Read Online Piece Keeper by Antwan Floyd Sr. - Free Book Online Page B

upon a three inch
steel door. Black paused and looked around the room he was in.
“What is this place?”
    “We call it the catacombs.”
    “Catacombs? Like a cemetery? There are bodies down
here?”
    Waeltz smirked, turned, and pulled a little harder
than Black had expected to get the door open. “Be serious, Love.
Why would we keep dead bodies in the basement of a police
station?”
    “I am being serious. You tell me why would the
basement of a police station even be considered a crime scene for a
work place rape?”
    Waeltz didn’t respond. He just stepped to the side
as the crime scene investigators entered with equipment in tow. In
comparison to the corridor that led to the catacombs, the inside
was surprisingly well illuminated. There were rows and rows of
shelves packed with boxes upon boxes.
    “What are these? Cold cases?” Black asked referring
to the boxes he assumed were filled with files and evidence from
cold case files. That’s what they called unsolved crimes: cold
cases.
    “Yeah. We don’t get down here often. Don’t have the
man power, money, or resources to keep many cases going.”
    It was now Black’s turn to remain silent. He
carefully walked around the room looking for anything that didn’t
belong and could possibly link the three officers to Teresa’s rape.
He had put in a request to have a forensics team from a neighboring
county to perform the DNA sweep for evidence but was denied by the
District Attorney in charge of the case. He had his reservations
about how bias the team he was relying on would be. These were
officers they were used to working with and in a small town like
Danville he wouldn’t be surprised if some of them were related to
one of the three accused. He couldn’t worry about that now. He had
to have faith in the law. He knew it wasn’t perfect but he believed
in the constitution and his oath as an officer of the courts was
something that he took very seriously.
    Black slid on a pair of plastic gloves and watched
as crime scene investigators opened silver metallic cases and
removed spray bottles. They went on to spray various locations in
the room beginning with the stainless steel table. They then turned
off the lights in the room and turned on a portable black light.
The room lit up with various stains that were once invisible to the
naked eye. Black remained silent with his game face on. He had to
keep his composure. He didn’t want to show any weakness. On the
outside he was cold as ice but on the inside his mind he was
screaming, “Run! Turn and get out of here!” He knew that the stains
he saw were secretions from the rapists and possibly blood from
Teresa. It made him wonder if this had been the first time that
something like this had happened. He wanted to question the female
officers that worked there. He knew it would be a slim chance that
they’d cooperate. He filed the thought in the back of his mind with
the intent to re-visit it if this hunt for evidence didn’t turn up
anything pertinent.
    “A lot of fluids in here,” Waeltz said stating the
obvious.
    Black grunted.
    They both watched as the crime technicians collected
samples and sprayed SPERM HY-LITER, a fluorescent monoclonal
antibody-based kit used for the microscopic identification of sperm
from sexual assault evidence.
    Waeltz continued. “I doubt we get anything out of
here we can use… print wise anyway.”
    “Prints would be nice. That would place them in the
basement but I’m assuming every officer who works here has access
to the catacombs correct?”
    “True. There would be no real reason for uniformed
officers to be searching cold case files but there are no official
restrictions in place preventing them access.”
    “So if we do find prints they could have left them
the night of the rape or two months ago.”
    “Right again. No way to tell.”
    Black watched as they began brushing for prints.
    Waeltz stood back and watched Black. “You want to
tell me what happened last