Chapter 6 5

A hundred years ago, the man who lived in this house might have been a moderately accomplished financier. Or it could be the owner of a men's clothing store on nearby Fourteenth Street's high-end shopping mall. Or maybe it was some political figure, some big shot at the Tammany Hall who knew the art of making personal fortunes through public affairs. Yet the current owner of the mansion on West Central Park Avenue is neither aware nor caring about the building's historical origins.These Victorian furnishings and small decorations in the late nineteenth century style that made the house look elegant and elegant did not attract Lincoln.Lyme's interest.He just likes the way the room is now: a large messy and sturdy table, several swivel stools, computers and various scientific instruments, including density gradient meters, chromatography mass spectrometers, microscopes, plastic boxes of various colors, beakers , a wide-mouth bottle, a thermometer, a propane barrel, goggles, a few black or gray boxes with strange shapes and locks, and it looks like there are some unknown musical instruments inside.

And wires. Wires and cables are everywhere in the room, densely packed on the floor where space is limited.Some wires were tied into a coil and connected to a certain machine, and some disappeared into the holes cut randomly in the wall to pull the wires. These few plastic slat walls that had been hard to preserve for a hundred years and were still flat, were just destroyed. Lincoln.The wires around Rhyme himself have been greatly reduced.Through advanced infrared and radio technology, his wheelchair and the bed upstairs are equipped with microphones, which can be used to control some devices and computers around him by voice control.Now he must use the ring finger of his left hand on the touchpad in addition to manipulating the wheelchair. Other actions such as answering the phone, receiving emails, and switching the images of the compound electron microscope connected to the computer screen can all be controlled by voice. Finish.

He can also operate his new Harmon Kardon Model 8000 amplifier by voice control.At this time, the machine was playing a piece of jazz, filling the temporary laboratory with pleasant music. Control, sound off.Hearing the sound of the door closing downstairs, Rhyme reluctantly gave this order. The music stopped, replaced by the sound of footsteps coming from the entrance hall and corridor.He could tell that one of the people who came in was Emilia.Sachs, she is tall and slender, her footsteps are clear and brisk.Then, he heard another sound of heavy footsteps, it was from Ron.Sellitto's naturally splayed feet.

Sachs, he muttered as soon as they entered the room: That's a big scene, isn't it?Is it too big? Not very big.Rhyme frowned at this question.Why do you ask? His eyes fell on the gray milk crates containing the evidence bags that she and a few other officers had brought up. I just find it odd that it took you so long to inspect the site.You can use the flashing lights on your car with confidence, you know, that's what they're made for.Of course, you can also turn on the siren.When Rhyme is bored, impatience builds up.In all his life, boredom was the evil force he hated most.

However, Sachs was not only unmoved by his harsh words, but also seemed to be in a particularly good mood.All she said was: Here are the puzzles, Rhyme. He remembered the word Sellitto had used to describe the murder. Tell me the details.How did it happen? Sachs told Rhyme the story as best he could, until the suspect finally escaped from the auditorium. The two police officers who went to the scene to deal with heard gunshots from inside, so they decided to open the door and rush in.There were only two doors in the auditorium, and they calculated the timing and entered through these two doors at the same time, but the gangster disappeared just like that.

Sellitto opened his notebook.The two patrol officers described the suspect as being in his mid-fifties, of medium height and build, with no distinguishing features other than a beard and brown hair.A co-worker was present at the time of the incident, but he said he did not see anyone entering or exiting the concert hall.But, you know, maybe he's got witness-phobia.The school will tell me the worker's name and phone number, and I will go and see if I can help him remember something. What about the victim's part?What is the murderer's motive? Sachs said: "I was not sexually assaulted, nor was I robbed.

Sellitto added: I asked the twins.She had never had a boyfriend, no emotional element that would have caused trouble. Is she a full-time student?Rhyme asked, still working? A full-time student, but she's apparently doing some acting outside.They are tracking down that place. Rhyme summoned Thomas to look after him and asked him to work as a scribe as before, asking him to write the contents of the evidence in beautiful handwriting on the big whiteboard in the laboratory.Thomas picked up the whiteboard marker and began to record without saying a word. At this time, there was a knock on the door, and Thomas left the room again.

