Forensics Squad Unleashed (3 page)

Mason bites his lip. “Is the cyclist all right?”

I nudge Mason. “News flash. It’s a made-up case. There wasn’t really a cyclist. So you don’t have to worry about him.”

“Actually, it’s an excellent question, Mason,” Samantha says. “And it also demonstrates your compassion for others.” Is it my imagination, or does she shoot me a stern look when she says that? I hope she doesn’t think I lack compassion for others. It’s only Mason I lack compassion for. “We want you to take this case as seriously as you would a real one, and information about the victim is always important. For your information, the cyclist remains under observation at the hospital. Had he remembered to wear his helmet, he probably would have been okay.”

I don’t bother writing that down, though Stacey seems to be recording every word. She has the smallest handwriting I have ever seen. Maybe it’s a way of saving trees. I feel slightly guilty that I am already on page three of my notebook.

When we get outside, the others crowd around the bicycle. Nico and Muriel argue as they snap photographs. Muriel elbows her brother. “Move! I’m trying to get a closeup shot.”

“Me too!”

“I’m older than you are!”

“Three minutes doesn’t count,” Nico mutters, but I guess they do, because he moves over.

Mason and Stacey take notes. Nathaniel’s notebook is open, but as far as I can tell, he has not written anything down.

“Hey, hey, no touching!” Lloyd calls out when Mason squats down and runs his fingers over the dented bike bell. “You’re tampering with the evidence!”

I am the only one who thinks to check the inside of the car. Samantha is behind me, and I can sense her reading over my shoulder as I record my observations. I hope she is impressed.
Six beer bottles, four open, on the floor, passenger side.

I take three sets of photos, including overall photos of the whole scene, mid-range photographs of the car floor and close-ups of the open beer bottles.

Afterward, when I tell the others about the beer bottles, Samantha points out that the driver might have been drinking, which could explain why he or she fled the scene.

First a missing bike helmet and now beer bottles? If you ask me, it’s a suspicious combination. Forensics Camp better be about solving cases—not about life lessons for thirteen-year-olds.

The others do not seem to notice—or mind—that Samantha and Lloyd have slipped in the life lessons.

“Whose car is it anyway?” Nathaniel asks. “Once we know that, we’ll know who did it.”

“Not necessarily,” Samantha tells him. “The police ran the license plate in their system. It turns out this car was stolen.”

“Which means,” Lloyd adds, “we’re going to have to dust for fingerprints. Any chance you guys might be interested in learning how to do that?”

We all say
yes
or
of course
at the same time.

At improv camp, we each performed a four-minute improv act. At planetarium camp, we saw one of Saturn’s rings. At cooking camp, we learned to make profiteroles.

But learning to dust for fingerprints is better than all that other stuff combined.

I might even be able to put up with a few life lessons along the way.

FOUR

We are back upstairs, sitting at a long rectangular table in the Department of Forensic Science conference room. Because our chairs swivel, we cannot resist testing them out. Nico is the only one who cannot stop. “Nico,” Samantha says, but not unkindly, “if you could stop swiveling. Please. You’re making me dizzy.”

“Okay, sorry about that. I’ll try.” Nico gives his chair one last swivel.

“Solving a crime is like solving a puzzle. The pieces need to fit—and there’s no use forcing them,” Samantha tells us. I think about how when I was a kid, Patti and I used to try jamming puzzle pieces together. Samantha is right. It never worked.

Nathaniel is eyeing a poster showing a cross section of a skull. Nico has stopped swiveling, but now he is twirling his pen, first in one direction, then the other. Maybe I should add those things to my list of observations.

Samantha wants us to take notes about something called Locard’s Exchange Principle. Edmond Locard, one of the world’s first forensic scientists, lived between 1877 and 1966, and was known as France’s Sherlock Holmes. “Locard’s Exchange Principle states that the perpetrator of a crime will bring something into the crime scene and take something from it,” Samantha explains. “Or as Locard once said, ‘Every contact leaves a trace.’”

Stacey nods as if she has just learned something really deep. “It’s the same with our planet,” she says. “Humans use up natural resources and leave traces—like plastic waste.” We already know how Stacey feels about plastic.

