Page 73 of Identity Unknown
“Unless it was already inside the truck.”
“You mean if Sal was transferring it in and out himself.” It’s a startling thought.
“We can’t be sure how long the residue has been there,” Benton says. “If it’s fake moon dust? What was he doing with it? Was he doing research? And if so, where?”
“He never mentioned regolith simulants to me,” I reply. “And most people don’t want a hazardous material like that around. It needs to be stored and worked with in a controlled environment.”
“Whatever he might have been doing behind the scenes, he wasn’t doing it for us.” Lucy means the U.S. government. “Or we’d know about it.” She shows us another photograph.
This one is of a smudge about the size of my hand butnothing like it. The somewhat V-shaped impression is long and slender like a hoof. Or possibly a mitten with vague, irregular fingerlike shapes inside it. Yes, somewhat clawlike, and reminding me of a Rorschach ink blot, actually. I see no suggestion of the friction ridge detail associated with skin, and I’m baffled.
“This was on the outside of the driver’s window,” Lucy explains.
“Made by what? Do we have an idea?” Benton’s shoulder is pressed against me as we stare at the image on the laptop computer. “It doesn’t look like an impression of any type of glove I’ve ever seen.”
“Not anything I’ve ever seen, either,” Lucy replies. “And it’s not the only one we found.”
Lucy walks away from the workbench, and we follow her to Sal’s pickup truck. Utility carts are parked around it, and the tent is gone.
“What about the sparkling residue?” Benton asks. “Was any of that associated with these impressions?”
“Not a lot of it,” Lucy says, and I pass along what Lee Fishburne told me about moon dust.
“Not the real thing but a simulant that has a fluorescent additive causing it to glow cobalt blue under UV light,” I explain. “And what that was doing on Luna Briley’s pajama top is anybody’s guess. We’ll find out soon enough if this same residue was on Sal Giordano’s body and is inside his truck.”
“I have a feeling it will be,” Benton replies. “Not too many things fluoresce cobalt blue or at all.”
“The deaths are connected, and it’s more than a feeling,” Lucy says flatly. “What’s happened to Luna Briley and SalGiordano is related for some reason. That doesn’t mean the same person killed them.”
“The same person didn’t,” Benton says. “His death was calculated and carefully planned. I don’t believe hers was.”
On a cart are crime lights and pairs of tinted goggles that Lucy hands out to us. We put on gloves, hair covers and face masks. She calls for someone to cut the lights directly overhead. We begin painting our UV lights over the truck, starting with the driver’s window. The clean rectangular shape in the middle of it is from the lifting tape, we’re told.
Also on the glass is a constellation of the pinprick cobalt-blue sparkles. I find more of them on the driver’s door handles inside and out. Even as I’m looking I’m invaded by memories of riding in this very truck with Sal to meetings at the White House, the Pentagon and other official places. I often joked that we looked like Ma and Pa Kettle making a visit to the big city.
I slowly circle the familiar old Chevy with its mangled chrome bumpers and shattered square headlights. The residue glitters near the tailgate handle, and there’s a scant spattering of sparkles on the outer front passenger door handle. But not on the interior one.
“Possibly suggesting the passenger door was opened and closed from the outside.” Benton paints his light over it. “Possibly Sal was incapacitated and placed in the passenger’s seat. Maybe the seat belts were fastened so the alarm didn’t chime while Sal was driven somewhere. Assuming the truck had an alarm as old as it was?”
“It’s possible, alarm or not. What we’re talking about is a habit, something one does without thinking,” Lucy says, shadowing us.
“But his truck went off the mountain,” I remind them.
“Before it did, someone took the time to remove everything from inside it,” Benton says. “It’s possible Sal was abducted in his own truck, and then transferred into a different vehicle that was parked out of sight nearby. Finally, the truck was sent off the mountain into the ravine.”
“Now that we’ve been able to look inside and under the hood, we know that at the time of the crash, the gearshift was in neutral with the engine running.” Lucy continues making comments from the shadowy sidelines. “In something old like this you could shut the doors and lock them from the outside while the key’s in the ignition.”
“I’ve known Sal to do that accidentally a number of times,” I reply. “Do we have any idea how much gas was in the tank at the time of the crash?”
“Nope,” Lucy says, the overhead lights turning back on. “It continued running until it was out of gas, but we can’t know how long that took. Diesel engines don’t have sparkplugs. They don’t emit electric signals that flash on radio telescopes and various sensors. His truck could have been running in the ravine for hours and it wasn’t going to be detected by anything.”
“And you found nothing inside it?” I ask, envisioning the gift basket I carefully put together for Sal.
“Even the glove box was cleaned out,” Lucy says.
We remove our tinted goggles, placing them back on the cart.
“Why take everything?” I ask them. “What was someone looking for?”