There are visitors!Thomas shouted from the doorway. visitor?Rhyme wondered that he was not in the mood to receive any visitors at all.However, this was a joke made by the nurse. It was none other than the thin, bald forensic expert Mel.Cobb.Rhyme had known him many years ago, when he was chief of the NYPD's criminal forensics unit, working with a police department on the north side of the city on a burglary-kidnapping case.Cobb, who was serving at the police station at the time, had no qualms about skeptical of Rhyme's analysis of certain soils, and it turned out that he was indeed right.Impressed by this incident, Rhyme went back and checked Cooper's files and found that he was quite active, a widely respected expert, and a member of the International Institute of Criminal Forensics (using fingerprints, DNA, on-site reconstructions, and residual teeth to identify criminal cases). membership of a body of experts who identify individuals).Cooper holds degrees in mathematics, physics, and organic chemistry, and is considered a leading expert in the field of physical evidence analysis.

So Rhyme began lobbying for Cobb to come to the big city, and he finally said yes.The soft-spoken criminal forensics expert who holds the title of social dancing champion is currently serving in the New York City Police Department's crime laboratory in Queens, but when Lime was entrusted as a consultant to investigate some complicated and difficult cases, he would Come and work with Lime often. After greeting everyone in the room, Cobb pushed back his heavy Harry Potter-style glasses on the bridge of his nose and squinted at the crates containing the evidence with the sharp eyes of a man who scrutinizes his opponents. Chess player.What have we got?

Taking the puzzle, Rhyme said: This is what our Miss Sachs said.puzzle. Yeah?So let's see if we can solve the puzzle. As Cobb put on latex gloves to examine the evidence bags and jars, Sellitto narrated the scene for him.Then Rhyme came up to him in the wheelchair.That, he nodded his head: what is it?His eyes fell on a green circuit board with a speaker glued on it. That's what I found in the concert hall, Sachs said: I don't know what it is, I only know that the suspect put it there based on his footprints. The circuit board appeared to come from something inside a computer, but Rhyme wasn't surprised at all, since perpetrators are always on the cutting edge of technology.The famous Curt 191.45 semiautomatic pistol had only been released for a few days and was legally owned by no one except the military, but it was already being used by bank robbers.In addition, some advanced equipment such as radios, communicators, machine guns, laser detectors, satellite positioning systems, mobile phone technology, surveillance equipment, and computer encryption are often listed among criminals before law enforcement agencies have them. The munitions are equipped.

