“Yep. The guy you’re looking for isn’t small.”

Leigh had described her attacker as “big” but that was a relative term. Leigh was only five feet four, and abject fear had a way of messing with people’s perceptions.

Now Brandon knew that her description was accurate.

“What’s the bad news?” he asked.

“The bad news is that this is a new boot. Or at least, it hasn’t been worn a lot. He didn’t find much in the way of individual wear patterns. So, assuming you ever do find a suspect who has a pair of these boots, it could be hard to trace them back to this exact print.”

Brandon refused to take this as bad news. When—not if—they tracked down Leigh’s attacker, Brandon planned to have a lot more evidence lined up than a single shoe print. This guy was going down.

Jane tipped her head to the side. “Can I ask you something?”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Why is this one high priority? I thought you and Antonio were working that missing-person case.”

“There’s a possibility this is related.”

Her eyebrows tipped up. “How?”

“The woman who was attacked is the missing woman’s lawyer.”

“Hmm. Well, in that case, you’ll be glad to see what else we found. Come look.”

She led him to the fuming chamber, which looked like a big aquarium. The lid had been removed, and Brandon’s pulse picked up when he saw a pair of clear latex gloves inside.

“Where’d those come from?” he asked.

“Detective Tate sent them in. One of the CSIs recovered them from a dumpster about a block away from the crime scene.”

Damn. Brandon had underestimated the guy. And now he wanted to know exactly where this dumpster was, because the attacker had probably parked his vehicle nearby.

“Tate didn’t mention the gloves?” Jane asked.

“No.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “Maybe he didn’t want you hounding him for lab results all weekend.”

She was probably right. He had a reputation for being demanding, but that was the only way to do this work. Every case was on a clock.

“I’ll show you what I found,” she said, reaching over to turn off the overhead light. Then she switched on a spotlight attached to a metal arm and directed it down at the gloves.

“It’s hard to see right now, but I’ve developed a good set of prints.”

“These are inside out?” he asked.

“Right.”

“The other side of the gloves—”

“I found a trace of blood,” she said, reading his mind. “I swabbed it and sent it to the DNA lab.”

Leigh’s blood.

He hated the thought of it. But in terms of forensic evidence, the gloves were a gold mine.