‘How do you know all of this? You own stock in the company?’

‘During my teenage years, I was a big-time hiker. My parents gave me a pair of Ryzer boots one Christmas. The ones they make now are mass produced and are crap, but the originals? You take care of them, they’ll last you a lifetime. I still have mine. They are, hands down, the most comfortable pair of boots I’ve ever owned. That’s why I recognized the logo – it’s their old logo. These boots we’re looking at, they don’t make them anymore.’

‘I’ll see what I can do to track them down. Thanks, Mary Beth.’

‘You’re wrong about Coop. He likes smart women. Like you, for example.’

‘We’re just partners.’

‘Whatever you say,’ Mary Beth said. ‘By the way, you really need to take a shower. And a couple of breath mints wouldn’t hurt, either.’

Chapter 12

The lab’s footwear database consisted of a collection of three-ring binders.

Darby spent the rest of the morning poring through lifted samples of men’s boots gathered from Boston cases. The footwear impression Mary Beth recovered didn’t match any local cases.

During her lunch hour, Darby went online and sifted through two forensic message boards devoted exclusively to footwear evidence. While hunting, she found the name of a former FBI agent whose specialty was identifying footwear impressions. He had been used as an expert in court on several high-profile criminal cases.

Head pounding from hunger – she had skipped breakfast – Darby rushed down to the cafeteria and came back with a tuna salad and Coke. She swung by Leland’s office to give him an update. He wasn’t in.

The message light on her office phone was on. It was a message from her mother. Sheila had seen the morning news and wanted to know if everything was okay.

Sturgis ‘Pappy’ Papagotis popped his head into the office. ‘Got a moment?’ he asked.

‘Come on in.’

Pappy pulled out Coop’s chair. He had the curse of being the world’s youngest-looking man. He was a breath over five feet and had the kind of boyish face that made bouncers take a serious look at his license.

‘I ran your white flecks through FTIR,’ he said. ‘Aluminum and alkyd-melamine.’

‘Automobile paint,’ Darby said. ‘What about styrene?’

‘No, this was a factory job. It wasn’t done in an auto body shop. How familiar are you with automobile paint?’

‘Melamine’s a resin added to paint to improve durability.’

‘Correct. Acrylic-melamine and polyestermelamine are the main polymers that make up paint. Alkyd-melamine is one of the super alkyds enamels they started using in the sixties. A lot of the automakers today favor using a polyurethane clear-coat system. It has higher gloss retention, for one, but the biggest reason is cost. Polyurethane is a fast air-drying top coat while melamine top coats need to be baked. The paint chip you found, it’s the original paint job.’

‘What about color?’

‘That’s where I hit a dead end,’ Pappy said. ‘I ran the chip through FTIR and it came up blank.’

‘But that doesn’t mean anything.’

‘Yes, I know what you’re going to say – Fourier Transform Infared Spectroscopy is only as good as our computer library, and my failure to identify it, all it means is that we couldn’t connect the paint chip to a local case. So I tried the Paint Query Database system run by our Canadian friends. No dice. I’ll send a sample to the feds. Their lab stores the lesser-known, harder-to-find paint samples on their National Automobile Paint File database.’

‘Have you used the feds before?’

‘I’ve never had to go to them since PDQ generally does the job. If we strike out there, we could try that Farfegnugen-thing run by the Germans. Supposedly, they have the largest known paint sample database in the world.’

‘You have any contacts at the federal lab?’

‘I did take a paint course given by the head of the Elemental Analysis Lab, this guy named Bob Gray. I could give him a call.’

Tell him we have an abduction case and we need him to move this to the front burner.’

‘I can ask.’ Pappy was grinning.

‘I know, don’t hold my breath and wait by the phone,’ Darby said.

Leland still wasn’t in his office so Darby headed down to the first floor.

Missing Persons was tucked at the end of a long hallway. Standing behind the counter was a slim woman in a dark gray charcoal suit. The name on her ID tag was Mabel Wantuck. Mabel wasn’t smiling in the picture, and she wasn’t smiling now.

‘Good morning,’ Darby said. ‘I was wondering if you could help me.’

The look on Mabel Wantuck’s face said, Don’t bet on it.

‘I’ve come across some evidence which may be connected to a missing person’s case,’ Darby said.

‘You know I can’t show you –’

‘The actual case file, yes, I know, only a detective can see that. All I need to know is if the person is, in fact, missing.’

Mabel Wantuck took a seat at a paper-filled desk cluttered with several small framed pictures of two chocolate Labrador retrievers. She pulled out the keyboard.

‘What’s the name?’

‘I’m not sure of the spelling, so we may have to try a few variations. What are the search parameters?’

‘Last name first.’

‘Last name is Mastrangelo,’ Darby said. ‘Let me try and spell that for you…’

Chapter 13

Coop rolled a ball of Play-Doh between his hands while Darby explained the results of the Missing Persons search. She was bringing him up to date on the evidence when the lab secretary popped her head inside their office.

‘Leland wants to see you in his office, Darby.’

Leland was on the phone. He saw Darby standing in the doorway and pointed to the single chair set up in front of his desk.

Behind him was a wall crammed full of pictures taken at exclusive black-tie fundraisers. Here was Leland, the proud Republican, standing arm-and-arm with both George Bush junior and senior. Here was Leland, the caring Republican, standing next to the governor as they handed out Thanksgiving Day turkeys to the poor. To prove he had a sense of humor beneath all that Brooks Brothers clothing, here was a picture of Leland, the funny Republican, holding a copy of The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker given to him at a book party.

Darby was thinking about the pictures on Carol Cranmore’s wall when Leland hung up.

That was the commissioner calling for an update. He was a bit surprised when I told him I didn’t have anything to tell him yet.’

‘I came by twice,’ Darby said. ‘You weren’t here.’

That’s what voice mail is for.’

‘I thought you’d want an update in person, in case you had any questions.’

You now have my full attention.’ Leland leaned back in his chair.

Darby told him about the paint chip first, then the footwear impression.

‘It’s a men’s size eleven, and the logo’s a perfect match for Ryzer footwear. The logo stamped on the sole of the footwear impression we found was their second and last logo before they were bought out in eighty-three and became Ryzer Gear. Based on my research, they only manufactured four models, which they sold through catalogues and specialty stores in the northeast. We’re talking a select group of customers. I tried our cases and struck out.’

‘So submit a copy to the feds and have them run it through their footwear database.’

‘Even if we ask them to expedite it, it will be a minimum of a month before they get around to processing it.’

‘I can’t change that.’

‘Maybe we can,’ Darby said. This afternoon I talked with a man named Larry Emmerich. He used to work for the FBI lab. He’s the go-to expert on footwear impressions. Emmerich’s retired now, hires himself out as a consultant. Not only does he have all of Ryzer’s old catalogues, he has vendor information and contacts. Plus, he’d be willing to look at it right away. If he can narrow down the make and model, all the feds would need to do is to run the boot impression through their footwear database. Emmerich has contacts at the lab. Running it through the database to see if it’s connected to any nationwide case would take a day, tops.’