At the Scene of the Crime Read Online Free PDF

job. She may have the combination to the vault for all I know. She’s been undercutting me with the president since the day I arrived.”
    “What about the security camera in the vault? What am I going to see when I look at it?”
    That deflates the aggressiveness. She sinks back against the wall. “I rewound the tape when we finished. There will be a time lapse of about forty minutes.” Her voice drops, then brightens. “But doesn’t that prove I had nothing to do with the burglary? You’ll be able to see the cabinet and the books inside. I closed the vault at ten. The books were there.”
    My cell phone chirps. I excuse myself, telling Simmons to stay put until I come back.
    When I’m out of earshot, I open the connection. “Fitzgerald.”
    “It’s Laura. Ran the fingerprints on the cabinet. They belong to Byers. Found tiny particles of something foreign in the prints. I’m running tests on that now. Lahey is processing the DNA from the chairs. Any chance you
can get samples from Byers and Simmons for comparison?”
    “I’ll ask. I gave Jenkins a water bottle. Start with that. In the meantime, I’ll call for a warrant. Just in case I can’t persuade the librarians to volunteer.”
    Laura signs off and I call an assistant DA to request a warrant. When I return to the lobby, Simmons is no longer where I left her.
    She’s squaring off with Byers.
    “You bitch. You’re not going to get what you want. You saw Dr. Nichols. He’ll fire both of us as soon as this is sorted out. I won’t have any trouble getting another job. What are you going to do?”
    Byers isn’t rising to the bait. “I can take care of myself,” she says. “But I wouldn’t be too sure about finding another job if I were you. With the Internet these days, you never know what’s going to show up.”
    Simmons’s face darkens. “You post anything defamatory about me and I’ll sue you.”
    Once again, Byers opens her mouth as if she’s going to fire back, then stops herself, takes a deep breath, remains silent.
    I touch Simmons’s arm. She turns toward me, her expression angry, combative. This time, I tell the uniform to escort her to the other side of the lobby. She looks like she wants to resist, but doesn’t, casting one last, fury-filled frown Byers’ way.
    “She’s something, isn’t she?” Byers says to me. “I’ll bet she and her boyfriend plan to sell the books and run off to Tahiti. She doesn’t care about the loss to the university. She only cares about herself.”
    My cell phone chirps. I shake a finger at Byers. “Stay here.”
    She nods and I walk away to take the call.
    “It’s Lahey. I’ve got two interesting bits for you. First, the stains from the chairs in the vault. Semen and vaginal fluids in one. The other—just vaginal fluids. The combination we can’t match. Not until we get samples from Simmons and her boyfriend. The vaginal fluids, though, are Byers’s. We were able to match it from the water bottle.”
    “No semen in that one?”

    “Not a trace. And nothing to indicate a condom was used. No lubricant, no spermicide, no residuals of any kind. I’d guess it was a party of one. Second, the substance in Byers’s fingerprints? Coal dust. Minute particles.”
    I snap my phone shut. Coal dust?
    I look around the building. The university is one of the oldest in Denver. It’s been retrofitted many times with new heating and air conditioning systems. Originally, though, I’d bet there was a combustion heating system of some kind. I dial McDuff.
    He picks up on the first ring. “Yes?”
    “Are you still with Nichols?”
    “In his office as we speak. The combination was in the safe in an envelope with a notarized stamp across the seal. Doesn’t look as if it has been tampered with.”
    “Ask him if the library had a coal-burning heating system at one time. And if there’s an old furnace room somewhere in the building.”
    I hear him put the question to Nichols. And I hear Nichols’ answer.