by Alec Peche
“I assume the FBI fingerprinted the florist shop?”
“Yeah, they did, but like the bank, the difficulty was the wide number of prints in a public business.”
“Do you have the prints collected by location?”
“Yes as part the chain of custody documentation, we indicate where the fingerprint has been collected from at a location.”
“Is there a bathroom door, computer mouse, or backdoor on the list? I would think those areas would most likely have the owner’s prints.
Damian could hear Natalie shuffling paper in the background as silence reigned on the phone. Then she said, “Looks like they have prints from those surfaces, perhaps about twenty to thirty in total. Again how do we weed out the prints we don’t care about?”
“Do you think we could get into the donut shop and take prints off the surfaces there and then see if there are any matches? I understand that prints can live on some surfaces for up to forty years.”
“You and I could probably do it, but I won’t get the crime scene team there I don’t think. I haven’t done prints since I was in the police academy. Do you have access to the Live Scan program that matches them?”
“I do. You get us in and I’ll help you collect prints off the surfaces.”
“Okay, I believe the shop is open for another hour, so I’m going to go talk to the owner now. I’d love to get prints when the business is closed, which might be soon. Can you get here quickly if the owner agrees to let us do it today? Like you might have to leave in the next fifteen minutes.”
“Yeah, I can help today. Traffic to get there will be much worst tomorrow so right now is good. I’ll collect the items we need and be ready to leave when you call. If you could come pick me up at a marina in Redwood City I could cut perhaps thirty minutes off my commute.”
“Let me see what the owner says and I just might be picking you up there in soon.”
“Life is always an adventure with you, Damian.”
“Back at you, Natalie.”
The call ended and Damian walked through his lab gathering supplies. He’d been playing with fingerprints on different surfaces and so he thought he was as prepared as he could be. Then he had a new idea for Hermione’s identity. What if he tried to match her DNA to a database. Her parents had managed to erase their existence from all databases, but maybe he could find a match in an aunt or uncle or cousin. Once he got beyond Natalie’s quest for prints in the donut shop, he’d see what he could find in Hermione’s bedroom that might contain DNA - perhaps a hair was on the floor in her bedroom or his bathroom. It would be so much simpler if the kid would just trust him, but he guessed she was working against a lifetime of training to trust no one but her parents.
A short time later, he had word from Natalie that she was on her way to Redwood City to pick him if he would provide an address. He did that and hopped aboard his speedy two seater boat and bounced across the bay, likely over the speed limit, towards the marina he scouted out in Redwood City. He tied his boat up as a guest dock and let the harbor master know he’d be back in a few hours. As he walked out of the harbor master’s office, he saw Natalie pulling up. He entered the car and she turned around to head south to Willow Glen. The owner would be closing in fifteen minutes and he generally stayed an hour tidying everything up so it was ready the next day. He indicated he was willing to wait for them to finish. Damian decided to order a couple of dozen donuts from the man to be sent to the closest police department building by way of thanks for staying behind for them.
They arrived back to find the owner waiting for them to enter before he locked the door behind them and put the close sign in the window. They introduced themselves to Mr. Kim and after a few questions asked and answered by both parties he returned to closing his business for the day while Natalie and Damian went to work finding fingerprints.
Shining a ultra-violet light, their area of interest had a surplus of prints. They discussed what they found as Damian shined the light on the various knobs and surfaces inside the small bedroom. Natalie relayed the furniture set-up that Mrs. Ho had seen in her tenant’s room. Fortunately when Mr. Kim took over they had no used the room for anything other than storage. Because of the room’s purpose, he hadn’t bothered painting it like he did the more public areas including the bathroom she’d used. They had already decided not to try and find prints in the bathroom as it seemed that potentially thousands had used the room and it had been painted so the likelihood of finding Mrs. Joseph’s prints was next to nil. After discussing the placement of the furniture, Natalie pantomimed where she might have touched the wall if she lived in the little room.
An hour later, they thanked the owner for access to the room, bought all his unsold donuts that day and left. They made two sets of fingerprints - one for Damian to take home and analyze, and the other for Natalie to send to SJPD for fingerprinting once she got Detective Shimoda’s approval for the analyses. She expected no issue with the detective, it was just that it would take time to go through the official steps. Natalie had built her consultant reputation by solving two, twenty-year old cold murder cases; if she solved a nearly ten year old bank robbery that the department and FBI were unable to solve, then she’d had her retirement gig reputation cemented as an excellent detective and consultant.
They dropped the donuts at Natalie’s car and then had a conversation on the hair salon. In the end they decided not to try and get prints there as they had painted and changed door knobs with each ownership change, so the odds were against them getting any quality evidence.
Natalie pulled into the parking area at the marina and Damian got out, bag in hand. He’d promised to call her as soon as he had anything interesting. As he wasn’t an expert, they would still have to wait on the official results, but it would allow the investigation to move forward if they could identify who Arielle Joseph was and where she was located now.