So Rhyme had to admit that some gangsters' knowledge was indeed beyond his professional ability.So anything that involved computers, cell phones, and things like this weird circuit board (which he nicknamed Nasdaq Exhibits) he outsourced to other experts. Take it downtown to Toby.Geller.He gives instructions. Toby.Geller is a young operative with the FBI's New York Computer Crime Prevention Branch, and as a computer genius, he has helped them a lot in the past.Rhyme knew that if he gave Geller the circuit board, he could tell them what it was and what it had been removed from. Sachs immediately handed the evidence bag to Sellitto, who in turn passed it on to a uniformed police officer, who was in charge of transporting it downtown.But Sachs suddenly told him to stop, stepped forward to check the custody card on the evidence bag, and made sure that the officer had signed the document that everyone who handled the evidence from the crime scene to the court hearing must sign. , before he was relieved to let him go. Sachs, how did you go on the assessment test you just took?Rhyme asked. Uh, she hesitated for a moment before saying: I think, it should pass the test. This answer surprised Rhyme a little.Emilia.Sachs is not a very confident person. Whenever someone praises her, she is always very embarrassed, and it is difficult to take other people's compliments to heart. I think so too.He said. Sergeant Sachs, Ron.Sellitto thought for a moment and said: Her grades must be high. Next, they moved on to work on pyrotechnic evidence found at the music school site: fuzes and firecrackers. At least one of the puzzles has been solved by Sachs.She explained to everyone that the murderer put away the two folding chairs and made them stand upright with only two chair legs, and tied the two chairs with a thin cotton thread to keep them in the tilted position.Then he tied a fuse to the center of the cotton thread and ignited it.After about a minute, the sparks from the fuze ignited the cotton thread, which snapped in two, and the chair fell to the floor with a loud thud, making people outside think that the murderer was still inside.The killer also lit another fuse and set off the firecrackers so that people outside would think it was gunshots. Is there a way to use these things to track down a suspect?Sellitto asked. This is a very common fuze, the source cannot be traced, and the firecracker blew up again.If the manufacturer cannot be found, nothing will work.Cobb shook his head.Rhyme knew he was right, because all that remained before him were tiny scraps of paper and the charred metal core of a fuse.After testing, the composition of the cotton thread is very simple, it is very common 100% pure cotton, and it is also impossible to trace any clues from it. The criminals also dropped a flashbang at the scene, Sachs said, looking at a notebook in his hand.When the officers saw him standing next to the victim, the gangster raised a hand, followed by a flash of light, and then they couldn't see anything. Are there traces of flashbangs? I couldn't find it, they said it was probably diluted with air. Then move on.What about the footprints part? Cooper pulled up the NYPD's digital database of shoe marks, which Rhyme had built up when he was chief of the NYPD's criminal forensics team.After a few minutes of browsing and comparing, Cooper said: This is a black ECCO brand loafer, the size is about ten. What about minor evidence?Rhyme asked. Sachs pulled out several plastic evidence bags one after another from the milk crate, filled with tape torn from the sticky roller.This is what was collected around where he walked and near the body. Cobb took the bags, took out the long strips of tape one by one, and carefully placed them on several inspection trays so that they would not be contaminated.Most of the stuff on the tape was dust, which matched the control samples Sachs had made, which meant that the source of these things belonged neither to the murderer nor to the victim, but something that would definitely be found at a crime scene.A few of the tapes, however, had fibers stuck to them, which Sachs had picked up from where the criminals had walked or touched objects.Look under a microscope. Cooper picked up the fiber with tweezers and placed it on a glass slide, then put it under a solid binocular microscope, which is the most commonly used instrument for analyzing fibers.Then he pressed a button, and the image that should have been observed through the eyepiece was projected onto a large LCD computer screen in the room so that everyone could see it clearly. The fibers on the screen were as thick as a rope and had a grayish color. Fibers are an important clue in forensic investigations because they are ubiquitous, travel from one source to another, and are easy to classify.They can be divided into two broad categories: natural and man-made.Rhyme immediately noticed that this was neither viscose nor viscose. It has excellent moisture absorption, so the fabric has good wearing comfort and moisture wicking, which is better than other synthetic fabrics. However, its resilience and crepe resistance are poor, it is not wear-resistant, and it is easy to shrink.), and it is not a polymer fiber, so these fibers are natural. But which natural fiber is this?Mel.Cobb asked aloud. Take a look at the cell structure.I bet it's excrement. What?Sellitto asked, excrement?Do you mean something like poop? I mean things excreted by insects, for example, silk comes out of the digestive tract of insects, and then it is dyed gray after matting.Mel, what about the other slides? He put the other glass slides under the microscope one by one, and confirmed that these fibers were all the same kind. Is the suspect wearing gray clothing? no.Sellitto replied. The victim's clothes were not gray either.Sachs said. Another unsolved puzzle. Ah, said Cobb, with his eyes still on the eyepieces: There seems to be a hair here. A long brown