The phone line went dead in Walt’s ear. Thirty seconds gave way to a minute. Closer to two minutes before the line popped and Boldt returned. “The delay was with ALPS. Their e-mail went down. They’ve had the results, we just never got them. My guy made a call just now. No hits, I’m afraid. The guy said he can and will e-mail them some other way. I’ll send them along when I get them.”
Walt thanked him, and asked for the bat to be returned by overnight courier. “And all the paperwork, please.”
“Chain of evidence.” Boldt didn’t miss much.
“I’d appreciate it.”
“You spoke with Matthews.”
“Smart lady.”
“Hang on,” Boldt said. “I just got them.” Walt heard a keyboard tapping, and a moment later an e-mail notice popped up in the lower corner of his screen.
“That was fast,” Walt said.
“She shared your conversation with me. I hope that’s all right?”
“We’re in this together,” Walt said.
“You get anything back on the blood evidence?”
“Never went to the lab. Wynn’s lawyer, Evers, put a noose around it. The shoes are still in limbo. We’ll be lucky if we get them before the next millennium.”
“It’s got to be either your case or mine,” Boldt said. “He didn’t cut himself shaving.”
“My deputy got a little overzealous. If they take a deposition, we’re going to lose the evidence.”
“Blood shadow,” Boldt said.
“I didn’t catch that.”
“You’re going to lose the blood evidence on the shoes,” Boldt explained. “But then there’s the matter of the shoes themselves.”
“I’m afraid you’ve lost me.”
“That’s ironic,” Boldt said, “because I think you may have just saved me. Do me a favor and send across the manufacturer and shoe size, will you please?”
“Happy to do it.”
“And if nothing else, convince the judge that it’s worth holding Wynn in town until the evidence is sorted out. I may need him to claim those shoes and I don’t want him going anywhere. I don’t want someone doing it for him.”
“I’ll make a couple calls. You going to let me in on this?” Walt asked.
“You’ll be the first to know,” Boldt said.
They ended the call and Walt opened the e-mail that included nine attachments, all high-resolution scans of latent fingerprints. The Automated Latent Print System was a national fingerprint database for felons in all fifty states. The fact that these prints had not kicked out identities didn’t tell the whole story. Most states, including Idaho, also maintained databases of fingerprints of state health workers, teachers, law enforcement officers, politicians, judges, attorneys, and even some ministers and priests. There were national databases for federal employees as well. With the push of a button, Walt could initiate additional database searches. The searches would then generate candidate lists and the results would be scrutinized by hand by latent print experts. The results could take anywhere from hours to days, sometimes weeks, depending how Walt labeled the request, and the workload at the facility. Potential homicides moved to the top of the list. Aggravated assault would move a request down the list.
Two people lived on the Engleton property full-time. One was a small woman just twenty-one, the other a part-time fishing guide who had single-handedly rescued a drowning child from a raging river.
Walt typed up the request in the frame of the e-mail message set to be forwarded to several departments, both state and federal. His finger hovered over the enter key.
“Kevin’s here.” Nancy’s voice, coming over the intercom.
Walt pulled his hand away from the keyboard and into his lap. He pushed back his chair, the wheels squeaking.
35
Walt watched as his nephew worked on a Mac laptop on the opposite side of his desk. The physical similarities to Walt’s dead brother—the high cheekbones, the nearly permanent five o’clock shadow, the perfect teeth, a darkly brooding rugged handsomeness—reminded Walt how much he missed the beers on the back porch, the softball games, their shared dislike of their father. He’d tried to step in to fill the void for Kevin after Bobby’s death and would always wonder how much that had affected the failure of his own marriage. He and Kevin had been through some challenging times together. Looking at him now, his intense concentration, the singular focus, reminded Walt of Bobby even more.
Alongside the laptop lay a scaled color printout of a human skull, with curved arrows indicating a region on the top of the skull that looked like a jigsaw puzzle. There were measurements written in McClure’s hand at the blunt end of the arrows, while their sharper ends pointed