Chapter 23
It was late in the afternoon when he returned to the island, unloading his supplies and the fingerprint evidence. He was settling in to work at his lab when he heard the alarm go off for Ariana’s house. He quickly looked at the monitors and discovered a man walking up from the bay towards the house and one parked at the end of her driveway.
He called Ariana’s cell and when she answered, asked, “Are you home?”
“No Hermione and I are met up with a friend of hers and her mother in town at my favorite tea house. Why?”
“There are two men trying to get into your house. One at the end of the driveway and the other docked a boat. I’m going to call the police as one of the men should shortly be trapped in a net.”
“I’ll call them, hold on,” Ariana said and placed him on hold while she called 9-1-1. She told the police that her security system alarmed and she could see burglars trying to break into her house from both the road and the bay. They collected her particulars and said they would dispatch officers immediately. She deactivated the driveway safeguards as she didn’t want her local police hit with a pepper juice shower.
Connecting back to Damian she said, “The police are going to dispatch a patrol car. So I think I’ll head home. Did the man end up in a net?”
“Yes, and he’s fighting his way out with a knife. I’m going to hop in my boat and head over as well. I’ll bring a new net to reset your system.”
They ended their call and Ariana stepped back inside the café to collect Hermione and head home. After a brief explanation to the other girl and her mother, they left. Ariana wanted to make sure the police arrived before she and Hermione did so they cautiously approached their road hoping to see the police in front of them. She looked down the street and saw nothing, but then she looked in her rear view mirror and saw a patrol car approaching with its lights on, but no siren. She pulled to the right side of the road to let the car pass, but held her hand out to stop them. Once they stopped, she told them she was the one that called and they proceeded forward with the patrol car in the lead.
“I
f I had been thinking, I probably should have left you with Megan’s mother rather than expose you to the danger here. Sorry about that,” Ariana said.
“I’m safe with you here and I might have been in danger with Megan’s mom. What if this burglary was just a diversion to get you to run home but I was the real target in town?”
Ariana looked at Hermione and let out a small laugh, “Nice try kiddo, I can see you’ll excel in a creative writing class.”
Hermione just grinned in response as they pulled up to the house behind the patrol car.
They got serious as they approached the back yard. They found a net sitting on the ground that had been shredded by a knife, but was now empty and a boat just a few yards out from the dock leaving, a man looking back over his shoulder. Ariana aimed her phone at the boat and took a picture, zooming in for a second picture as the man turned his back to avoid being photographed. Hermione called Damian to give him a description of the boat leaving their dock in hopes that he could follow it and find out more about the man.
One of the patrolmen walked over to Ariana and said, “You’re the owner that called us?”
Ariana nodded and said, “I received notice that my security system was being breached and I knew there was a man stuck inside that net,” pointing to the cargo net with an obvious hole in it. “I knew he’d arrived by boat and there was supposed to be a second thug at the top of my driveway.”
“That’s a very sophisticated alarm system. Were you expecting trouble?” the officer asked.
“I have a daughter who I’m trying to protect and it appears I was right to take precautions. Did you take a picture of the retreating boat so you find out who the assailant is?”
“Ma’am, can you tell me what was stolen from your property today?”
“I don’t believe anything was stolen as according to my alarm system, he didn’t make it into the house.”
“Maybe he was a boater who ran into trouble and was seeking aid,” the officer suggested.
Ariana couldn’t believe what she was hearing, “And he ran away from a clearly marked officer of the law because why? I’m just not following your line of thinking.”
“Ma’am, there’s more than meets the eye here. This is a wealthy town with fancy security systems, but not one of them has cargo nets to capture suspects. Why do you want to meet these criminals?”
Ariana was becoming exasperated with the cop’s questions and well, yeah he was right there was more going on than she planned to admit to.
“I don’t want to meet them, I was planning on having you release them from the net into your capable hands so you could arrest them for trespassing. I don’t want to meet them rather I want to make sure they never come back,” Ariana said. The statement was partially true, she did want the cops to meet them and take them away, but she wanted to know their identity first.
The cop gave her a blank stare indicating he wasn’t buying what she said, but there would be no further questions. Instead he mused to his fellow officer, “I’ve never seen an attempted burglary by boat, have you?”
The other officer shook his head indicating he also had never seen a trespasser leave by water.
“Have you had any word back from anyone on the identification of the boat and its occupant?” Ariana asked.
“No ma’am that may take a few days as we put word out to the various marinas around the bay.”
The other officer than said, “I suppose we could look for prints on the cargo net, but I don’t know how we would distinguish between your perpetrator and the security person that installed it for you or the people that made or sold the cargo net.”
Ariana had also thought of that and came to the same conclusion, “Sadly I agree with you. Will you let me know if you find information of the boat?”
“Yes ma’am,” and the two officers soon wrapped things up and departed.
Hermione had been monitoring her phone during the exchange and Ariana looked over at her and asked, “Has Damian caught up with the boat?”
“He caught sight of it and was following it, but it ducked into one of the many marinas across the way in Marin and he lost tract of it. He wants to know if you have a name on it and can send him the picture you took.”
