Find Her Alive (Detective Josie Quinn #8) - Lisa Regan Page 0,22
Trinity was missing—possibly dead—and her beloved convertible had been picked over by Josie’s own Evidence Response Team. She held back a shiver as she stepped toward Hummel.
Gretchen already had her notebook out.
Hummel said, “Don’t worry. It’s all been processed. You don’t need to suit up.”
“What’ve you got?” Gretchen asked.
Hummel looked past her to Josie. “Boss?”
“What is it, Hummel?” Josie said.
He motioned for her to come around to the driver’s side door. “We got prints from the inside and outside of the car. They’ll take some time to be run through AFIS.”
“That’s not why you called me here,” Josie said as she walked up to the open door.
Her heart pounded as she stared at the driver’s side door panel, just above the handle. The interior of Trinity’s Fiat Spider was upholstered in black, so Hummel had used fluorescent fingerprint powder to dust for latent prints. The bright yellow powder had illuminated some fingerprints, but that wasn’t what Hummel wanted her to see.
A hastily scrawled message stretched across the panel. It was one word. A name, actually.
Vanessa.
Her heart thumped so loudly, Josie worried that Gretchen and Hummel could hear it. She put one hand against the side of the car to steady herself. A tremble started in her legs and worked its way upward until her fingers drummed against the car’s cool red metal. She snatched her hand back to her chest, willing her body to settle.
If Hummel noticed her reaction, he didn’t let on. He pointed to the panel. “Fingerprints 101, right? Your fingers leave oil residue. Even if you don’t leave a clear print, if you try to draw something with your finger, it might show up. I didn’t see it until I dusted.”
Trinity had covered enough crime stories to know that it was the moisture from a person’s skin that left fingerprints behind. Someone with exceptionally dry skin wouldn’t leave as crisp and defined a fingerprint as someone with oily or sweaty fingers. Trinity also would have known that the ERT would process the inside of her car, particularly since her keys had been left in the ignition—it made for suspicious circumstances. Before she got out of the car, she had used a fingertip to hastily scrawl the name onto her door panel. Whoever took her wouldn’t have seen it. In fact, no one would ever know it was there unless they used magnetic fingerprint powder or cyanoacrylate fuming to check for prints.
Below the name were some squiggly lines and shapes—almost as though she had attempted to write something else but perhaps hadn’t had time.
Hummel said, “Who’s Vanessa?”
Josie stared at the letters as the thundering of her heart slowed incrementally. “Me,” she replied. “I’m Vanessa.”
“I don’t understand,” Hummel said.
Gretchen stepped up beside Josie, using her phone to snap a few pictures of the door. “That was the boss’s given name when she was born,” she explained to Hummel. “She was kidnapped at three weeks old, remember? Her parents thought she died in a fire but she had actually been taken.”
Hummel grimaced. “Right. Sorry, boss. I forgot. Well, I didn’t forget, I just—”
Josie put up a hand. “It’s okay, Hummel.”
“But you were raised as Josie,” Gretchen said. “Trinity knew you as Josie for years before you found out you were sisters. You never changed your name to Vanessa. Did she call you that in private?”
Josie shook her head. “No. Never.” Vanessa never existed, she almost said.
Hummel used the cap of his pen to scratch his temple. “Then why would she write Vanessa inside the door of her car?”
Again, Josie felt a strange and piercing sense of grief and frustration. They were sisters. Twins. Yet, Josie was astounded by how little she really understood about Trinity. “I have no idea,” she told him.
Gretchen knelt beside the open door, putting her reading glasses on and examining the door panel up close. She pointed to the lines beneath the name. “What do you think this is that she was trying to write underneath?”
“I don’t know,” Hummel said. “It doesn’t look like letters.”
“They almost look like symbols,” Gretchen said.
Josie studied the shapes, but she couldn’t make sense of them either. Regardless, she understood that this was a message, and it was meant for her. “Do you mind if I get in?” she asked Hummel.
“Go for it,” he said. “We’re finished with the car.”
Josie sat in the driver’s seat and put her hands on the wheel, imagining herself in Trinity’s position. “Hummel,” Josie asked. “Did the car start?”