A Perfect Grave Part 41

"I think so."

"Want to go for a short ride in a detective car?" Grace said.

A few minutes later, they stood before the park bench where the stranger had sat.

The trash basket beside it was half-filled. Grace squatted, concentrating on the dates she saw on the discarded newspapers. The trash had not been emptied for several days.

"Guys, you said he was drinking coffee from a take-out cup."

"He was drinking from that one," Ryan said.

"Come closer, show me without touching."

Ryan pulled his face to the trash, pointing to the red, white, and blue take-out cup under the plastic take-out bag.

Perelli and Grace exchanged glances.

It was the only red, white, and blue take-out cup in the trash.

"Are you sure, Ryan?"

"Yes, I saw him crumple it before he left."

Grace was making notes.

"Did you see if he got into a car, or where he went?"

Justin and Ryan shook their heads.

"Can you remember, Ryan, was the man wearing gloves?"

"No gloves."

Dial tones sounded. Perelli had turned away to call Kay Cataldo to get to their location fast.

"Uhm," Justin said, "what happened to Brady?"

Grace looked at the boys.

"We're working on that."

Grace turned back to the cup, pulling it out carefully and holding it as if it were the Holy Grail.

"And this cup may give us the answer."

Chapter Fifty-Nine.

This is it, baby.

At her table in the Seattle Police Crime Scene Investigation Unit near the airport, Kay Cataldo examined the take-out coffee cup plucked from the trash in the park near Brady Boland's home.

She worked on it with near reverence because she knew, knew deep in her heart, that they had something. The cup was abundant with wonderfully clear latents.

Grace was bang-on. This was their Holy Grail.

It was the cup used by the Boland boy's kidnapper, who wore the shoes worn by Sister Anne's and Sharla May Forrest's killer. He'd left a nice size-11 impression under the Bolands' back window.

Thank you.

We are so on to you, you mother- Cataldo had dusted and photographed the prints with an old reliable CU-5, before collecting them with lifting tape. She had a complete and crisp set of impressions from the right hand.

She studied the loops, whorls, and arches.

Very good.

Time was her enemy.

She worked quickly but with expert efficiency, beginning with the thumb, which in a standard ten-card is "number one." Carefully, she coded its characteristics before moving on to the other fingers. Then she scanned the prints and entered the information into her computer.

Now she could submit them to the automated fingerprint-identification systems, AFIS, for a quick search through ma.s.sive local, state, and nationwide data banks for a match.

After typing commands on her keyboard, Cataldo finished the last of her bagel and orange juice while her computer processed her data for possible matches. In less than two minutes, it came back with two hits from the Seattle PD's local data bank.

Now we're getting somewhere.

It was a start, she thought, waiting for results from the Was.h.i.+ngton State Patrol Identification and Criminal History Section (WASIS) and a range of other criminal history database systems.

Her submission was searched through the regional information-sharing systems, like the western states network and the FBI's mother of all data banks, the IAFIS, which stored some seven hundred million impressions from law enforcement agencies across the country.

We're coming for you.

When it was done, her search had yielded a total of five possibles that closely matched her submission from the cup.

Immediately, she began making a visual point-by-point comparison between each of the three candidates and her unidentified set from the cup. She zeroed in on the critical minutiae points, like the trail of ridges near the tip of the number-three finger. Too many dissimilarities there.

So long, candidate number one.

For the next set, Cataldo blew up her sample to visually count the number of ridges on the number-two finger and soon saw distinct differences. That took care of number two.

Let's go to number three.

Cataldo's concentration intensified as she compared her submission with the computer's remaining suggested match. The branching of the ridges matched. All the minutiae points matched. Her pulse quickened as she began counting the points of comparison where the two samples matched.

Looking good.

Some courts required about a dozen clear point matches. She had fourteen and was still counting, knowing that one divergent point instantly eliminated a print. By the time she'd compared the left slanting patterns from the last finger, she had seventeen clear points of comparison.

Then she matched the scales of the prints and used her computer program to superimpose one over the other, the way one would trace a picture.

We have a winner.

Cataldo confirmed the identification number of her new subject, and submitted a query to several law enforcement data banks, including the FBI's National Crime Information Center and the Was.h.i.+ngton State Department of Corrections. By accessing the various criminal history systems she could verify parolee history, offender identification, arrest records, convictions, holds, and commitments for other law enforcement agencies.

In minutes, Cataldo's computer introduced her to the owner of the fingerprints on the take-out cup.

Gotcha.

The cold, hard eyes of a white man glared from her monitor, as if he were angry that she'd found him. She clicked to his central file summary and read quickly through his offences.

Second-degree murder.

Armed robbery.

A lifetime achiever. These were only the bigticket items.

According to his ERD, his Earned Release Date, he was released months ago.

Cataldo clicked and the guy's story unfolded before her. Her head snapped back at what she'd read.

"Lord, that can't be!"

Cataldo seized her phone, punched a number.

"Homicide, Garner."

"Grace, it's Kay."

"You got him?"

"Leon Dean Sperbeck. Did twenty-five for second-degree during an armed robbery. Was released to community custody a few months ago."

"Got an address?"

"Grace, you won't believe this. His DOC file is closed. It's marked deceased."

Chapter Sixty.

Ten minutes after Cataldo locked on to Sperbeck, Grace was on the phone with his community corrections officer.

"Dead men don't leave fingerprints," Grace said. "I need an address."

"Sonofa-Hold on. Are you sure those are Sperbeck's prints on that cup?" Herb Kent, ten months from retirement, pulled a page from the file on his desk. "Because I'm looking at the report from the Rangers at Mount Rainier last month. Leon drowned himself in the Nisqually River."

"I know. But did they find his body?"

"I'm not sure. Sorry, I just came back from sick leave, had surgery to remove two toes." Kent paged through the file. "Nothing here says they found him yet. But I talked to Leon, maybe a week before he went there. He was despondent, like he said in his note."

"Do you have his note?"

"I have a copy in here. I'll fax it to you."

"Did Sperbeck ever talk about the Boland family or Sister Anne Braxton? Did they visit him inside?"

"Let me grab his visitor sheet." Kent sifted through the file. "What I know is that Leon was quiet, kept to himself and out of trouble. When he was a.s.signed to me, his case didn't need a lot of monitoring."

Kent flipped through reports, applications, test results for Sperbeck.

"He served his full time and was no risk to reoffend. He had no family, or much of a support network. I helped him with his release plan, you know, contacting social service agencies, lining up job interviews. He had no violations and he got work as a janitor, but it didn't last and he took it hard. Some guys can't cope after being inside a long time. The world changes, they're stigmatized."

d.a.m.n it. Grace had had enough. Grace had had enough.

Sperbeck had fallen through the cracks. Violent felons were supposed to be tracked, even after release. Sperbeck had obviously staged his death. Those were his prints on the cup.

"Herb. Stop. Just give me Sperbeck's last known address now."

"Well, he had a couple. I'm still checking. He told me one place got flooded. The other was noisy."

"Herb."

"Here we go. This one in the northwest was his last. It's off Market."

Grace took it down.

"And, look here, the answer is, yes. Seems Sister Anne Braxton visited him several times at Was.h.i.+ngton State, then at Clallam Bay and Coyote Ridge."

"You can confirm that he had contact with her?"

"The file here says she was instrumental in helping Sperbeck with his Moral Reconation Therapy and as his spiritual counselor-h.e.l.lo?"

Grace hung up and alerted SWAT to roll on Sperbeck's residence.