“That’s an interesting connection,” Samantha tells Stacey. “I like how you think.” The compliment makes Stacey beam. I get the feeling Stacey would like Samantha to say more about how smart she is, but Samantha has material to cover. “Now let’s name some of the things that can be
taken
from a crime scene,” she says.

Lloyd makes two columns on the whiteboard. One says
things taken from a crime scene
, the other says
things brought into a crime scene
.

“Money can be taken,” I say, “or electronics equipment.” I am thinking about the time our house got broken into. Mom and Dad hardly ever mention the break-in when I’m around. All I’ve ever heard Mom say about it is how relieved she was the thieves never went up to the third floor, where my bedroom is.

For a second, I see myself as a little girl coloring in my room, trying to make sense of the loud noises downstairs.
Why is the sound on the
TV
getting louder? I have remembered this scene before, only now I see something else. The little girl—it’s me, of course—is pressing her palms over her ears. Then, just like that, the picture disappears.

Lloyd writes down the words
money
and
electronics equipment
.

“If there’s a kidnapping, people get taken,” Muriel adds.

“Jewelry,” Nico calls out, swiveling—but then stopping himself—when Lloyd adds
jewelry
to the list.

“Passports,” I say. “When we’re out of the country, my mom is paranoid about our passports getting stolen.” Two years ago, when the three of us went for a beach holiday to Cuba, Mom was always checking her bag to make sure the passports were still there.

“Those are all good suggestions,” Samantha says. “But you guys are thinking mostly about thefts. What about other kinds of crimes? I want to see you think outside the box.”

Mason scratches his head. “If it’s a hit-and-run, and the driver takes off from the scene, there could be paint from the car he hit on his car.”

Nathaniel comes up with something too. “If it’s an assault, you could get someone’s blood on you,” he says.

“Or fibers from their clothes,” I add.

“Excellent,” Samantha says. “Now, what about things that are brought
to
a crime scene?”

“Well, there’s stuff like weapons”—Nathaniel closes his eyes for a second, as if he is picturing guns and knives, then opens them again—“and fingerprints,” he says.

“Fingerprints on weapons,” Nico adds.

“Hair.” Mason looks at me. He must be remembering the strand of hair I found on my bookcase over the weekend. I shrug and give Mason a teeny smile. I want him to know I’m over it.

Thinking about Mason touching my encyclopedia reminds me how after the break-in it used to upset me knowing that strangers had handled our stuff and trashed the place—and I come up with another item for Samantha’s list. “Footprints,” I call out.

Lloyd rests his digital pen on the tray at the bottom of the whiteboard. “That’s a great start, folks,” he tells us. “As you know, we’re going to discuss fingerprints first. Samantha? You want to give them some background?”

When Samantha takes over, Lloyd goes to the supply closet at the side of the room. He must be preparing something for later in the lesson.

“You’ve probably heard that no two people have the same fingerprints,” Samantha tells us. “Not even identical twins. Fingerprints are like snowflakes. Every single print is unique.”

Which is pretty amazing, considering there are over seven billion people on the planet. Not to mention all the people who used to live here, and all the ones who have not yet been born. With all those billions, you figure there might be some overlap. But no.

“What most people don’t know,” Samantha continues, “is that every person has ten completely different fingerprints.”

Now, of course, we are all examining our fingertips.

“You’ll have time for that later,” Samantha promises us. “I need to cover some more theory first.” She waits until
we are focused on her again. “Some fingerprints are latent, others are visible, and others are three-dimensional. Latent means the fingerprints are there, but we can’t see them—not until we dust for them. Visible means we can see them with the naked eye. Say someone leaves greasy prints on a window or a glass—we can see those. What do you think three-dimensional fingerprints look like?”

“Uhh, like they have three dimensions.” Nico looks insulted when no one laughs.

“If someone pokes something soft with their fingers—for example, a donut with chocolate glaze on it—they would leave three-dimensional prints in the chocolate glaze,” Mason says. Why am I not surprised he is thinking about donuts?

