-nine and fifty-nine dollars at sporting-goods stores across the country. Comes with a black plastic sheath.”

“Damn. At least tell me you found some prints or some blood or something to help us out.”

“No prints. That was the first thing we checked. Looks like it was wiped down.”

“Perfect. No fingerprints and the blade was clean.”

“I didn’t say ‘clean.’ Under the scope, you can see tiny white fibers from the material used to wipe it—most likely, a cotton T-shirt. You can also see faint traces of blood along the edge.”

Callie’s pulse picked up.

“We swabbed that, sent it up to our DNA lab.”

“To Mia?”

“What’s that?”

“In the DNA lab,” Callie said. “She’s married to Ric Santos, one of our detectives on this thing.”

“That explains the quick turnaround. I don’t know who ran the tests, but whoever it was found human and animal blood.”

“Human?”

“Yes, and it’s the victim’s. They confirmed it upstairs.”

“You’re telling me we have our murder weapon. I want to see it. Is it upstairs?”

“Nope, right here. Come have a look.”

He led her across the room to another table. This one was the same height, but the black slate tabletop sat beneath a Plexiglas shield, like at a salad bar. Travis switched on a light, illuminating another sheet of butcher paper, this one with knife parts scattered across it.

He pulled on a latex glove. “I disassembled the knife to examine the components.”

Until this moment, Callie hadn’t thought of a knife as having components. “You just . . . unscrewed the handle?”

“These are rivets.” He picked one up. “The black pieces are the handle slabs. Then you have the blade, the tang.”

“Tang?”

“The steel piece goes all the way to the butt of the knife, so it’s called a full tang. Makes it more durable. And the tang”—he pointed to it—“that’s where we found a second DNA profile, blood that had seeped through the crevices. Our lab tells me that profile matches the one found under the victim’s fingernails.”

“No way.”