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Ben groaned "I swear, that wasn’t my fault"

"Of course not," he replied with a roll of his eyes "Come on in and let me take a look at what you have"

We dutifully followed hih the lab and, much like my first tour of the coroner’s office, I was disappointed to see that there was no neon or chro but cra lab equipe tables in it, all covered with a ridiculous nus or boxes with "Evidence" stickers on them Sean stopped at a table that actually had soloves fro with the watch in front of hi and peered inside

"Okay, I’ll stick it in the fu cha cha like an idiot, but I was also wildly curious about how all of this forensic stuff worked Even if there wasn’t any chrome or neon

Luckily Sean didn’t see All you need is an airtight tank, solue" He lifted the watch with a gloved hand "See, fingerprints leave stuff behind--traces of amino acids, proteins, fatty acids That stuff reacts to the fulue is heated, and a sticky, white erprints,"Here, I’ll show you"

I followed hierly into an adjacent roo one ere a series of glass-doored cha fro cha the door of one that was only about a foot high He carefully hung the watch from a metal hook, then opened a small plastic tube and squeezed the contents into athe door of the cha it, he punched some buttons on the front "Now the chamber will heat up to release the fuht be on the watch," he explained "And when it’s done the chaave me a wry smile "That’s a vast improvement over the technique we used to have to use, which was basically a fish tank"

I watched, fascinated as adoes it take?"

"About five minutes, but then you have to wait for it to vent Like I said, much better than the fish tank method, where we basically had to yank the cover off and run to keep frohts turned green, and Sean carefully relass, nodding

"Well, there’s a beautiful print on the watch," he said, to h AFIS"

I watched in rapt fascination as Sean proceeded to powder the print, pull it off with a piece of sticky paper that I learned was called a lifter, photograph the print that cae into a coe of the print up on the screen and began ed print with red dots--which he explained were "points"; places where ridges ended, caether, separated, or simply made dots

It looked awesouy supposed to be again?" Sean asked as he suberprint with all its lanced down at the file "Norman Kearny" He rattled off the date of birth and social security number "He should have prints in the systeround check"

Sean tapped a few more keys "Yeah, here are his prints" His eyes flicked back and forth on the screen, then his forehead puckered in a frown "But the print on the watch doesn’t h lad I hulanced over his shoulder "Noe simply have to find out who it does match"

"And where’s the real Norood question"

My patience had a hard ti factor in cris flashed on the co

After about ten minutes my wait paid off "Well, that’s odd," I heard Seanforward to peer at the erprints with a bunch of dots all over them I had no idea what any of it meant

"Well, I think so," said Sean "I mean, this sure as hell looks like a s "I have well over ten points uy"

"Great!" Ben said "What’s so odd about it?"

Sean leaned back in the chair and shoved both hands through his hair "I saw the body on the scene He looked like he was in his sixties at least, right?"

We both nodded, but a knot began to foruy who matches that print would be forty-three years old"

Ben shook his head "That has to be a typo"

Sean pivoted to a different computer "Nope, his other records also have that sae," I offered "Or perhaps the print is frorabbed the watch or soed "It’s possible, but that’s not the only thing that’s fucked up Take a look at this guy’s name"