Fatal Measure by Brent Ladd

Author:Brent Ladd [Brent Ladd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
Published: 2023-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

***

Joel smiled as the seventy-year-old woman strutted down the hallway toting a large shoulder bag. She was tall with dyed red hair that curled like her perma-hunched shoulders that had lost the battle to overly large breasts. She looked lost but unwilling to admit it. Joel popped up and reached out a hand to greet her. “Mrs. Robinson?”

“Yes. Not the famous one, but just as randy,” she said as they shook hands.

Joel almost pulled back his hand mid-shake, afraid he might have unintentionally committed to something.

“I’m just messing with you, son. Or am I?” She said the last part with one eyebrow raised.

“I’m . . . I’m Special Agent Strickman. Please follow me.” He led her to the small conference room where Codi and he had been working the case.

“I understand you have some experience with HCS?” Joel said.

“HCS?” Mrs. Robinson glanced at him for confirmation.

He nodded.

“Well, that’s all I did for thirty years. Is that what you got me out of retirement for, Sonny?”

“Joel,” he tried to correct her.

“Hmm?” she said, oblivious to his efforts.

“We are working on a case from the sixties, and we have a couple of partials we tried to compare against a stack of suspects. We loaded everything into AFIS but got back nothing conclusive. We thought maybe going analog for these old prints might work, and as I understand it, you were considered one of the best on the HCS system.”

“It’s just HCS,” Mrs. Robinson corrected him.

“What?”

“HCS literally stands for Henry Classification System, so you don’t have to say the word system after it.”

“Gotcha,” Joel mumbled, duly reprimanded.

“I like this one, Joel,” Codi spoke up.

Joel and Mrs. Robinson both looked up to see Codi standing in the doorway.

“Hi, I’m Special Agent Sanders,” she said as she entered the room and took a seat.

“Pleased to meet you,” Mrs. Robinson replied. She sat down and started digging in her purse. She extracted a pair of reading glasses that were so thick, the glass extended way beyond the frame.

Joel tried to refocus the meeting. “We were hoping you could match this . . .” Joel slid over a fingerprint card with two partial prints on it. “. . . to one of these,” he said as he slid over a small stack of complete fingerprint cards, each from one of the people working on Operation Quiet Bird at the time of the murder.

“Well, no guarantees, but let me take a look.” She pulled a magnifying loupe on a gold chain out of her cleavage and spread out the photos on the table. Joel and Codi watched with fascination as forensic history came to life in front of them. She placed the magnifier on a card and hunched over even further to examine it. She focused on the whorl pattern somewhat visible on one of the partials. The first two suspect cards had ulnar loops and she quickly dismissed them. “This’ll go a lot faster without you two watching,” Mrs. Robinson said, without looking up.

“Copy that,” Joel responded. He and Codi left the room to let her have at it.

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