Sellitto said, "There was a message painted on the wall behind his desk, where they found the body. It said 'You call us wops, you take our homes.' It was written in Mah's blood, by the way."
Nodding, Deng said, "Major rivalry between the third-generation Mafiosi--you know, the Sopranos crowd--and the tongs. Chinese gambling and massage parlors--some drugs too--they've just about kicked the Italians out of Manhattan O.C."
The demographics of organized crime, Rhyme knew, were as fluid as those of the city itself.
"Anyway," Coe said, "those people off the Dragon, they're going to dig underground as fast as they can. They'd avoid somebody public like Mah. I would."
"Unless they were desperate," Sachs said. "Which they are." She looked at Rhyme. "Maybe the Ghost killed Mah and made it look like an O.C. hit. Should I run the scene?"
Rhyme debated for a moment. Yes, the families were desperate but Rhyme had already seen the immigrants' resourcefulness, presumably the work of Sam Chang. It would leave too many trails to go to somebody like Mah for help, he assessed. "No, I need you here. But send a special team from Crime Scene and tell them to copy us on the crime scene report stat."
To Eddie Deng, Rhyme said, "Call Dellray and Peabody at the Federal Building. Let them know about the killing."
"Yessir," Deng said.
Dellray had gone downtown to arrange for the extra agents from the two relevant federal jurisdictions in New York--the Southern and Eastern, which covered Manhattan and Long Island. He was also wielding his influence to get the SPEC-TAC team on site, which Washington was reluctant to do; the special unit was generally reserved for major hostage standoffs and embassy takeovers, not for manhunts. Still, Rhyme knew, Dellray was a tough man to say no to and if anybody could get the much-needed tactical force up here it'd be the lanky agent.
Rhyme maneuvered the chair back to the evidence and the whiteboards.
Nothing, nothing, nothing . . .
What else can we do? he wondered. What haven't we exhausted? Scanning the board . . . Finally he said, "Let's look at the blood some more." He looked over the samples that Sachs had found: that from the injured immigrant, the woman with the broken or gashed arm, hand or shoulder.
Lincoln Rhyme loved blood as a forensic tool. It was easy to spot, it stuck like glue to all kinds of surfaces, it retained its important forensic information for years.
The history of blood in criminal investigation, in fact, largely reflects the history of forensic science itself.
The earliest effort--in the mid-1800s--to use blood as evidence focused simply on classifying it, that is, determining if an unknown substance was indeed blood and not, say, dried brown paint. Fifty years later the focus was on identifying blood as human, as opposed to animal. Not long after that detectives began looking for a way to differentiate blood--break it down into a limited number of categories--and scientists responded by creating the process of blood typing (the A, B, O system as well as the MN and the Rh systems), which narrows down the number of sources. In the sixties and seventies forensic scientists sought to go one step further--to individuate the blood, that is, trace it back to a single individual, like a fingerprint. Early efforts at doing this biochemically--identifying enzymes and proteins--could eliminate many individuals as the source, but not all. It wasn't until DNA typing that true individuation was achieved.
Classification, identification, differentiation, individuation . . . that's criminalistics in a nutshell.
But there was more to blood than linking it to an individual. The way it fell on surfaces at crime scenes--spatter, it was called--provided great information about the nature of the attack. And Lincoln Rhyme often examined the content of blood to determine what it could tell about the individual who'd shed it.
"Let's see if our injured woman's got a drug habit or's taking some rare medicine. Call the M.E.'s office and have them do a complete workup. I want to know everything that's in her bloodstream."
As Cooper was talking to the office Sellitto's phone rang and he took the call.
Rhyme could see in the detective's face that he was receiving some bad news.
"Oh, Jesus . . .oh, no . . . "
The criminalist sensed an odd fibrillation in the core of his body--an area where he could by rights feel nothing at all. People who are paralyzed often feel phantom pain from limbs and parts of their body that cannot have any sensation. Rhyme not only had experienced this feeling but he'd felt shock and adrenaline rushes too, when his logical mind knew that this was impossible.
"What, Lon?" Sachs asked.
"Fifth Precinct again. Chinatown," he said, wincing. "Another killing. This time it's definitely the Ghost." He glanced at Rhyme and shook his head. "Man, it's not good."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, they're saying it's fucking unpleasant, Linc."
Unpleasant was not a word that one heard often from an NYPD homicide detective, especially Lon Sellitto, as hardened a cop as you'd ever find.
He wrote down some information then hung up the phone and glanced at Sachs. "Suit up, Officer, you've got a scene to run."
GHOSTKILL
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