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Byrd’s arm hair.”
    â€œWho’s the criminalist?”
    â€œJohn Chen.”
    â€œChen’s good. I know him.”
    Lindo turned the page. The next scan showed a single Polaroid of a thin young woman with short black hair and hollow cheeks. She was on her right side on what appeared to be a tile floor in a darkened room or enclosure. The wall behind her was burned by the glare from the camera’s flash. Her left cheek was split as if she had been struck, and a red trace of blood had run down her face to drip from the end of her nose. Three overlapping drops were spotting the floor. A cord or wire was wrapped so deeply into her neck it disappeared into her skin. Someone had labeled the bottom of the scan with the victim’s name, age, date of death, and original case number.
    Lindo touched the image.
    â€œThis was the first victim—Sondra Frostokovich. See the cut here under her eye? He coldcocked her first to stun her. That was a unifying element of his M.O. He stunned them so they couldn’t fight back.”
    â€œWas she raped?”
    â€œNone of them were raped, so far as I know. Again, I didn’t work the individual cases, but this guy didn’t play with them—there wasn’t any rape, torture, mutilation, or any of that. You can see that much in the pictures. Now check this out—”
    Lindo touched the page by her nose.
    â€œSee the blood drops below her nose? Three drops, two overlapping. We compared this picture with the original shots taken by the coroner investigator. The crime scene pix show a puddle about the size of her head. Likely your boy was in front of her for the strike that cut her cheek, then strangled her from behind. The blood started to drip as soon as she was down. Three or four drops like this, she couldn’t have been down more than twenty seconds before he snapped the picture.”
    â€œHe wasn’t my boy.”
    â€œPoint is, we have time-specific indicators in pretty much every picture that marks them at or near the time of death. This is his second victim, Janice Evansfield—”
    The second picture was of an African-American woman with Rasta hair whose neck had been slashed so many times it was shredded. Lindo pointed out a blurry red string floating across her face.
    â€œSee that? We didn’t know what it was until we enhanced it.”
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œThat’s blood squirting from the carotid artery at the base of her neck. See how it arcs? She wasn’t dead yet, Cole. She was dying. This exposure was taken at the exact moment her heart beat. That kinda rules out some cop later at the scene, doesn’t it?”
    I looked away, feeling numb and distant, as if the pictures and I weren’t really in the booth, so I could pretend I wasn’t seeing them.
    Lindo showed me each of the remaining victims, and then a photograph of a clunky black device with knobs and sensors like you’d see in a dated science fiction movie.
    â€œOkay, the second way we put him with the murders is by the camera. These cameras, they push the picture out through a little slot when you snap the exposure. The rollers leave discrete impressions on the edges of the picture—”
    It was easier to look at the picture of the camera.
    â€œLike the rifling in a gun barrel marks a bullet?”
    â€œYeah. This is a discontinued model. All seven pictures were taken with this camera, which we recovered in Byrd’s house. The only prints on the camera belong to Lionel Byrd. Ditto the film packs we found in the camera.”
    He showed me a picture of two film packs, one labeled with the letter A , the other with B .
    â€œPartials belonging to a different individual were found on the unopened film, but we believe they belong to the cashier or salesclerk where he bought the film. The lot numbers gave a point of sale in Hollywood, not far from Laurel Canyon. You see how it’s adding up?”
    Lindo