“Not specifically.” I return to the cabinet and find jars of sodium acetate and 5-sulfosalicylic acid.
“I’ll pull it up from online news,” she says, as she does it. “So this past March fourth, a Sunday? An e-mail was sent to Channing Lott’s personal account from a user he later claimed he didn’t recognize but assumed it was someone from one of his shipping offices. He said in direct testimony that he can’t possibly know the names of everyone who works for him around the world.”
Lucy reads what’s quoted in the story.
I realize it’s inappropriate for me to contact you directly through e-mail, but I must have verification of the partnership and the subsequent exchange before I proceed with the solution.
“And what did Channing Lott reply?” I dissolve the sulfosalicylic acid into hydrogen peroxide.
“He wrote, ‘Are we still committed to an award of one hundred thousand dollars?’”
“Certainly sounds incriminating.” I check the reagent Leuco Crystal Violet, LCV, making sure it hasn’t turned yellow, that it’s white and fresh.
“He claims he assumed the e-mail exchange was about a monetary prize his shipping company offers,” she reports. “That he often partners with other marine transport companies in rewarding scientists for coming up with viable solutions for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”
I pour in the LCV, a cationic triarylmethane dye, and mix with a magnetic stirrer.
“The amount of the award was in fact one hundred thousand dollars,” Lucy says.
“Sounds like an argument Jill Donoghue would come up with.” I transfer some of the solution into a spray bottle.
“Except the Mildred Vivian Cipriano Award has existed for more than a decade,” Lucy says. “So it wasn’t just trumped up for his defense to explain away the e-mails. And since whoever initiated them has never been arrested or even identified, I conclude the e-mail sent to Lott wasn’t traceable. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”
“If you could go into that cabinet and get the D-Seventy.” I tell her which lens I want. “We’re going to try infrared to see if there are any bloody impressions we can enhance that aren’t going to show up any other way on black cotton.”
We begin taking photographs using different filters and shutter speeds and distances. First we try without chemical enhancement, and on the front and back of the T-shirt and on the plaid boxer shorts are indistinct areas where a bloody residue was transferred to the fabric by something coming in contact with it. Then I spray the LCV and it reacts to the hemoglobin in blood, and I get discernible shapes, startling ones.
Footwear images, the outsole, a heel, a toe, glow a vivid violet, the bloody shapes overlaying one another as someone repeatedly stomped and kicked Howard Roth’s chest, his sides, his abdomen, his groin, while he was on his back, probably while he was already down on the basement floor. He bled from a gash on his head, and he bled from his nose and mouth, frothy blood from shattered ribs puncturing lungs, and I try to imagine it.
A man drunk and barely dressed, and I don’t believe he was in bed when his killer showed up. Most people don’t wear socks to bed, especially in warm weather, and I go through the scene and autopsy photographs again, and I’m not satisfied.
I call Sil Machado.
“Free as a bird” are the first words out of his mouth. “And Donoghue’s giving you all the credit.”
“Wonderful.”
“She says you reminded the jury, and rightly so, that it can’t be proven that Mildred Lott is dead, much less that her husband did it.”
“Where are you now?”
“What do you need?”
I ask him to meet me at Howard Roth’s house as I pull off protective clothing in the anteroom, and the door leading into the corridor opens. Benton is here.
“Give me about twenty minutes,” I tell Machado. “If you get there first it would be helpful if you wait outside.” I meet Benton’s eyes. “It appears Howard Roth had a visitor right before he died. The check you found in the toolbox? Have you submitted it?”
“Latents has it,” Machado says. “And by the way, when they fumed the car they got a print from the rearview mirror. And it isn’t Peggy Stanton’s.”
thirty-two
BENTON DRIVES MY SUV WEST ALONG THE CHARLES, past the Art Deco former headquarters of Polaroid and the patinated copper-roofed DeWolfe Boathouse. It’s noon, and patchy ice has melted, sunlight sparkling on water and bright on the old Shell sign. We head toward Central Square while I return Ernie’s call.