“Tell them if they need a methane probe, we’ll send one,” Crawford said. “Save a lot of digging.”
Springfield relayed the request. The telephone rang as soon as he hung it up. The call was for Jack Crawford. It was Jimmy Price at the Lombard Funeral Home. Crawford punched on from the other phone.
“Jack, I got a partial that’s probably a thumb and a fragment of a palm.”
“Jimmy, you’re the light of my life.”
“I know. The partial’s a tented arch, but it’s smudged. I’ll have to see what I can do with it when I get back. Came off the oldest kid’s left eye. I never did that before. Never would have seen it, but it stood out against an eight-ball hemorrhage from the gunshot wound.”
“Can you make an identification off it?”
“It’s a very long shot, Jack. If he’s in the single-print index, maybe, but that’s like the Irish Sweepstakes, you know that. The palm came off the nail of Mrs. Leeds’s left big toe. It’s only good for comparison. We’ll be lucky to get six points off it. The assistant SAC witnessed, and so did Lombard. He’s a notary. I’ve got pictures in situ. Will that do it?”
“What about elimination prints on the funeral-home employees?”
“I inked up Lombard and all his Merry Men, major case prints whether they said they had touched her or not. They’re scrubbing their hands and bitching now. Let me go home, Jack. I want to work these up in my own darkroom. Who knows what’s in the water here—turtles—who knows?
“I can catch a plane to Washington in an hour and fax the prints down to you by early afternoon.”
Crawford thought a moment. “Okay, Jimmy, but step on it. Copies to Atlanta and Birmingham PD’s and Bureau offices.”
“You got it. Now, something else we’ve got to get straight on your end.”
Crawford rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Gonna piss in my ear about the per diem, aren’t you?”
“R ight.”
“Today, Jimmy my lad, nothing’s too good for you.”
Graham stared out the window while Crawford told them about the prints.
“That’s by God remarkable,” was all Springfield said.
Graham’s face was blank; closed like a lifer’s face, Springfield thought.
He watched Graham all the way to the door.
The public-safety commissioner’s news conference was breaking up in the foyer as Crawford and Graham left Springfield’s office. The print reporters headed for the phones. Television reporters were doing “cutaways,” standing alone before their cameras asking the best questions they had heard at the news conference and extending their microphones to thin air for a reply that would be spliced in later from film of the commissioner.
Crawford and Graham had started down the front steps when a small man darted ahead of them, spun and took a picture. His face popped up behind his camera.
“Will Graham!” he said. “Remember me—Freddy Lounds? I covered the Lecter case for the Tattler. I did the paperback.”
“I remember,” Graham said. He and Crawford continued down the steps, Lounds walking sideways ahead of them.
“When did they call you in, Will? What have you got?”
“I won’t talk to you, Lounds.”
“How does this guy compare with Lecter? Does he do them—”
“Lounds.” Graham’s voice was loud and Crawford got in front of him fast. “Lounds, you write lying shit, and The National Tattler is an asswipe. Keep away from me.”
Crawford gripped Graham’s arm. “Get away, Lounds. Go on. Will, let’s get some breakfast. Come on, Will.” They rounded the corner, walking swiftly.
“I’m sorry, Jack. I can’t stand that bastard. When I was in the hospital, he came in and—”
“I know it,” Crawford said. “I reamed him out, much good it did.” Crawford remembered the picture in The National Tattler at the end of the Lecter case. Lounds had come into the hospital room while Graham was asleep. He flipped back the sheet and shot a picture of Graham’s temporary colostomy. The paper ran it retouched with a black square covering Graham’s groin. The caption said “Crazy Guts Cop.”