The Seduction - Art Bourgeau by Art Bourgeau Page B

showed she died
from strangulation, and that she'd been raped."
    "Considering the condition of her body . . . I
mean, how could you tell for sure about the rape?"
    "There were still traces of sperm."
    Sperm, such an antiseptic word, Laura thought. It
conveyed nothing of the violence that was done to her.
    "Also, for whatever it's worth, mostly to the
parents, I guess, she was a virgin."
    "That's so damn sad, whether you're a parent or
not. Maybe you have to be a woman to understand . . . What about
fingerprints?"
    "Only the victim's."
    "So you still have no leads to the killer—"
    "I didn't say that." Defensively.
    "Well, what do you have?"
    Sloan pulled his coat tighter around him. He'd
already told her more than he probably should have, but she seemed a
straight lady; he liked her . . . oh, he didn't have any illusions
about anything happening between them (or did he?) . . . and
sometimes it helped to have somebody besides the folks at the shop to
bounce things off of. He didn't have anybody like that, no wife, no
kids, so the hell with it, he was only human . . .
    "Okay, Laura, it goes like this, and I have your
word you won't print anything unless I give you the go-ahead. What we
have here is sort of the normal procedure in reverse. I mean, in a
case like this the two things that help get a conviction are sperm
and pubic hair. I said 'get a conviction,' not catch the suspect.
Once we have a suspect in custody sperm and pubic hair can yield
important pieces of evidence. In this case we have some evidence from
them but no damn suspect. But hey, you take what you get and hope to
match it up with the guy when we nail him."
    "So what have you got?"
    "Well, first of all we checked the sperm for
V.D. and found none. Our boy is clean—"
    "How nice for him."
    "Yeah . . . well, you asked for what we had and
I'm trying to tell you. I can always spare you the boring details—"

"I'm sorry, Sloan, please . . ."
    "Yes, well, the next thing we did was check for
blood type. The ABH factors in the blood determine blood type——A,
B, O, AB, positive or negative. Mine's A positive." He felt sort
of foolish telling her that. Was that the best he could do to make a
connection?
    "Mine's O." She even smiled. Things were
really heating up.
    "That's the most common," Sloan said. "Now
it gets a little more complicated. In about eighty percent of the
population these ABH factors are water soluble. That means they turn
up in every other body fluid as well as in blood. So we can get blood
type from sperm, urine, saliva, even tears. People with watersoluble
ABH are the 'secretors.' In the other twenty percent the ABH factors
aren't water soluble and can only be found in actual blood, which is
the only fluid that yields up the blood type. People in that twenty
percent are 'non-secretors.' The lab tested the sperm found in Terri
for ABH factors and first found out whether our boy was a secretor or
a non-secretor, whether he was in the eighty or the twenty percent."
    "And . . . ?"
    "Off the record, your absolute word on it?"
    "Come on, Sloan, I already gave you that. But if
you need it again, absolutely off the record until you give the
word."
    "He's a secretor."
    Laura thrust her hands deeper into her trenchcoat
pockets.
    "So he's one of your eighty percent. That's a
lot of territory. I guess you'd have preferred he be a non—secretor."
    "At first when I got the results I reacted that
way. But it's a mixed deal. Sure, if he'd been one of the twenty
percent it would have theoretically narrowed the field by plenty. But
we would also have had to stop the testing right there. We'd have
needed his blood to get the blood type. The semen wouldn't have told
us anything. As it was, we could test for the type and get it. So
we've got two pieces of important information—he's a secretor and
we know his blood type from the semen. Any suspect we bring in, the
first thing we do is give him a saliva test, easier than the sperm
and just as good. We're testing