Death Row novel · Chapter 11 of 24
Chapter 11: Let It Dry
The officer stopped with the rag an inch from the glass.
She was the same woman who had walked me past the lobby that first day.
She was about my age, with a tired face, a wedding ring and a small gold cross at her collar.
"Marwick," she said slowly. "You asked him for his hand."
"Yes."
"On purpose."
"Yes."
She looked at the palm print on the pane, and then at me.
"He said he burned a man in the front room."
"You heard it."
"I heard it." Her jaw worked. "I've worked this unit nine years. I've heard every kind of thing a man says to a woman through that glass. I never heard that."
"Will you put it in a report?"
"They'd say you got it out of him with a trick." She lowered the rag. "They'd say a lot of things."
Then she put it back in her belt.
She went to the door, took a laminated sign off the hook, and hung it over the booth window.
OUT OF SERVICE.
"I can hold this booth until the shift changes at three," she said. "If anybody's coming, they'd better come fast."
My shoulders came down, and I sat back in the chair.
I did not have to wait long.
It was less than an hour before the visitor-side door opened again.
Hauck came in first, still in his tight suit, followed by Evan carrying a black case, and a thin woman in a lab coat with gray hair pinned up under a cap.
She didn't say hello.
She put the case on the counter, snapped it open, and looked at the glass for a moment from three sides.
"That's a clean palm," she said. "And two fingertips. Whose?"
"Dean Fell," Hauck said. "Maybe."
"Don't tell me what I'm hoping to find."
She dusted the pane with a fine gray powder using a feather-soft brush.
I watched from my side.
His hand rose out of the powder one ridge at a time, every whorl and crease, a large square print with the two tapped fingertips beside it.
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