The Dead Room (12 page)

23

Darby picked up the dish holding the bullet and carried it across the room to the lab’s brand-new scanning electron microscope. She loaded the cartridge into the chamber, shut the small door and then sat down, turning her attention to the console. Coop wheeled a chair next to hers.

The SEM’s terminal screen showed a magnified black-and-white image of the bullet’s headstamp. A thick white ring glowed in the middle, around the primer cap. Printed in the centre were two neat rows containing both letters and numbers:

GLK18

B4M6

‘What the hell is that?’ he asked. ‘Some sort of stamp?’

‘That’s exactly what it is.’ She printed off two copies of the image, then created a digital copy and sent the jpeg to her email. ‘What we’re looking at here is what’s being hailed as the latest technological advance in ballistics identification – microstamping.’

‘That technology hasn’t made its way into mass production.’

Darby nodded. ‘At the moment, the gun lobbyists have successfully prevented microstamping from seeing the light of day, but that may change soon. California is trying to push through a bill that would require microstamping to be implemented on all firearms over the next five years. If the bill gets passed, it’ll be the first state in the nation to have this.

‘Currently, we need to find the handgun and examine it to see if a particular bullet was fired through it. Microstamping eliminates that. It creates a ballistic fingerprint. A handgun’s firing pin is engraved with a unique microscopic code that stamps the gun’s make, model and serial number on the primer cap. The first row – in this case, GLK18 – is supposed to be the stamp for the handgun, the bottom row the code for the shop that sold it.’

‘So I’m assuming there’s going to be some sort of database that’ll store these numbers and codes.’

Darby nodded. ‘The database gives us not only the make and model of the handgun but where it was sold, who purchased it – everything.’ She worked the small joystick mounted on the keyboard in an effort to examine the edges of the cartridge’s headstamp. ‘And the database will also provide us with information about other crime scenes where cartridges with the same stamp were found. The beauty of this new technology is that you can see the stamp only through a scanning electron microscope.’

‘But since this technology isn’t in mass production yet, there’s no way we can trace it.’

‘This bullet has to be a part of a batch of test ammo.’

‘A prototype, in other words.’

‘Exactly. Only a handful of companies are doing microstamping, so this prototype or whatever it is should be easy to narrow down.’

‘The stamp on this first row here, GLK18,’ Coop said. ‘I’m guessing it’s a Glock eighteen.’

‘That would be my guess too.’

‘I’ve never heard of a model eighteen.’

‘That’s because they’re not sold here. It’s a military-issue weapon commissioned by the Austrian Counter-Terrorism Unit, EKO Cobra. As far as I know, they’re the only ones who use it. Take a look at the engraved letters around the headstamp.’

Coop put his arm around the back of her chair and leaned forward for a closer view. She could feel his arm touching her and was suddenly pierced by the thought of his moving away – not to another state but to another country.

‘R… E… and what looks like an S,’ he said.

She took a deep breath, trying to wash away the sinking feeling in her stomach. ‘There’s a company called Reynolds Engineering Systems that’s one of the leading developers of microstamping. They’re based in Washington, I think. Or Virginia.’

He turned to her. Their faces were inches apart.

‘How do you know all of this stuff?’

‘I do a lot of reading.’ She turned to the keyboard to print off more copies.

‘You need a hobby.’

‘This
is
my hobby. Have you seen the Wonder Twins?’

‘They’re in Exam Room 2 working on the binoculars.’

‘What binoculars?’

‘Randy found a small pair of binoculars in the woods.’

Darby wondered if one of the men she had seen last night had accidently dropped them.

She stood up. ‘I’ll get on the horn and see what I can find out about this microstamp.’

‘Wait.’ Coop grabbed her wrist as she stood. ‘When you were examining Amy Hallcox’s body, did you see a tattoo?’

‘She had one above her left breast. A small heart.’

‘Did it have a black arrow through it?’

It did. ‘How did you know that?’

‘I need the fingerprint card for Amy Hallcox.’

‘It’s on the bench near the Kelvin probe.’

He walked across the room, grabbed the bag containing the Amy Hallcox fingerprint card and disappeared around the corner. Darby followed.

Coop stood at the last bench, his favourite spot, a small corner suite arranged around a grouping of windows that offered strong sunlight. Not today. The sky was black and heavy rain continued to pelt the windows.

