Martini, Steve - Shadow of Power by Martini Steve

Author:Martini, Steve [Martini, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Espionage, Thrillers, Thriller, Suspense, Mystery
ISBN: 9780062025357
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2008-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Next morning, early court call, neither Harry nor I have time to be looking at maps. Tuchio is beginning his run for the finish, bringing out the big guns.

He starts with his fingerprint expert. For the better part of a day, using charts, magnified photographs of the full set of Carl’s fingerprints taken at the time he was booked after his arrest, and comparing them to the partial prints lifted from the entry-hall floor of Scarborough’s hotel room, the witness explains the art of fingerprint identification to the jury.

He tells them that based on studies of the millions upon millions of fingerprints classified over the last nearly one hundred years, no two sets of prints from different individuals have ever been found to be identical. In addition to being unique, they are immutable. Except in the event of physical injury, fingerprint patterns do not change over a person’s lifetime.

The witness explains that comparison between known fingerprints taken from a known individual and those found at a crime scene turn on the analysis of ridge characteristics, known as minutiae, as well as the location and proximity of these characteristics one to another.

The testimony, questions and answers, drones on for hours. Tuchio risks putting the jury to sleep with evidence of what everyone in the courtroom already knows to be fact: The fingerprints at the murder scene belong to Carl.

Asked how the small pinkie print landed on the handle of the hammer, the witness testifies that based upon photographs taken by police of the hammer’s location on the floor, it appeared that the fingerprint in question was made at the same time as the other prints on the floor. According to the testimony, the defendant’s contact with the handle caused it to move several inches away, accounting for the later gap between the print of the third finger of Carl’s right hand on the floor and the fourth finger, the pinkie print on the handle. Nonetheless, the fingerprint in question, the one on the hammer’s handle, is sufficiently clear to identify it conclusively as belonging to the defendant.

Tuchio turns the witness over to me. I pass on him without a single question. It is, after all, exactly what Carl told the police when they questioned him, the same story he told Harry and me the first time we met him.

The judge looks up at the clock on the wall. It’s approaching four. Friday afternoon, and Quinn decides that’s it for the week. He cuts some slack and allows the jury to go home early. Monday will be a big day, the intimate details of death. The state is scheduled to bring on its medical examiner.

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