But Samantha approves of Mason’s example. “The next thing you need to know is there are three kinds of fingerprint patterns—”

“Loops, whorls and arches,” I say without realizing I have finished her sentence. “Oops.” I cover my mouth with one hand. “That was in the
Junior Encyclopedia of Forensic Science
. Chapter four.”

I’m glad that Samantha does not seem to mind my interruption. “All right then, Tabitha, why don’t you go ahead and tell us what you know about loops, whorls and arches?”

I am daydreaming about how one day I want to study forensic science at the University of Montreal and maybe be a counselor at forensics camp. I picture myself at the whiteboard explaining Locard’s Principle.

“Tabitha?” Samantha says.

“Oh, yeah, sorry. Loops have ridges that start at one end and go all the way around, then back to where they started. That’s why they’re called loops.”

Samantha puts an image of a looped fingerprint on the screen at the other side of the room.

“With whorls, the ridges enter at one end, make a circle, then go out the other end. Arches make an arch. The ridges enter, then go out the other end but without circling.”

Samantha is showing us more images, but I am the only one looking at the screen. The others have moved closer to the window, where the light is better for examining their fingertips. I already know some of my fingerprints are arched and the rest are whorls.

“I have a whorl!” Muriel says as if she has discovered a new planet.

“That’s impossible!” Nico grabs Muriel’s hand. “We’re twins, and I have loops and arches.”

Muriel pulls her hand away. “Didn’t you hear what she just said about twins—even identical ones?”

Lloyd brings a cardboard box over to the table. When he hands us each a plain white mug, my first thought is that I am not thirsty. But we are not having drinks. The mugs must have something to do with our fingerprinting lesson.

“Touch your face with your fingers. Like this.” Lloyd circles his cheeks, then runs his fingers down his nose. If he keeps doing that he is going to get even more zits. Now he grabs his mug with both hands.

We copy him. Except for the whirring sound of a fan in the corner, the room is quiet.

We set our mugs down in front of us. Samantha passes around a box of medical gloves, and we each take a pair.

Stacey pulls one glove down over her wrist. “Why are you looking at me like that?” she asks me.

“I just thought since they’re made of plastic, you might…you know…say something. About the planet.”

Stacey wiggles her fingers inside the gloves. “I checked the box for the list of contents. These gloves are made of nitrile rubber. It’s a recyclable substance.”

Samantha raises her hands up in the air. She has gloves on too. “The first reason forensic scientists wear gloves is for safety. Gloves protect us when we’re handling dangerous substances. But there’s another reason. Gloves prevent us from contaminating our evidence.”

Lloyd hands Samantha a tray with a bowl of fine black powder in it and some wands that look like a cross between fountain pens and the kind of brush my mom uses to powder her face. Samantha holds the tip of the wand over the bowl to collect the powder. “Both the powder and the wands are magnetic, so you don’t need to dip the wand in the powder.”

Then Samantha squeezes the handle at the top of the wand. That releases the black powder, which drifts down and sticks to the places where she held her mug. “Be careful not to let the wand touch the fingerprints, or you might lose some of the detail in the print,” she warns us.

“Super cool!” Nico says when Samantha’s fingerprints emerge from the white background.

We each get to dust our mugs for our fingerprints. But that turns out to be only step one of our fingerprinting lesson.
“You don’t want to lose your evidence,” Lloyd explains. “This is where you’ll need your cameras again.”

Samantha and Lloyd take out their cameras and show us how to get clear close-up shots of our fingerprints.

I move in until all that appears in my camera screen is the mug with my fingerprints.

“Hey, we’re taking
mug
shots!” Nico calls out.

This time everyone laughs—except Nathaniel. He could be the grumpiest kid I’ve ever met.

Taking photographs is not the only way to record fingerprint evidence. Lloyd demonstrates how to use special sticky tape to lift his prints from the mug he used. “This tape costs thirty bucks a roll,” he tells us, “so don’t waste it. Smooth the tape out with your thumb like this,” he says, “so you don’t get any creases or air bubbles. And when you’re done, always fold the tape over at the end. You don’t want to spend half an hour at a crime scene looking for the start of your tape.” I write that down in my notebook and underline it twice. It is the kind of information I could never find in the
Junior Encyclopedia of Forensic Science
.