Scarpetta examines the dirty clothes inside the laundry basket. On top is a T-shirt that is loosely folded, and with a gloved hand, she picks it up and lets it fall open. It’s damp and streaked with dirt. She gets up and looks inside the sink. The stainless steel is spotted from splashing water, and a small amount of water is pooled around the drain.

“I’m wondering if he used this to clean the window,” Scarpetta says. “It still feels damp, and it’s dirty, as if someone used it as a cleaning rag. I’d like to seal it in a paper bag, submit it to the labs.”

“To look for what?” Becky asks that question again.

“If he held this, we might get his DNA. Could be trace evidence. I guess we’d better decide which labs.”

“SLED’s fine and dandy but will take forever. If you can help us with your labs?”

“That’s why we’ve got them.” Scarpetta looks at the alarm keypad near the door that leads into the hallway. “Maybe he disarmed the alarm when he came in. I don’t think we should assume he didn’t. An LCD touchpad instead of buttons. A good surface for prints. And maybe DNA.”

“That would mean he knew her if he unset the alarm. Makes sense when you think about how long he was in the house.”

“It would mean he’s familiar with this place. It doesn’t mean he knew her,” Scarpetta says. “What’s the code?”

“What we call the ‘one, two, three, four, walk right in my door’ code. Probably preset, and she never bothered to change it. Let me make sure about the labs before we start receipting everything to you. I need to ask Tommy.”

He’s in the foyer with Lucy, and Becky asks him about the labs, and he says it’s amazing what’s going private these days. Some departments are even hiring private cops.

“We will be,” Lucy says, handing Scarpetta a pair of yellow-tinted goggles. “We had them in Florida.”

Becky gets interested in the hard case open on the floor. She looks at the five flashlight-shaped forensic high-intensity light sources, the nickel nine-volt batteries, the goggles, and multiport charger. “I’ve been begging the sheriff to get us one of these portable Crime-lites. Each one of them’s a different bandwidth, right?”

“Violet, blue, blue-green, and green spectra,” Lucy says. “And this handy broad-bandwidth white light”—she picks it up—“with interchangeable filters in blue, green, and red for contrast enhancement.”

“Works good?”

“Body fluids, fingerprints, drug residues, fibers, or trace evidence. Yup. Works good.”