Page 49 of The Watchmaker's Hand

“Itwaslocked. I unlocked it.”

“How?”

A tightening of his lips. “Wasn’t the most pleasant thing in the world. I washed the blood and brains off Gilligan’s forehead, stuffed some chewing gum in the bullet hole and knocked a fewpieces of bone back into place. Then I borrowed some makeup from one of the uniforms. Was afraid I’d insulted her, you know, like she’s a woman, ofcourseshe’d have makeup. But she was cool with it.”

Rhyme barked an uncharacteristic laugh. “You tricked the facial rec lock.”

Sellitto glanced toward Rhyme. “The chewing gum–makeup trick. Put that in the next edition of your book, Linc.”

The young officer continued, “Once I was in, I shut off the password security.”

“Always thinking, Pulaski. Always thinking. Well, let’s see what’s on it.” Rhyme called, “Thom? Thom!”

The aide walked into the room. “Yes?”

“Glove up and play cop. Give me everything that’s on that phone. Call logs, voice mails, texts. Let’s hope we can see emails without a password.”

“Me?”

“Amelia’s on a lead.”

“Hm. Do I get a raise?”

“No, you get not fired.”

“I’ll organize a strike later.” He pulled on latex gloves and took the evidence bag containing the phone.

“And don’t forget …”

“Chain of custody,” he called as he disappeared into the dining room to begin excavation.

Pulaski gave the men his theory that Gilligan and the shooter knew each other.

“Gilligan? Corrupt?” Rhyme, not pleased, looked around the parlor. “If so, not a great idea, us inviting him in.”

Sellitto said, “But remember, Linc. We didn’t. He came to us.”

Even more troubling … He wanted to be here. Why?

Cooper continued itemizing what Pulaski had found: A laptop.Trace from Gilligan’s shoes, from the corpse and around it, from the logical path the victim and the shooter had walked, from the street beneath the doors, from the Lexus. Fingernail scrapings too and several items from the car.

“Slugs?”

Pulaski said, “Still in him. I think the shooter had a suppressor.”

“Video?” Rhyme was looking at the SD card Pulaski was feeding into a computer.

“Found a receipt for a diner Gilligan ate at yesterday. I stopped by on the way here. They copied their security cam footage for me around the time he was there. Great baklava, by the way.” He called up a player program, loaded the security footage and began scrubbing.

While he searched, Rhyme said, “Mel, the trace. And, Lon, can you do the honors?” A nod at the whiteboard.

“Yeah, with my handwriting? Sister Mary Elizabeth didn’t give me rave reviews in grade school.” But he took the marker and smoothed the top sheet on the easel with his hand, like Picasso ready to draw.

Cooper began calling out the conclusions reached by that workhorse of all crime labs: the gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer, which isolates and identifies unknown substances.

The bulk of what Pulaski had collected near the body and in the field were sand and loam soil. This matched the control samples, which meant that they were of no probative value.

But then he discovered trace that didnotmatch. It had come from a source other than the field where Gilligan died.

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