He already had a fingerprint card set up on the bench. He slid Amy Hallcox’s card from the bag and examined it with a fingerprint magnifier. By the time she stepped up next to him, he had pushed the magnifier to the side.

‘It’s a match,’ he said, more to himself than to her.

‘A match to what?’

He slid a fingerprint card yellowed by age across the bench. She looked at the name typed at the top: K
ENDRA
L. S
HEPPARD
. White female. No age or other information was listed.

‘Who’s Kendra Sheppard?’

‘She was… she was from Charlestown,’ he said. ‘Got busted a couple of times for prostitution. When you and I went inside the house and I saw her, I thought my mind was playing tricks on me. That I was imagining it.’

She remembered Coop standing in the dining room wiping his sweaty forehead, his face as white as a sheet.

‘When you were outside talking to Pine, I took a closer look at Amy Hallcox’s face,’ he said. ‘Kendra had a small mole on her cheek – I told her she looked like a blonde version of Cindy Crawford. And Kendra also had a scar underneath her bottom lip. She got that when she was eighteen. We came out of Jimmy DeCarlo’s house and she fell down drunk on a piece of glass. I had to take her to the hospital for stitches.’

He grinned at the memory, then took a deep breath and said, ‘Even then I still didn’t believe it, so when I got back to the lab, I pulled Kendra’s prints. I wanted to make sure before I said anything to you.’

‘And there’s no question?’

‘None. Amy Hallcox is Kendra Sheppard.’

Coop crossed his arms over his chest, muscles rippling underneath the tight polo shirt, and focused on some private thought. ‘All this time, I thought she was dead. Now I find her two decades later tied down to her chair with her throat cut and…’ He shook his head as if trying to clear away the images. ‘It’s just weird, you know?’

Darby nodded and placed the fingerprint card back on the bench. ‘Why did Kendra change her name?’

‘I only knew her as Kendra,’ he said. ‘At one point in time, she was my girlfriend – my first serious girlfriend, I guess you could say.’

24

Darby leaned the small of her back against a lab bench and grabbed the edges.

‘She wasn’t a bad kid,’ Coop said, his eyes on Kendra Sheppard’s fingerprint card. ‘Not the brightest bulb, especially when it came to the realities of living in Charlestown – she had no common sense or street smarts.’

Coop lived in Charlestown and knew everyone – not a hard thing to do when you lived in a place that was just one square mile. He and his three older sisters had grown up in the small historic neighbourhood, the site of one of the first battles of the American Revolution – Bunker Hill – and later, during the 1980s, a hotbed of Irish mafia activity. Coop was thirteen when his father had been killed in an unsolved hit-and-run – the same age Darby had been when her father was murdered. That common wound had cemented their friendship during the early days at the crime lab.

‘Kendra had a good heart,’ he said, ‘and, Christ, she was wild. Loved to party, loved to booze it up and do blow. I was willing to overlook the coke because she was so goddamn attractive. But when I found out about her getting busted for prostitution, I couldn’t handle it and broke up with her. Not a good time in my life.’

‘Why did you think Kendra was dead?’

He blinked as if waking up from a dream. ‘What’s that?’

‘You said, “All this time, I thought she was dead.” ’

‘Her parents were murdered. They were shot to death while they were sleeping.’

That matched what Sean had told her.

‘When did this happen?’

‘April of ’83,’ Coop said. ‘I remember it because I had just gotten my licence. I know Kendra wasn’t home when they were murdered because the police were looking for her. I don’t know where she was. By that time we weren’t speaking. She didn’t go to the wake or funeral, she just… vanished, so I assumed the worst.’

‘She have any family in Charlestown?’

‘An aunt and uncle. Heather and Mark Base. They don’t live there any more. After the murder, they packed up and moved somewhere in the Midwest, I think.’

‘Sean told me his grandparents were killed.’

‘Sean?’

‘That’s John Hallcox’s real name.’ She hadn’t had a chance to talk with Coop about her interview with the boy – or this morning’s encounter with the brown van. After speaking to the Belham patrolmen who’d arrived on the scene, she’d driven back to Boston to work on Amy Hallcox’s body before the autopsy.

‘Sean told me his grandparents were murdered but said his mother wouldn’t tell him how they died – or where they lived,’ Darby said. ‘He had just started talking about what had happened inside the house when he shut off the tape recorder and told me his real name was Sean. That’s when the guy posing as a Fed came in with this shit about the mother being a fugitive and –’

‘Wait, the guy wasn’t an actual Fed?’

