Forensics Squad Unleashed (9 page)

At 7:15
PM
—or 19:15 hours in forensic-science-speak—we prepare to leave with the newest member of our family, Roxie.

Larry goes back into the house for Roxie’s dog bed and her favorite toy, a rubber stick. Then he walks us to our car. Pixie, the fear biter, is supervising from the porch.

“If you don’t mind,” Larry says, “I’d like a minute alone with Roxie. To say goodbye.”

I cannot hear what Larry is saying, but I can tell it is not easy for him to let Roxie go.

“There’s one more thing,” he tells us before we pile into the car. “I don’t know whether or not you’ve heard, but a number of dogs in the Montreal area—all purebreds—have gone missing in the last couple of weeks. And I also heard on the grapevine that a box of bark breakers were stolen from a pet store downtown.”

“Bark breakers?” Mom asks.

“They’re collars that release citronella spray every time a dog barks. One stolen collar wouldn’t concern me, but when I heard a whole box went missing, well, I got to wondering…”

I suddenly remember the posters I have seen—the missing Chihuahua and then the standard poodle. Both purebreds. I assumed the dogs had run away, but maybe it’s something more sinister.

“Are you suggesting they might have been
dog
napped?” I ask Larry.

“All I’m suggesting is it’s suspicious,” he answers.

On the drive home, Roxie sits next to me in the backseat. She turns to look at Larry, who is standing in his driveway, waving. She barks when we turn the corner and Larry is out of view. “We’re gonna take good care of you, girl,” I promise her. I don’t have a lot of experience looking after someone else—but I feel ready for the responsibility.

Roxie spreads out on the backseat and lays her head in my lap. Mom reaches from the front seat to pat Roxie’s head.

TWELVE

This morning when I reached into the top drawer of my nightstand, I happened to grab my ransom-note bracelet. It’s a leather cord with wooden alphabet beads, each a different color and printed in a different font. It spells out
LEAVE THE CASH IN AN UNMARKED ENVELOPE
.

“That’s the perfect bracelet for today, Tabitha,” Lloyd says when he notices it. “Day three at forensics camp starts with a lesson in document analysis.”

Samantha does not do chitchat the way Lloyd does. Once she’s through taking attendance, she tells us to take out our notebooks. “Forensic scientists use document analysis to examine evidence such as ransom notes, forgeries and threatening letters,” she says.

“Yeah, but how’s any of that going to help us figure out who trashed the cafeteria?” Nathaniel calls out.

“I’ll get to that, Nathaniel,” Samantha tells him.

“What about the mustard message?” I wonder out loud. “Couldn’t that be considered a document—sort of?”

“Possibly,” is all Samantha will say.

Except for her purple glasses, Samantha looks even more businesslike than usual today. She is wearing a white shirt and a plain gray skirt. I wonder if she even owns a pair of jeans. “We’re going to begin by looking at something called imprints,” she tells us. “Do any of you know what an imprint is?”

The others look at me. Ever since I answered the question about Theodore Kaczynski, they expect me to know everything. On the one hand, I’m honored. On the other hand, it makes me feel pressured. Especially when I don’t know the answer, like now. So I shrug and try to look like I don’t care, even though I do.

“Instead of boring you with the definition, I’m going to show you what an imprint looks like. Stacey, if you could pass me your notebook, please.” Samantha opens the notebook to the last page Stacey wrote on. “I don’t know if the rest of you have noticed, but Stacey presses down really hard when she writes. Which is why I asked for her notebook. Now have a look at this.” Samantha turns the page. “Do you see anything?”

We pass the notebook around. When Nathaniel holds it up to the fluorescent light, we can see pale scratches from where Stacey pressed down, but we cannot make out any letters or words.

Lloyd brings a small square box from the supply cupboard. Inside are two flashlights. One looks like a
regular flashlight, except it has three settings: normal, white light and infrared. The other is a small rectangular ultraviolet light. We start with the regular flashlight, holding it so the light is shining directly on Stacey’s notebook, but we still can’t make out the letters. Not until we move the flashlight so the light is coming from the side. Now there’s a shadow, which lets us see the imprint of Stacey’s handwriting:
ransom notes, forgeries and threatening letters
.

