Murder in the Courthouse by Nancy Grace Page B

a trial lawyer. If any defendant was stupid enough to leave them behind, they had the same effect as a giant neon sign screaming out “I did it!” for the world to see. They could also match up to hand and palm. Even ridges from the foot could be traced . . . basically comparing the raised portion of the skin, practically invisible to the human eye, but not to the microscope.
    Fingerprint impressions could be left behind on surfaces simply by the natural secretions of sweat, ever present on the skin. Even though the word “latent” actually meant hidden, in the crime-scene world it meant any impression left by fingers or palms on a surface, visible or invisible at the time it was left. Different fingerprint patterns, each and every loop, whorl, and arch could be used in evidence at trial.
    If crime-scene techs picked them up, that is. If Trimble had wrestled with the door handle, it would have only complicated things.
    It was hard enough to ascertain and lift latent prints with no interference whatsoever. Latent prints often exhibit only a portion of the fingertip and can easily be smeared, distorted, or even overlapped by prints from the same or different persons.
    The crew converged around Billings.
    â€œStart with the car, the handles, the entire side closest to the kitchen door, then the other side just in case a perp was hiding out over there. Then, of course, the kitchen doorknob, all around it.”
    â€œWhat about the garage door remote?” Hailey suggested it quietly to Billings, who was standing next to her. She didn’t want to appear to upstage him.
    â€œGood thinking, Hailey. Any other ideas?” He asked it as if he genuinely wanted her thoughts.
    â€œAs a matter of fact, yes.” She walked across the garage toward the side of the door, looking up at the door’s chain mechanism. “Bet this was an older model, no automatic reverse.”
    â€œRight. An automatic reverse,” Finch thought out loud as he, too, looked up toward the far upper corner of the door. “The feature that causes a closing door to reverse if it detects something in its path.”
    â€œExactly,” Hailey went on. “I can’t tell from here whether there is one or not; it would probably be part of the mechanism itself. And if there is an electric eye, like a sensor, it can be programmed to override.”
    â€œAnything else?” Billings asked her without the least hint of sarcasm.
    â€œWell, yeah. Look at the lower edge of door itself right above where his body is. The rubber trim is cut away in just that one spot. It’s left the sheet metal exposed. If he was simply trapped under the rubber edge of the door, at most he’d have been asphyxiated. But the sharp metal actually cut into the guy’s torso. That’s an awful lot of coincidences.”
    Billings was listening intently, jotting more notes in his notebook. She was right. There was a good three feet of the rubber edging gone from the bottom of the door and by the looks of it, it had been cleanly and precisely cut away.
    â€œAnd what about the manual device, the in-garage mechanism he would have used if things had gone wrong. Maybe the perp used that. And, oh yeah, the driver’s side sun visor. I see Turner clipped his garage door remote to that; maybe the perp fumbled and touched the visor. I mean, hey, it’s worth a shot . . . you never know where you might just get a fingerprint.” Hailey was looking into the car though the front window.
    Leaving the immediate vicinity of the car, she began to prowl around the garage, staring intently at everything from power tools to golf clubs to a bicycle pump. Fincher knew what she was doing . . . looking for something . . . anything that might have rendered the blow to Alton Turner’s head.
    â€œYou’re right. Maybe the guy did use Turner’s own remote.” Billings bent down over her shoulder to look into Alton’s car as