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didn’t you? The powder came out of a rubber glove as you pulled it off to touch her, DIDN’T IT, YOU SON OF A BITCH? You touched her with your bare hands and then you put the gloves back on and you wiped her down. But while the gloves were off, DID YOU OPEN THEIR EYES?
    Jack Crawford answered his telephone on the fifth ring. He had answered the telephone in the night many times and he was not confused.
    “Jack, this is Will.”
    “Yes, Will.”
    “Is Price still in Latent Prints?”
    “Yeah. He doesn’t go out much anymore. He’s working on the single-print index.”
    “I think he ought to come to Atlanta.”
    “Why? You said yourself the guy down here is good.”
    “He is good, but not as good as Price.”
    “What do you want him to do? Where would he look?”
    “Mrs. Leeds’s fingernails and toenails. They’re painted, it’s a slick surface. And the corneas of all their eyes. I think he took his gloves off, Jack.”
    “Jesus, Price’ll have to gun it,” Crawford said. “The funeral’s this afternoon.”

3
    “I think he had to touch her,” Graham said in greeting.
    Crawford handed him a Coke from the machine in Atlanta police headquarters. It was seven-fifty A.M.
    “Sure, he moved her around,” Crawford said. “There were grip marks on her wrists and behind her knees. But every print in the place is from nonporous gloves. Don’t worry, Price is here. Grouchy old bastard. He’s on his way to the funeral home now. The morgue released the bodies last night, but the funeral home’s not doing anything yet. You look bushed. Did you get any sleep?”
    “Maybe an hour. I think he had to touch her with his hands.”
    “I hope you’re right, but the Atlanta lab swears he wore like surgeon’s gloves the whole time,” Crawford said. “The mirror pieces had those smooth prints. Forefinger on the back of the piece wedged in the labia, smudged thumb on the front.”
    “He polished it after he placed it, so he could see his damn face in there probably,” Graham said.
    “The one in her mouth was obscured with blood. Same with the eyes. He never took the gloves off.”
    “Mrs. Leeds was a good-looking woman,” Graham said. “You’ve seen the family pictures, right? I’d want to touch her skin in an intimate situation, wouldn’t you?”
    “Intimate?” Distaste sounded in Crawford’s voice before he could stop it. Suddenly he was busy rummaging in his pockets for change.
    “Intimate—they had privacy. Everybody else was dead. He could have their eyes open or shut, however he liked.”
    “Any way he liked,” Crawford said. “They tried her skin for prints, of course. Nothing. They did get a hand spread off her neck.”
    “The report didn’t say anything about dusting nails.”
    “I expect her fingernails were smudged when they took scrapings. The scrapings were just where she cut her palms with them. She never scratched him.”
    “She had pretty feet,” Graham said.
    “Umm-hmm. Let’s head upstairs,” Crawford said. “The troops are about to muster.”
     
     
     
    Jimmy Price had a lot of equipment—two heavy cases plus his camera bag and tripod. He made a clatter coming through the front door of the Lombard Funeral Home in Atlanta. He was a frail old man and his humor had not been improved by a long taxi ride from the airport in the morning rush.
    An officious young fellow with styled hair hustled him into an office decorated in apricot and cream. The desk was bare except for a sculpture called The Praying Hands.
    Price was examining the fingertips of the praying hands when Mr. Lombard himself came in. Lombard checked Price’s credentials with extreme care.
    “Your Atlanta office or agency or whatever called me, of course, Mr. Price. But last night we had to get the police to remove an obnoxious fellow who was trying to take pictures for The National Tattler , so I’m being very careful. I’m sure you understand. Mr. Price, the bodies were only released to us about one