Wow! So if a kidnapper wrote a ransom note on a pad of paper and tore the note off the pad, the police might be able to find the imprint!

Stacey is thinking about something else. “Too bad mustard doesn’t leave an imprint,” she says.

“You’re right about mustard,” Lloyd says, “but forensic graphologists—the term for forensic scientists who specialize in document analysis—can do other things with handwriting. Even mustard handwriting. You guys ready to learn a little more?”

We all nod. Forensics camp keeps getting more and more interesting. If only we learned stuff like this at school!

“Forensic graphologists look at similarities and differences in handwriting. They study characteristics such as spacing between letters or lines, slants, patterns in letters and loops on certain letters. Did you guys write all that down?”

“Almost,” Muriel says without looking up from her notebook.

“Perfect! Because we’re going to study samples of your handwriting. Nico, let’s start by having a look at yours.” Lloyd gestures for us to come over so we can all examine
Nico’s handwriting. “Do you see any identifying characteristics? Think about some of the things I just asked you to write down.”

“It’s messy,” Muriel says. “Does that count as an identifying characteristic?”

“Not really,” Lloyd says. “Can you try to be a little more specific?”

“Well, his letters are really crowded together,” Muriel says.

“That’s better. Now you’re talking about spacing.”

“He didn’t dot his
i
’s,” I say, pointing to the words
forensic
and
similarities
.

“That’s only because I was rushing,” Nico says.

Stacey shakes her head. “You’re always rushing.”

“And making bad jokes,” Muriel adds.

We look at all of our handwriting. Of the six of us, Muriel leaves the most space between her letters. Stacey’s handwriting is the smallest. Mason’s is the straightest, and the lines across Nathaniel’s small
t
’s are lower down than the rest of ours. I don’t always bother dotting my
i
’s. “Those are all excellent observations,” Lloyd says. “I think you’re ready to learn a new trick.”

He reaches back into the square box and takes out a pad of tracing paper and a bundle of pencils. Then he borrows Nico’s notebook again to demonstrate what he wants us to do next. Lloyd puts a piece of tracing paper over the longest line Nico has written, and then he makes a dot at the highest point that every letter reaches. “Now I connect the dots horizontally,” he says. The line Lloyd gets by connecting the dots reminds me of a mountain range in the Himalayas.
“This line shows us the top slope of Nico’s handwriting. Even if a person is in a rush and doesn’t have time to dot his
i
’s, handwriting slope tends to be consistent. We’re going to do the same thing with the bottom slope.”

“That means we should be able to examine the slope of the mustard handwriting!” Nathaniel says.

“We should,” Samantha says, “
if
the photos you and Mason took are sharp enough.”

“We’ve got one more exercise to do first though,” Lloyd says. Samantha hands him an envelope from the square box. Inside are three bundles of bank checks. “You’ll be working with your partners for this activity,” Lloyd continues. He gives each group a check from each of the bundles. “You will notice that all of these checks are in the amount of one thousand dollars. Each check is signed by someone named Edgar Rich. Two of the checks in your bundle were actually signed by Mr. Rich. Your task is to uncover the forgery.”

“Rich is the right name for this dude,” Nico says. “Imagine writing nine thousand bucks’ worth of checks!”

Muriel sighs. “Did you look at the date, Nico? The year says 1952. I’m pretty sure they’re expired by now.”

At first glance, all three Edgar Rich signatures look identical. “Wouldn’t a professional forger be able to copy someone’s slope and get the little details right—like how a person dots his letters and crosses his
t
’s?” Stacey asks.

“That’s true,” Lloyd says. “Professional forgers know about all the things we’ve covered this morning. But it’s virtually impossible to get someone else’s signature exactly right.
That’s because a signature doesn’t just come from someone’s hand—it comes from their brain.”

We are all thinking about that when Muriel says, “I knew how to forge my fifth-grade teacher’s signature.” Then she adds as an afterthought, “Don’t worry—I never did it. I just knew how.”

Maybe it’s because Muriel has a background in forging teachers’ signatures that she notices the tiny extra squiggle at the bottom of one of the
g
’s in the
Edgar
. We decide that check is probably the forgery, but we want to confirm our hunch. Muriel traces the top slope on all three signatures; I trace the bottom. When it turns out the top slope is less jagged on the check with the squiggly
g,
we raise our hands so that we can show the counselors what we have found. Lloyd says we have done such a good job that we should go and help the others.