Ariana looked at the pictures she snapped of the departing boat forwarding them to Damian once she confirmed they were in focus. She tried enlarging a few of them to see if she captured the name of the boat or its call letter or the driver’s face. The first shot had the best picture of the driver’s face as he apparently noticed her camera and turned his head away after that. She couldn’t read the name of the boat or its call letters as the water churned up by the motor covered it.
After sending him the pictures she called him knowing he was likely going slow enough to have a conversation.
“Sorry my pictures weren’t better.”
“Kudos to you for thinking quickly enough to take the pictures and maybe I can identify the guy in the first picture. At least I know the boat’s color and engine as I look for it through these series of berths in the marinas.”
“How many marinas are you going to have to look through?”
“I saw the boat just as it was rounding Peninsula Point and I lost sight of it until I rounded the same point and there are a lot of boats out here today so it may be as few as one or as many as twenty docks. Then I’ll need to add restaurants docks where boaters tie up as well so this might take me a while.”
“Are you safe?”
“What do you mean?” Damian asked puzzled. “My boat isn’t going to overturn or anything, the water is calm in this area.”
“I mean do you think he saw you chasing him and he might try to shoot you or something?” Ariana said lamely.
“I don’t think he looked back once he cleared the point because there were enough boats to try and fit in with and he didn’t see you jump in your pontoon to chase him; so he doesn’t realize anyone is following him. So no, I don’t think he’ll be standing on the edge of a dock looking for me and then try shooting me.”
“Ah, okay. Keep us posted here. The police left suspicious of my security system.”
“Are you both wearing your vests?” Damian asked and then checking something on his cell phone said, “I see the system is still disarmed. Why don’t you two go inside and re-arm it until I get there.”
“We’re wearing our vests. We could join you in the search,” Ariana suggested.
He hesitated and thought about the offer, and then said, “Okay, hopefully I’ll find the boat before you get here, but if not we’ll plan our strategy then. We have about three hours of daylight left, but I don’t think it will take me that long on my own to search the berths for the boat. Fortunately, so many people have sailboats, yachts, or pontoon boats that I’ll be able to rule out the boats as I drive by. Call me when you reach this area and we’ll meet.”
Ariana ended the call and said to Hermione who had been listening to her side of the story, “He’s agreed to have us help. I didn’t expect him to agree as he’s always so overprotective of us.”
“Cool,” Hermione replied, ready for an adventure.
“We need to leave before he changes his mind. Let’s run inside, use the bathroom, grab some drinks and snacks, and jackets and be back at this spot in say three minutes,” Ariana said as she sprinted into the house.
True to her word she was seconds faster than the teenager in returning to the spot with her items in hand, but Hermione got bonus points for thinking of bringing her binoculars which would aid in the search.
Covering their heads and adding jackets gave them a little bit of a disguise. As Ariana was tooling the boat over toward Marin, she asked Hermione, “The man might have noticed this boat, before he left our dock. Let’s hide the canopy so the boat can’t be identified.” Stopping the boat, the two women folded down the canopy. Fortunately the pontoon was a plain white color and so would blend in well with other pontoons out on the bay.
Fifteen minutes la
ter they were pulling aside Damian’s boat just outside one of the marinas. Ariana passed him water and a few snacks and then indicated that Hermione had binoculars. He hadn’t spotted the boat yet, so they would start at the far end of the continuous community of yachts clubs and marinas. An hour later they met and admitted they hadn’t located the trespasser’s boat.
“If he was smart he would have watched me approach the first marina and once I was out of view, blocked by the height of other boats; he could head out on to the bay and fit in with all the boats out there,” Damian said. “We could make a second pass but we’d probably be wasting our time.”
The women nodded and then Adriana said, “The police didn’t dust for prints on the cargo net as they said there were likely too many prints on them from manufacture and set-up. What are your thoughts about that?”
“Having just gone through a fingerprint exercise with Natalie on the bank robbery case, I would tend to agree with the cops of the likelihood of the prints being of little use.”
“They were kind of snarky about the trespasser and the cargo net.”
“Why?” Damian asked.
“I think they thought I was hiding something given the sophistication of my alarm system. He said he’d seen a lot of security systems throughout Belvedere and no one had a cargo net to capture suspects and therefore I must have something to hide.”
“That is kind of snarky. Oh well, he was there when we needed him,” Damian said. “Speaking of which, let’s head back to your house and I’ll get a new net set up. Once I return home, I’ll see if I can identify the guy from either the security camera or from your camera shot.”
A short time later, Damian was putting the pieces in place for a new cargo net. He stopped and surveyed her lot. One guy had tried to enter from the driveway, and now another thug had come from the dock. That left the two side yards as the next avenue of access to the house. He had traps in place there and he hoped these guys had learned their lesson having first been sprayed with pepper juice than by hauled up in the air by a cargo net. He really wished he knew what they were after. Did they want Hermione dead or alive?
