“What’s your blood type, Terry? Do you know?”
Terry looked at Howie, who shrugged, then back at Ralph. “I ought to. I give six times a year at the Red Cross, because it’s pretty rare.”
“AB positive?”
Terry blinked. “How did you know that?” And then, realizing what the answer must be: “But not that rare. If you want really rare, you want AB negative. One per cent of the population. The Red Cross has people with that type on speed-dial, believe me.”
“When it comes to rare, I always think of fingerprints,” Samuels remarked, as if just passing the time of day. “I suppose because they come up so often in court.”
“Where they rarely figure in the jury’s decision,” Howie said.
Samuels ignored him. “No two sets exactly alike. There are even minute variations in the prints of identical twins. You don’t happen to have an identical twin, do you, Terry?”
“You’re not saying you have mine at the scene where the Peterson boy was killed, are you?” Terry’s expression was pure incredulity. Ralph had to give it to him; he was a hell of an actor, and apparently meant to play the string out right to the end.
“We’ve got so many fingerprints I can barely count them,” Ralph said. “They’re all over the white van you used to abduct the Peterson boy. They’re on the boy’s bike, which we found in the back of the van. They’re on the toolbox that was in the van. They’re all over the Subaru you switched to behind Shorty’s Pub.” He paused. “And they’re on the branch that was used to sodomize the Peterson boy, an attack so vicious that the internal injuries alone might well have killed him.”
“No need for fingerprint powder or UV light on those,” Samuels said. “Those prints are in the boy’s blood.”
This was where most perps—like ninety-five per cent—would break down, lawyer or no lawyer. Not this one. Ralph saw shock and amazement on the man’s face, but no guilt.
Howie rallied. “You have prints. Fine. It wouldn’t be the first time fingerprints were planted.”
“A few, maybe,” Ralph said. “But seventy? Eighty? And in blood, on the weapon itself?”
“We also have a chain of witnesses,” Samuels said. He began ticking them off on his fingers. “You were seen accosting Peterson in the parking lot of Gerald’s Fine Groceries. You were seen putting his bicycle in the back of the van you used. He was seen getting into the van with you. You were seen exiting the woods where the murder took place, covered with blood. I could go on, but my mother always told me that I should save some for later.”
“Eyewitnesses are rarely reliable,” Howie said. “The fingerprints are iffy, but eyewitnesses . . .” He shook his head.
Ralph jumped in. “I’d agree, at least in most cases. Not in this one. I interviewed someone recently who said Flint City is really just a small town. I don’t know if I buy that completely, but the West Side is pretty tightly knit, and Mr. Maitland here is widely known. Terry, the woman who ID’d you at Gerald’s is a neighbor, and the girl who saw you coming out of the woods in Figgis Park knows you very well, not just because she lives a little way down from you, on Barnum Street, but because you once brought back her lost dog.”
“June Morris?” Terry was looking at Ralph with frank disbelief. “Junie?”
“There are others,” Samuels said. “Many.”
“Willow?” Terry sounded out of breath, as if he’d been punched. “Her, too?”
“Many,” Samuels repeated.
“Every one of them picked you out of six-packs,” Ralph said. “No hesitation.”
“And was the photo of my client perhaps wearing a Golden Dragons cap and a shirt with a big C on it?” Howie asked. “Was that one perhaps tapped by the finger of the questioning officer?”
“You know better,” Ralph said. “At least I hope you do.”
Terry said, “This is a nightmare.”
Samuels smiled sympathetically. “I understand that. And all you have to do to end it is to tell us why you did it.”
As if there might be a reason on God’s green earth that any sane person could understand, Ralph thought.
“It might make a difference.” Samuels was almost wheedling now. “But you should do it before the DNA comes back. We’ve got plenty, and when it matches those cheek swabs . . .” He shrugged.
“Tell us,” Ralph said. “I don’t know if it was temporary insanity, or something you did in a fugue state, or a sexual compulsion, or just what, but tell us.” He heard his voice rising, thought about clamping down on it, then thought what the hell. “Be a man and tell us!”