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physics to work out here, and physics takes time. How about some of that food downstairs? Can you arrange that?" Vic was back on the food.
April shook her head. They always wanted the females on the job to play mother. She outranked him and wasn't buying into it. Not that she was paranoid, or a stickler. She pointed at the froth of white stuffed under a pew down the center aisle, then caught her breath. It was a long swath of veil, glinting diamonds and pearls in the soft light. The wedding veil.
"Got anything interesting so far?" Mike asked.
"You won't believe this. I lifted a left ear print from the door out there." It was Ken's excited voice.
"An ear? Who do you think you're kidding?" April scoffed, still a little put off by the food request. Not that she was paranoid about it. Uh-uh. She trotted down the aisle to find him, saw his white-covered knees and shoes, and stood up again.
"Don't laugh. We're talking ear print. We're talking second ear print in history. I lifted it with superglue fumes."
"What's it good for?" April couldn't help teasing a little.
'Ybu don't get it, do you?"
"Yes, we get it; you lifted an ear," Mike said, laughing with her.
"Okay, hotshots, how many body parts are absolutely unique?"
Mike didn't want to play. He took a little tour of the space, careful where he stepped and keeping his hands to himself.
"Okay, April, you don't know this; you should."
April answered. "Fine, I'll bite. Teeth." She counted one. "Fingerprints, footprints. DNA. Thaf s four. What is this, anyway, school?"
"That's not all. What else?"
"Totally unique?" April glanced at Mike, now half an auditorium away. "Eyes?" she guessed.
Ken's voice thundered back. "Retina, yeah, that's five. What else?"
"Okay—ear, I got it. Ear." April thought about it. Okay, she'd concede. If they had the ear of a guy, they had something. She perked up a little. They had an ear. Great.
"And hps. I'll give you five of the seven. You didn't get ear and lips. That's a C in my book. You should do some forensic work."
"Lips. You can always change your lips with a little collagen. You don't happen to have a lip print, too?"
"You got a fucking C, Sarge. Don't make fun."
"Hey, watch the language around the lady," Mike said. Always the gentleman.
"You want an educated guess? Here's what we're thinking. The shooter has his head pressed against the door. He doesn't want to open the door even a crack until the victim is walking down the aisle, all eyes on her. The outside doors are closed. Maybe he's assembling his rifle."
    Vic snapped more shots.
    "You have something on the weapon?" Mike asked.
    "Uh-huh," Ken said. "There was a discharged shell casing on the floor under where I lifted the ear print. It must have rolled back against the door, and he missed it when he picked up the others." His voice was cautiously optimistic. "Maybe we'll get a print from the casing. We got a couple dozen prints and partials from that door alone. Couple of partial palm prints. We're doing the whole damn place. It's a nightmare, but it may pay off later if the guy was ever in here."
    Ken was wedged into the narrow space between two pews, about three-quarters of the way down the middle aisle. On his knees with his head down, he was carefully digging at a hole in the blood-spattered wood in front of him.
    "Got it," he said suddenly. Clumsy in the tight space, he wiggled his bulk to his feet and displayed his trophy on the end of calipers, viewing it with his flashlight before bagging it in a paper bag and labeling it with all the appropriate numbers.
    "Might be a hollow-point, and looks like there's something in it," he reported. "I hope it's not just a splinter of wood. Right here, I picked up a piece of the second victim's ear." He pointed, sniffed, took off his gloves, threw them aside, wiped his nose, donned a new pair of gloves.
    April swallowed uneasily, thinking about the piece of ear, the ear print. What was this, an ear case?
Nothing to a Chinese was without some cosmic