What?

“Shift it again,” I said, leaning close to the baby.

Ryan did.

Yes. There. Where the right shoulder met the curve of the baby’s neck. Not so much a spot as an absence of luminosity, a dullness compared to the surrounding skin.

A few gray cells offered up a suggestion.

Hardly daring to hope, I crossed to the counter, grabbed a hand lens, and viewed the irregularity under magnification.

“Look at this,” I said.

“CÂLISSE,” LAMANCHE WHISPERED.

“You’re thinking print.” Ryan’s tone was so flat, I wondered if he was dubious or simply trying to be objective.

“ALS?” Pomier asked.

“Please,” I said.

“I’ll get the powder,” Tanenbaum said.

Both techs left, reappeared shortly. Pomier was carrying goggles and a black box with a handle on top and a flexible wand projecting from one end. Tanenbaum had a fingerprint kit.

“May we go dark for a few minutes?” I called down to Pelletier.

“No problem. Madame is going for X-rays.”

As I pointed out the area in question, Tanenbaum dusted bright orange powder onto the baby’s neck.

Pomier hooked up the CrimeScope CS-16-500, an alternate light source capable of providing wavelengths ranging from infrared to ultraviolet. When done, he distributed orange-tinted plastic goggles. LaManche, Ryan, Tanenbaum, and I donned them.

“Ready?” Pomier asked.

LaManche nodded.

Pomier killed the overheads, slipped on his goggles, adjusted dials on the CrimeScope, then positioned the wand over the baby.

Slowly, the light crept up the pale little feet. It probed the hills and valleys of the perfect toes, the knees, the groin, the belly. Lit the hollow from which the shriveled umbilical cord hung.

Here and there, filaments lit up like hot white wires. Hairs? Fibers? Maybe useful, maybe not. I tweezed and transferred each into a plastic vial.

Finally, the beam swept the gentle curve where the baby’s right shoulder met its neck. Pomier twisted a knob to return to the lower end of the green spectrum, then slowly moved up the wavelengths.

And there it was. An oval composed of concentric loops and whirls.

We all leaned closer.

“Bonjour,” Pomier said in the darkness.

“I’ll be damned.”

Ryan’s voice at my ear made me aware of decidedly nonmorgue smells. Bay Rum cologne, starched cotton, a hint of male perspiration.

Feeling awkward, I straightened. “Because the skin is so soft and finely textured, it’s easier to get a latent from an infant than from an adult,” I said crisply.

I heard rattling and knew Tanenbaum was placing an orange filter over the lens of her digital camera. We all waited out a long series of clicks. The next sequence of noises told me she was using an adhesive lifter to transfer the print.

“Je l’ai,” she said after several minutes. “I’ve got it.”

Though we worked another half hour in the dark, our efforts revealed nothing else of interest. Still, we were all pumped as hell.

Pomier restored the lights, then went to inquire about the use of the CT scanner at St. Mary’s Hospital.