“Can we please,
please
start analyzing the mustard message?” Muriel asks.

Samantha claps to get everyone’s attention. “I know you’re all anxious to apply your new graphology skills to the mustard message. And you will be doing that today. But first”—she pauses, and I can tell it’s because she thinks we are going to get excited about what she is about to say—“there’s the obstacle course.”

“You mean the sort of obstacle course you have to do before you can get accepted into police academy?” Nico asks. For once, he is not trying to make a joke.

“You got it,” Lloyd says.

Someone in the room makes a gagging sound.

“Mason?” Samantha says. “Is something wrong?”

“Uh, I’m just feeling a little queasy. Maybe there was something wrong with the milk in my cereal this morning.” He does not say he feels too queasy to do the obstacle course. But I have known Mason Johnson long enough to know that is exactly what he is thinking.

THIRTEEN

It is hard to believe Lloyd was ever out of shape. Especially when he demonstrates how to do the obstacle course.

He has set things up behind the Life Sciences Building, where there is a large concrete terrace and two sets of stairs leading to a rooftop vegetable garden. It is a quiet spot, so we are not likely to get in anyone’s way.

Stacey approves of the garden’s rainwater collection system. “That’s for harvesting rain,” she says, pointing to a giant barrel. It seems weird to use the words
harvesting
and
rain
together, but there isn’t time to discuss that with Stacey, even if I wanted to.

Lloyd is doing ten push-ups on the terrace. His back is stick straight, and his elbows are slightly bent. When he is done, Samantha tosses him a red medicine ball (“Those things are a lot heavier than they look,” Nathaniel says), and Lloyd runs up and down the stairs—twice. Next he bounces the medicine ball, slamming it against the concrete
five times before catching it again and dashing to the next station. The guy has not even broken a sweat.

Nathaniel nudges Mason. “How’s your stomach?”

“Not so good.” Mason looks pale. Maybe it is from the thought of having to do ten push-ups.

Next Lloyd crawls through two narrow, ten-foot coiled tubes that are set up on the terrace.

We can see the outline of Lloyd’s elbows as he pushes his way through the tubes. “That looks really hard,” Stacey says.

“You think that’s hard? Wait till you see him jump over the wall!” Samantha tells her.

“Jump over a wall?” Mason gulps. “You’re joking, right?”

“Do I strike you as the joking type?” Samantha asks. “But hey, don’t worry—the wall here is only four feet high. You’d have to jump a lot higher than that to get into the police academy.”

The wall is actually a concrete divider at the shady end of the terrace. “I want you to watch Lloyd’s technique,” Samantha tells us. “He’s going to use his upper body strength to lift himself up and over.”

We all watch as Lloyd places both hands on top of the wall, a foot or so apart. He hoists one leg up, then the other. He seems totally calm and focused. But when he swings his legs over the wall and drops to the other side, he makes this wild whooping sound, and we clap and cheer for him.

“Don’t think this obstacle course is over yet!” Lloyd shouts back at us.

We follow Samantha under the stairway so we can catch up with Lloyd and see the final obstacle.

“Oh my god,” I say when I see what is lying on the concrete: a life-sized rubber dummy. Why are its wrists wrapped in duct tape? I figure out the answer when Lloyd, who has finally started to sweat, grabs the dummy by its wrists and starts dragging it over the concrete. I guess the duct tape gives him something to grip.

“Do you see how he’s bending his knees?” Samantha says. “That’s because he’s letting his legs do most of the work.” Lloyd’s calf muscles are twitching.

When he has dragged the dummy past a yellow chalk line on the concrete, Lloyd squats down and shakes out his arms. When he looks up at us, the sweat is pouring off his face. “You guys think you can do that?” he pants, still trying to catch his breath.

“No,” Nico says, “but it’s nice of you to ask.”

Samantha checks her cell-phone stopwatch. “The obstacle course took Lloyd precisely two minutes and forty-two seconds.”

Lloyd has stopped panting. “Any of you think you can beat that?” he asks.