And thank God for that.
Just to make sure, she snuck through the trees until she could see the house. There was one police cruiser out front with an officer in the driver’s seat. She couldn’t see him clearly from this vantage point, but he appeared to be reading something on his phone. The forensics team must have finished up and gone on their merry way with Pottinger’s body, and hopefully with some promising clues.
She couldn’t see any other cars. If Pottinger had hired help, they wouldn’t be allowed in the house right now, but she imagined they would have already been questioned by Sullivan or would be shortly.
She got back to the mailbox, which fortunately was set about ten feet off the road and screened from there by some large bushes. She made one more searching look up and down the road and then toward the mansion. All was clear.
She opened her leather kit and took out the fingerprinting equipment — a vial of latent powder, a fiberglass brush, black plastic lifting tape, and backing cards. Luckily, it hadn’t rained or else she might have had to use a reactive spray to bring out the latent prints. The same would hold for curved or irregular surfaces. But the mailbox’s sides and lid were mostly flat and the metal nonporous, so it was ideal for what she wanted to do.
She applied the titanium dioxide powder to her brush, spun off the excess, and, holding her light at oblique angles to highlight the surface and check for ridge detail, followed the whorls, loops, arches, and circles wherever they took her.
It was fortunate that she had started out her police career as a crime tech. Forensic evidence ruled the day in the world of criminal convictions. And the lack thereof almost guaranteed that guilty people often walked free, lifting their collective middle finger at the scales of justice.
She spread the powder to all areas of the mailbox, around the handle, the flag, the sides, anywhere someone might have touched the surface. She knew she would probably get the prints of the mailman as well, but she could work around that.
She identified ten sets of viable prints. Her next step was to use her lifting tape to grab them. She established an anchor point and set the tape down over the first print, smoothing away the air bubbles. She repeated this for all the other prints, including a nice palm print on the side of the box where someone had placed their hand, perhaps to provide a leverage point for pulling an oversized package from the box. She constantly looked around for anyone coming. She knew she was taking a risk, and would be in serious trouble if the cops showed up, or the officer on perimeter duty decided to go get some coffee. But right now she didn’t care, and she would hear the car coming and could duck down and hope whoever it was didn’t notice the print powder on the mailbox.
Gibson placed each print onto her acetate cards. She finished and wiped off the print powder with a spray bottle of water and a rag from her kit. She wasn’t destroying evidence, she told herself. The cops would have lots of prints inside the house and they could always take them right off the dead man. Gibson was certain they already had, though they had preliminarily identified him as Daniel Pottinger. But that was not conclusive, Gibson knew. And that was the reason she was here. Because Pottinger’s background, or lack thereof, just screamed that he was trying to hide his real identity for some reason.
She walked back to her van and drove off. Gibson suddenly noticed that her heart was racing and her cheeks were flushed. All in a good way. This was perhaps her most exciting moment since she was a patrol officer running down a suspected rapist and tackling him in an alleyway behind a Walmart back in the Garden State. And when he’d tried to attack her, a knee to his groin and a palm strike to his nose had been immensely gratifying.
She returned to her house, took pictures of each card with her camera phone, and then called a friend of hers who still worked for the New Jersey State Police. She asked the woman to run the prints for her through her databases and, if necessary, also through the NGI system, which had replaced the FBI’s IAFIS fingerprint database and featured enhanced capabilities including palm prints, irises, and even facial ID.
“What’s this for, Mick?” her friend asked.
“It’s personal, Kate, but I really need to find out the ID of someone.”
“Where’d you get the prints?”
“Off a mailbox.”
“Is that legal?”
“Absolutely, public space,” said Gibson, though she really had no idea if it was.
“I’ll see what I can do,” replied Kate. “How are the kids?”
“Adorable, especially when they’re not vomiting on me.”
That got a laugh out of old Kate, who was the mother of four. And hopefully extra incentive to run the prints for her.
Then the phone that had been left on her porch buzzed.
Chapter 9
“Are you ready to talk calmly now?” the woman said.
“I was talking calmly last time and you hung up on me,” replied Gibson a little testily. “But I am ready to talk, and listen to what you have to say.”
“Good. Do the police know the cause of death yet?”
“Again, they have no reason to share that with me. In fact, I asked and they refused.”
“Can you ask again?”
“Why?”
“It could be critical. It could be instructive, like a clue. Cops like clues, right?”
“Okay, I’ll see what I can do.”
“Have you told the local police about me?”’
“No. I’m keeping it to myself for now.”
“Good, because it might unduly complicate things if you do let them know.”
“They’re complicated enough. You mentioned Miami and business. Can you tell me anything else? I need something to go on if I’m going to make any progress. You want me to help you, so you need to help me. I hope you can see that.”
“You’re very manipulative,” she replied.
Gibson wanted to scream out, I’m manipulative? Instead she said, “Just the cop in me. But I do need some information, otherwise I’m stuck in neutral.”
“What do you want to know?”
“First, is Daniel Pottinger the man’s real name?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because there is really nothing on the guy online. Just stuff that could be fabricated.”
“Not everyone bares their soul online.”
“Preaching to the choir on that one, but my question is still hanging out there.”
“Dan was secretive,” she said cautiously. “He didn’t like people knowing his business.”
“So maybe he had a fake identity then?”
“I knew him only as Dan Pottinger. If he had a different identity it was before my time.”
“Okay, were you in Miami with him?”
“For a while.”
“How long ago?”
“Years.”
“How long did you two work together?” asked Gibson.
“Not long enough. He taught me a lot.”
“When did you learn he had moved to Virginia and bought Stormfield?”
“Recently. As I said, he communicated with me and told me to visit him there. I wish I had gotten to him before whoever killed him did.”
Well, that’s quite the self-serving statement. “Before then, how long had it been since you had heard from him?”
“Why does that matter?” the woman asked.
“I’m just trying to establish some basic facts and timelines here.”
“What you need to establish is how he died.”
“But for the police to share with me, I need something of value to barter with them.”