hair appears on the screen. This is human hair.Rhyme noted the hundreds of scales on the hair and said so.If it were animal hair, there would only be dozens of scales. However, this is false. Fake?Sellitto asked. Well, he said patiently: This is real hair, but it fell out of a wig.It's obvious that if you look at the root of the hair, it's not the follicle, it's the glue.While it's probably not the gangster's hair, it's still worth writing about on the evidence sheet. So, his hair isn't brown?asked Thomas. Basically, Lem puts it succinctly: This is exactly what we care about.Just write: The suspect may be wearing a brown wig. yes sir. Cobb continued to examine, and found some fine soil particles and some kind of plant fragments on the other two sticky tapes. Mel, start by zooming in on the plant fragments. While analyzing crime scenes in New York City, Lincoln.Lyme always focused on evidence related to geology, flora and fauna, because only one eighteenth of the city is located on the American continent, and the rest is made up of islands.This means that each area is more or less unique in terms of mineralogy, flora and fauna, and even when overlapping adjacent areas, specific locations can be easily traced. After a while, a red plant twig and a small piece of leaf appeared on the screen, presenting a quite artistic picture.Very good.Lyme said. What good?asked Thomas. I say yes because the plant is rare.This is the red hickory tree, which is hard to spot in this city.I only know of two places that have this plant, one is Central Park, the other is Riverside Park, and ah, look at that, see that little blue-green clump? Where?Sachs asked. Didn't you see it?right there!Rhyme felt so much pain that he wished he could jump out of the wheelchair and point out the location on the screen with his hands.It's in the lower left corner.If that branch is Italy, that little blob is Sicily. see. What do you think, Mel?It's lichen, right?I daresay it's a slum lichen. Possibly, Mel said cautiously: but there are just too many types of lichens. But there are not many blue-green gray lichens, and Lime said coldly: In fact, there is almost only one kind, and most of them only appear in Central Park. It's a park.Come on, let's look at the soil part now. Cobb put on another slide.Asteroid swarms of soil particles appeared on the screen, but there was nothing definite about it, so Rhyme said, take a sample and do gas chromatography. Gas chromatography mass spectrometry is a combination of two chemical analysis instruments. The first instrument breaks down the tested substance into constituent molecules, and the second instrument analyzes and identifies the types of these components.Some white powders that look identical can be analyzed by instrumentation to isolate a dozen different chemicals, such as sodium bicarbonate, arsenic, baby powder, carbolic acid, and cocaine.We can think of a chromatographic analyzer as a racetrack. At the beginning, all the constituent molecules stand on the same starting line, but because each component travels at the same speed after starting, differences gradually arise_.When the finish line is reached, the mass spectrometer will compare these components one by one with the huge known data in the database, and then confirm the names of these components. According to Cooper's analysis results, the soil retrieved by Sachs from the scene contained a kind of oil, but according to the database, it can only be identified that this oil belongs to mineral oil, not vegetable oil or animal oil, otherwise, there is no Do a more detailed identification. Lyme's immediate verdict: Send the sample to the FBI to see if the experts in their lab can do anything about it.After speaking, he narrowed his eyes and looked at the next plastic bag.Is that the black cloth you found? Maybe it's a clue, maybe it's nothing She nodded.The cloth was found in the corner of the room where the victim was strangled. Did she bring it?Cobb asked. Perhaps, said Rhyme, but the possibility of a murderer cannot be ruled out. Cobb lifted the cloth carefully and examined it for a moment.The cloth is silk and hand stitched. Rhyme stared silently at the black cloth.Although the cloth is only a small piece when folded, it becomes quite large when unfolded, measuring six by four feet. We already know he hid in that lounge first and waited for the girl to come in, Rhyme said: I dare say this is what he did: hide in a corner and put this black cloth over himself.He disguised himself so that no one could see him.He should have taken the cloth away, but the sudden appearance of the two patrolmen prevented him from taking it in time. poor girl.She must have been completely terrified when the killer appeared by magic and put the noose around her neck? Cobb found a few spots glued to the black cloth.He scraped off these smudges and placed them on a glass slide, and a clear image appeared on the screen immediately.Under a microscope, the smudges appear with ragged edges, a bit like flesh-colored lettuce.Cobb poked it with a probe and found that the material was damp. What the hell is this?Sellitto asked. Rhyme judged: some kind of rubber, the balloon fragments were wrong, not that thick.Look at this slide again.Some are stained, Mel, and the same is flesh-colored.Take it for gas chromatography analysis. While they were waiting for the results of the analysis, the doorbell rang. Thomas hurried out of the room and went downstairs to open the door. When he came back, he had an extra envelope in his hand. is a fingerprint.He said. Ah, great, said Rhyme: here are the fingerprints.Mel, quickly compare these fingerprints with the Automatic Fingerprint Identification System.AFIS is owned by the FBI, a powerful server located in West Virginia.After the fingerprints are converted into digital files and input into this server, they can be compared with the fingerprint databases of federal units or state governments across the