Page 146 - Labelle Gramercy, On the Case

Soaked to the Bone

Fern: That’s absurd! Who could have been so desperate and so
deliberate? How can you prove any of this?
Labelle: The murderer did not wipe fingerprints off any surfaces;
that reinforces my assertion that only a member of Fish’s
intimate circle could have killed him. But there is one
place the killer’s fingerprints cannot be explained away,
and that is the vodka bottles. Having committed the
crime, the killer did not want to risk being stopped with
the empty bottles. Knowing the trash would be collected
before anyone discovered Fish the next morning, that
individual placed them in the recyclables bin. An hour
ago I found those two half-gallon Podgorny vodka
bottles at the recycling center at the bottom of the hill: a
scavenger had retrieved them before they could be
picked up and dumped into the massive common pile of
glass, plastic, metal and paper. The bottles are being
analyzed for fingerprints at the police laboratory now.
Everyone has given us their prints except you two. I will
have a technician take them now, if you have no
objections. [My jaw dropped—but my lips were sealed]
Fern: Wait a minute: can you legally do that? Isn’t that some
kind of coercion?
Labelle: Then you refuse?
Fern: Let me think about it.
Labelle: Fine. [Turning to Alma, half of whose face was visible to me
between the door frame and the policeman’s right arm] Let’s see if
your mother feels the same way.
Alma: [Shrieks]
Fern: My—what!
Labelle: Then you did not know?
Fern: I—I know I was adopted. My dad, Rocky, told me
before he died. That was three years ago, in Baton
Rouge. Are you telling me that Alma del Banco is my
biological mother?
Labelle: It is obvious, when one looks beyond the superficial
differences. You may request a DNA test later. [Now I
could see half of Fern’s face on the other side of my obscured field of
vision, and there were indeed too many points of resemblance to be

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