‘Seventy-five percent?’ Captain Blake this time. ‘That should be good enough for a search against IAFIS.’
‘If there is a match in IAFIS.’ The comment came from Garcia. ‘Then yes, a seventy-five percent partial print should be good enough to identify it.’
‘If there is a match,’ Hunter said, being cautious as always.
‘There is,’ Dr. Slater confirmed.
Everyone inside the UVC Unit’s office frowned at the phone on Hunter’s desk.
‘What do you mean, Doc?’ Garcia asked.
‘I’m sorry about that,’ the doctor replied. ‘Once again, curiosity took over and I took the liberty of checking. Since what we’ve got is only a partial fingerprint, it took IAFIS a little longer than usual to find a match, but the real surprise is . . . it’s not a “he” . . . it’s a “she”.’
Ten
There was a time when matching a fingerprint to any already stored into IAFIS – Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System – would take days, sometimes weeks. Matching a partial fingerprint, even if ‘partial’ meant seventy-five percent or more, was almost impossible, but those days are long gone. Today, from their own smartphones, any detective or forensics agent could run a search against the millions of entries stored into IAFIS and a result would come back in seconds. Partial fingerprints would take a little longer.
Hunter didn’t doubt Dr. Slater, but he had to run his own search against the IAFIS database just to be thorough. Once he’d downloaded the partial fingerprint image he had received and fed it into IAFIS, it took the database just a little over four minutes to find a match. As the arrest file filled Hunter’s computer screen, Garcia and Captain Blake repositioned themselves behind his chair to have a better look.
The large mugshot on the top left-hand corner of the screen showed a young white woman, staring straight at the camera and holding the traditional ‘arrest information’ placard. The look in her eyes was intriguing, to say the least – focused and careless in equal measures. Her buttery blonde hair, although a little disheveled, showed signs that it had once been styled into a side-swept, classic bob. The shape of her face sat midway between a heart and a diamond, with thin lips, almond-shaped eyes that were hazel-blue in color, and a small button nose. Her makeup was a little odd – light on the eyes and lips, but quite heavy on the cheekbones and eyebrows. Not a very flattering look.
‘Angela Wood,’ Captain Blake read from the placard the woman was holding. ‘Twenty-one years old.’ Her attention, together with Hunter and Garcia’s, moved to the information on the arrest sheet and they all read it in silence.
Miss Wood was from Pocatello, Idaho. She had moved to Los Angeles when she was only seventeen years old and got arrested a year later – pickpocketing in Santa Monica Beach. She was caught with six different wallets and four different smartphones. Judge Connor sentenced her to 120 days in jail for her crime. According to the arrest sheet, she lived somewhere in Studio City.
Captain Blake paused, straightened her body and looked at her detectives.
‘This doesn’t really read like the rap sheet of a serial killer with over sixteen heinous murders under her belt, does it?’
‘She’s not our killer, Captain,’ Garcia said. ‘But if her fingerprints were on one of the victim’s Polaroid photos, it means that sometime, probably in the four years that she’s been living in LA, she came into contact with the person we’re after.’
‘Doc,’ Hunter called.
Dr. Slater had stayed on the phone while they’d run their own IAFIS search.
‘Yes, I’m still here.’
‘Have all the Polaroids been dusted for prints,’ Hunter asked. ‘Or just the one from which you retrieved this fingerprint?’
‘The photos have all been dusted and analyzed,’ the doctor confirmed. ‘The pages in the diary, not yet.’
‘And is her fingerprint on all the Polaroids?’
‘No,’ Doctor Slater surprised everyone. ‘Only one out of the sixteen.’
‘Which photo is it?’ Hunter asked. ‘Is it the one from the victim we found last night? The first entry in the diary?’
‘No, it’s not. I don’t really know who the person on the photo is. I haven’t checked it against the diary, but the photo is of a boy who looks to be . . .’ She paused as if weighing her conclusion. ‘ . . . seventeen . . . eighteen, maybe.’
‘Can you do us a favor, Doc?’ Hunter asked. ‘Can you expedite all those photos to us?’
‘Of course. The pages from the journal will follow later today.’
‘Thank you.’ Hunter disconnected from the call and immediately put a call to his research team, asking them to compile a file on Angela Wood. He put the phone down and checked his watch – 11:38 a.m. ‘Want to take a drive to Studio City?’ he asked Garcia.
‘I thought you’d never ask,’ Garcia replied, reaching for his jacket.
Eleven
Colfax Avenue, located north of San Fernando Valley, on the other side of Hollywood Hills, was a three-mile-long straight avenue that led from North Hollywood to Studio City, which was the address that Hunter and Garcia had obtained from Angela Wood’s arrest sheet. The building in question was a pale-fronted, three-story-high structure, directly across the road from a medium-sized independent supermarket and liquor store called ‘The Village Market’.
‘I think this is it,’ Garcia said, as he slowed down to check the number on the building.
‘That’s the one, all right,’ Hunter said, reading from his notes. ‘Apartment 309.’
Garcia pulled up onto a street parking space just past the building. As they took the short flight of stairs that led up to the entrance lobby, they got lucky. The postman had just finished delivering the mail to the building’s postboxes. As he was leaving, he saw Hunter and Garcia coming up the stairs and held the entrance door open for them. That would allow them to go straight up to apartment 309, instead of having to ring the intercom.
Being arrested is a very unpleasant experience, so it’s no surprise that people who have spent any sort of time in jail, people with a rap sheet, tend to be very reluctant to talk to cops, even if they have nothing to hide. Knowing that, the less warning Hunter and Garcia gave Angela Wood that they were coming, the better.
‘Hold on a sec,’ Garcia said. ‘Let me go check the back of the building for a fire escape.’ He shrugged at Hunter. ‘You never know how spooked people might get once you flash a detective’s badge at them.’
Hunter waited while Garcia quickly rounded the building. He was back in less than thirty seconds.
‘Nope,’ he said with a headshake. ‘No fire escape.’
They took the stairs up to the third floor, which dropped them at the beginning of a short and brightly lit corridor with five doors on each side. Apartment 309 was the last door on the right. Hunter gave it three hard knocks and they waited.
Twenty seconds went by with no reply.
Hunter knocked again and he and Garcia moved their ears a little closer to the door.
This time they heard some noise coming from inside, but they still had to wait another fifteen seconds for a reply.