country, and the results can be obtained within a few hours.If the fingerprint is clear enough, the answer can even be obtained in a few minutes. What about fingerprints?Rhyme asked. It's pretty clear.Sachs held up the photographs for Rhyme.Many of the fingerprints were incomplete, but one photograph clearly showed the suspect's entire left hand.At a glance, Rhyme found that the killer had two distorted ring fingers and little fingers on his hand. These two fingers were glued together, covered by the same skin, and there were no lines on it.Despite his knowledge of forensic pathology, Rhyme couldn't tell from the photo of the palm print whether it was a congenital deformity or an injury. Looking at this photo, Rhyme felt that it was a kind of irony. The suspect's injured and deformed ring finger of his left hand was the only part he could move from the neck down. As soon as the thought passed, he frowned again.Mel, keep this picture for a while Sachs, bring it over, I want to see it more clearly. Sachs walked up to Rhyme and asked him to take a close look at the fingerprint photos again.Rhyme asks: Did you notice anything unusual about the fingerprints? She replied: no wait.She burst out laughing: the fingerprints are the same.She flicked through the photos.The fingerprints of the suspects were all the same.That little scar, all in the same place. He must have been wearing some kind of glove, Cobb said: there were fake fingerprints on it.I've never seen anything like this except on TV shows. Who is this gangster? The test results of the chromatographic mass spectrometer popped up on the screen.Well, I've isolated the pure emulsion, what's this?He thinks carefully.The computer judged that it was something like alginate.never heard of teeth. What?Cobb asked Rhyme. This is a powder that is mixed with water to make molds.Dentists use it to make braces and restore teeth.Maybe our suspect just went to the dentist recently. Cobb continued to study the data on the screen.We also have very trace amounts of Castor Oil, Propylene Glycol, Cetyl Alcohol, Mica, Iron Oxides, Titanium Dioxide, Tar and some neutral dyes. Some are substances commonly found in cosmetics.Lyme said.He recalled a previous case in which the suspect used a stick of lip balm to write obscene words on the victim's mirror, and Rhyme based his name on the remnants of the lip balm found on the suspect's sleeve. suspect's crime.To deal with that case, he had specifically studied the substances contained in cosmetics. Is it on her?Cobb asked Sachs. No, Sachs replied, I checked her skin and the victim did not use makeup. Well, write it on the whiteboard and see if it makes sense later. Next is to inspect the rope, the tool used by gangsters to kill.Mel.Cobb buries his head on the ceramic inspection board for a moment before raising his head and saying: This kind of rope has two layers, a white outer layer wraps around a black core.The inner and outer layers are made of silk thread, which looks quite light and thin. Although it is made of two ropes, it is not as thick as ordinary ropes. What does it mean?Does this core make the rope pull stronger?Or is it easier to tie a knot, Rhyme asked?Or more difficult to untie?What is the reason? have no idea. There is one more puzzle.Sachs said with dramatic exaggeration.If Rhyme had not to agree with what she said, he would have lost his temper immediately. Yeah, he admits with a little embarrassment, it's something completely new to me.Let's move on, I want to look at something familiar, something we can use. What about the knot? It was tied by the maven, but I don't recognize what kind of knot it is.Cooper said. Send a copy of the knot photo to the FBI.And then do we have people we know in the Maritime Museum? They helped us with the knots a few times, and Sachs said: "I'll post a photo for them. At this time, Toby of the Computer Crime Center of the New York Office of the FBI.Geller called.Very interesting, Lincoln. Glad we entertained you, Rhyme grumbled: Why don't you just tell us what you found helpful about our toy? Geller, a young man with curly hair, was unaffected by Rhyme's harsh tone, especially when the topic involved computer parts.It's a digital recorder, and it's fairly small.Your suspect recorded some sound on the hard drive and played it after a delay.I don't know exactly what he recorded because he put in an auto-erase program that destroyed everything. He recorded his own voice, and Rhyme murmured: The police officers at the scene heard him say that he had a hostage, but it was actually played from the recorder.The purpose was the same as that of the two chairs. The suspect deliberately used the recorder to deceive people outside into thinking he was still in that room. Makes sense.There is a very special speaker on this recorder, this device is small, but it has a very good bass and mid-tone, which can closely imitate the human voice. Nothing left on the disk? Gone, nothing left. Damn, I want the gangster's voiceprint. Sorry, it has been automatically cleared. Rhyme sighed unhappily, and Sachs took over the rest of the words to thank Geller. Next, they inspected the crushed watch in the victim's hand, but no one could figure out why the gangster did this.There was no clue from the broken watch either, except for a stopped time.Sometimes criminals set crime scene watches or clocks to the wrong time before destroying them, thereby misleading police investigations.But the time when the watch stopped was the moment when the victim died. What does this mean? the puzzle While Nurse Thomas was writing their observations on the whiteboard, Rhyme had moved on to the next evidence bag, the signature book for the school gate.One name was missing from the autograph book, he mused: Nine people signed, but there are only eight names in the book. I think we have to call in the experts.Rhyme immediately issued a command into the microphone.Instructions, phone calls.Dial, Parker.Kincaid.