Crooked River(26)
Mayfield looked from the check to her and back again. “I…” he began.
Ms. Greene seemed to take this as assent, because she rose from her chair. “Thank you so much for your consideration. We’ll stop by tomorrow afternoon for the key. May I suggest four o’clock?”
And when the lawyer made no reply, she smiled, inclined her head ever so faintly, then turned and exited the office.
14
AGENT PENDERGAST STEPPED into the room—part office, part laboratory—that Dr. Crossley had lent him in the low, sand-colored building that housed the district medical examiner for Lee County. Another man was there already—short and thin, in his late forties, with dark hair parted carefully down the middle as slick and shiny as an Eton schoolboy’s. He quickly stood up as the agent entered. There was a wheeled tray beside him, on which sat four evidence bags, their surfaces scuffed and cloudy.
“Ah, Mr.…Quarles, is it not?” Pendergast said. “Thank you so much for agreeing to work with us on this matter.”
“My pleasure, Agent Pendergast,” the man said, shaking the proffered hand. “Peter Quarles, forensic examiner, FTG.”
“Yes, yes. FTG—?”
“Footwear and Tire Group.”
“Yes, of course.”
“As soon as your courier package arrived at Huntsville yesterday morning, I dropped everything and began an analysis of the specimens. The Bureau placed the highest priority on this case.”
“Excellent. I look forward to hearing the results.” Pendergast sat down and offered him a place across the room’s small conference table. “Tell me about this, ah, Footwear and Tire Group. I haven’t worked with that forensic subspecialty before at the Bureau.”
“The most problematic tire work is done in Quantico, the rest in Huntsville. ‘Footwear and tire’ is a little deceiving, of course—because there are so many items that require specialized knowledge, each of us in the group had to develop broader areas of expertise. In addition to shoes, mine includes hats, neckties, and men’s underwear.”
“I see.”
“Boxers only, however. Briefs are handled in Quantico.”
“I would never have suspected.”
Mr. Quarles nodded, pleased. “And may I compliment you on your own pair?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your pair. Of shoes. John Lobb, if I’m not mistaken. A beautiful example of bespoke handcraft.”
“You are most kind.” Pendergast crossed one leg over the other and glanced pointedly at the evidence bags.
“But here I am, wasting your time with pleasantries!” Quarles rose, wheeled the metal tray over, and adjusted its height so that it hovered barely an inch above the table. The evidence bags on the tray, Pendergast knew, each contained one of the shoes that had floated ashore—two right and two left, in different sizes, including the one the M.E. had originally sliced up.
“I examined all four examples carefully. Since they’re without question from the same source and identical, I’ll simplify things by focusing on one,” Quarles said as he pulled on a pair of gloves. Then he selected an evidence bag, slid open the seal, and removed a shoe. Although it was still in one piece—barely—it had been sliced, cross-sectioned, punched, and cut for samples so many times that it looked more like a flayed bird than a shoe. Quarles set the item before Pendergast. A faint smell of seawater and rotten fish reached Pendergast’s nostrils.
“As one who appreciates fine footwear, you probably don’t need me to describe the traditional shoemaking process to you: creating the last; stretching the shell; steaming the upper; adding the lining, tongue, and hardware on the stitching line; and so forth. This,” Quarles said, shaking the shoe for emphasis so that it flapped, “is not that kind of shoe. It is a cheap, mass-produced item almost certainly made in China. It was created for a specialized environment rather than for everyday streetwear. It’s clearly not a fashion product: it’s strictly utilitarian. I don’t find any match to this shoe in our databases.”
“What kind of specialized environment?”
“There are many settings in which specific footwear is required. There are disposable, nonwoven foam ‘scuffs’ for spas, hotels, and the like, usually color-coded for size. On the other end of the spectrum are the kind of heavy-duty, polyethylene-coated shoe coverings used in biohazard environments or clean rooms. This is neither of those.”
Pendergast nodded for the technician to continue.
“When a shoe resists easy analysis, we must turn to its component parts to look for an answer.” Quarles picked up a small metal instrument from the tray, almost like a dental pick, which he used for demonstration. “The shoe—I use ‘shoe’ here in the most generic sense—is cheaply made, of inferior materials, and lacks many standard components, such as an inner lining. The top was formed through a process known in the trade as ‘SMS’—meltblown polypropylene, sandwiched between layers of spunbond polypropylene. Usually, such footwear would have three or four plies of material, but these have only two—more evidence of how cheaply they were made. The exterior layers are not woven into a breathable material. That gives them fluid resistance at the expense of comfort.”
“Fluid resistance?”