Page 25 of Cold Silence
“Do you know when this room is cleaned?” Sierra held out her hands.
“Usually the last thing in the day after we’re finished using the equipment.”
“What are you getting at here?” Travis asked, losing patience.
“If trash was emptied at the end of the day, and your suspect was the one who disabled the security at eleven, he could’ve been the first person to deposit trash in the bottom of the bag.”
“Oh, yeah,” Claire said. “I suppose so.”
“And that’s important because?” Travis asked, trying to remain patient.
“Because…” Sierra reached into her evidence bin to pull out two bags. “I recovered a bloody tissue and Band-Aid wrappers in the bottom of the trash in here. Not a lot of blood, but I also recovered more from a sharp screw on the cubby where your missing device was stored.”
Claire’s eyes brightened. “That’s good news! You could have our suspect’s DNA.”
“Possible.” Sierra’s tone was more reserved than Claire’s expression. “We can analyze the tissue as well. If it’s a brand name, we can likely narrow it down to the manufacturer, so if you have staff who keep tissues on their desk, we can compare.”
“If they took the tissue from their own desk,” Gage said.
“Good point,” Sierra said. “We’ll also be sure to process your first aid kit in case the Band-Aid was taken from there. We should have good DNA recovery there and in here.”
“But what can you tell us from the DNA?” Claire asked.
“Unfortunately, not much right now. If you’d collected DNA on all of your employees, which I doubt, to use as comparison, we run our samples against it. Without that, we won’t have anything to match our results to and the DNA will come into play at the trial.”
“No DNA on file, and I can’t very well go around asking for samples.” A heavy sigh slipped from Claire’s lips.
“Once you identify a likely suspect, wecancollect one easy enough. However, we would need to recover it in a manner that would hold up in a court of law.” She returned the bags to the box. “We can talk about that if it becomes necessary.”
“But you can run it against CODIS,” Gage said.
“The FBI’s DNA database,” Sierra stated. “Yes, we can and will in case we’re looking at an outsider who might have a criminal record.”
Claire tapped her chin. “I have to wonder if this might eliminate the people who access the device most often.”
“How’s that?” Sierra asked.
“We all know about that sharp screw because at one time or another we’ve cut ourselves on it. So we avoid it. But someone not familiar with the cubby might not.”
“Possible or could be the person was just in a hurry or nervous and forgot,” Gage said.
“What about blood types?” Travis asked, grasping at anything that might help. “Can you type the blood, and if it’s rare, might we be able to ID someone that way?”
“You could narrow things down that way and then get a DNA sample.”
“But you’d have to ask people their blood types,” Gage weighed in.
“I could do that.” Claire’s voice raised. “Maybe I could pretend the subject of how many people knew their blood type came up in conversation, and I was taking a poll to see who did know it.”
“Sounds like that might work,” Sierra said.
“You’d have to be careful not to raise any suspicions,” Travis warned.
“I can handle it.” Claire lifted her chin and eyed him.
She was issuing him a challenge. He loved when she did that. When she stood up to him. When it wasn’t dangerous, that was. And this could be if she approached people the wrong way.
“Tell you what,” Sierra said. “I’ll go ahead and get you that information the minute I return to the lab. That way if the blood type is unique and you decide to do it, you’ll have the info.”