‘No, but he sure as hell looked and acted the part – had the ID, badge. Pine said he saw the Federal warrant and it looked legit. I didn’t find out he wasn’t the real deal until this morning.’

‘Jesus.’ Coop propped up his elbows on the bench and massaged his forehead with the heels of his palms.

‘I should have suspected something after he disappeared from the hospital,’ she said. ‘I thought he left to call an early-morning meeting for damage control – you know how the Feds are, protect their image at all costs.’

‘So Amy Hallcox wasn’t a fugitive.’

‘No. I checked NCIC, it was all bullshit. This guy was after the kid.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know yet.’

Coop looked at her. ‘He must have known
something
. Why else would a twelve-year-old be carrying a gun?’

‘I agree. I don’t know who this guy is, but he’s probably working with the guys I saw following me this morning.’ She told him about the brown van and what Ted Castonguay had found in the pictures and the hospital videotape. ‘What’s going on with the fingerprints you lifted from the house?’

‘They’re running them through the database as we speak. As for evidence, we’ve just started processing it. What else did Sean tell you?’

‘He said the people who killed his grandparents were never caught.’

‘He’s right.’

‘Were there ever any suspects? Do you remember hearing anything?’

‘Nothing jumps to mind.’

Darby grabbed the clipboard and pen lying on the bench, turned to a fresh sheet of paper and wrote down the names for the aunt and uncle. ‘What were the names of Kendra’s parents?’

‘Sue and Donnie.’

‘Does Kendra have any friends living in the area?’

‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘Did she tell you why she was hooking?’

‘No.’

‘She never tried?’

‘Sure she did. She tried a lot, as a matter of fact. She kept calling the house, came around a few times and tried cornering me at school. And I ignored her. I wasn’t interested in hearing why.’

‘I’m sure you heard some stories. Charlestown is small –’

‘I didn’t want to know why she did it. If someone started talking about it, I left the room. In fact, I made it a point of burying my head in the sand. I was seventeen when I found out my nineteen-year-old girlfriend was blowing guys around town in hotel rooms and cars.’ He glared at her, eyes bright with anger. ‘I didn’t want to know specifics. I was embarrassed, okay?’

Why is he acting so defensive?

‘Coop, I’ve just found out Amy Hallcox’s real name is Kendra Sheppard.’ She spoke the words calmly. ‘And you’re the person who told me. You told me her parents were murdered and that she disappeared. You told me you two dated, so I’m asking you questions, trying to get some background information on her.’

He was no longer looking at her. He was staring out of the window. The rain running down the glass cast shadows across the benches and walls.

A moment later he sighed and threw up his hands. ‘What else did Sean tell you?’

‘He said his mother was always afraid these people would find her. She seemed paranoid about it – she didn’t have a computer and wouldn’t hook up to the internet because she was afraid these people might track her down. I got the sense he believed the people who killed his grandparents are the same ones who killed his mother.’

‘But they didn’t kill him.’

‘I think they were interrupted.’ She explained her theory of a possible third party – the shooter who had entered through the sliding glass door and taken down the man in the suit.

‘Sean told me the guy wearing the Celtics gear was an older white male who may or may not have had a facelift,’ Darby said. ‘At the moment that’s all we know about the Celtics guy. We have no idea where he is or what might have happened to him. Do you have any ideas or theories?’

‘About the Celtics guy? Based on that description, he could be any Boston yahoo.’

‘I meant why these people were so interested in finding her.’

‘Haven’t the foggiest.’ Coop stood up. ‘Why did Sean Sheppard ask to speak to your father?’

‘His mother said if he was ever in trouble to talk to him. She told him to speak only to him.’

‘So you don’t know the connection to your old man?’

‘Not yet. Was Kendra arrested for prostitution in Charlestown?’

‘As far as I know.’

‘I’ll go pull her record.’

‘I’m going to get to work on that Nicorette wrapper you found and the shells the Wonder Twins recovered from the woods.’

‘Okay. If you remember anything else, let me know.’

‘Will do.’

‘Thanks.’

Coop moved past her. She looked down at Kendra Sheppard’s fingerprint card.

Darby had known him for so long, had spent so much time with him both on and off the job, that they had become in many ways like an old married couple, in tune with each other’s moods and idiosyncrasies. She knew what was lurking behind Coop’s anger.

He’s afraid.