Provided Barry Shales had touched the bullets with his bare fingers. Which wasn’t the case. Sachs, goggled, was blasting the slug with an alternative light source wand. “None.”

“What about trace?”

Cooper was going over the slug now. “Bits of glass dust from the window.” He then used tweezers to remove some minuscule bits of material. He examined the specimens closely under the microscope. “Vegetation,” Rhyme postulated, looking at the monitor.

“Yes, that’s right,” the tech said. He ran a chemical analysis. “It’s urushiol. A skin-irritating allergen.” He looked up. “Poison ivy, sumac?”

“Ah, the poisonwood tree. Outside the window of the Kill Room. The bullet must’ve passed through a leaf before it hit Moreno.”

The tech also found a fiber, identical to those making up Moreno’s shirt, and traces of blood, which matched the activist’s blood in type.

Cooper said, “Aside from that and the ejecta, there’s nothing else on the bullet.”

Rhyme turned his new chair to face the evidence boards. “Ron, if you could update our opus with your fine Catholic school handwriting? I need to optic the big picture,” he added, unable to resist a bit of jargon worthy of their leader in absentia, Captain Bill Myers.

CHAPTER 58

Robert Moreno Homicide

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