Chapter 32
Louise
“Do I smell citrus?” Louise asks the building manager, tall and thin and a bit persnickety. And definitely unhappy that the police have descended on his building.
“Good nose, Detective. It’s part of our scent program.”
“Of course.” She turns to Cutty. “You have a scent program at your home, right, Cut?”
“Absolutely,” he says. “This month it’s Lysol.”
Louise snaps on her nitrile gloves and approaches the door of the Brices’ unit, centered in a softly lit alcove framed by molding, the 11F in gold serifed stenciling on a solid door of dark-stained oak.
She types in the code on the smart-lock panel.
The gears whine and groan before the lock unlatches.
While the tech team fans out in their blue jackets with orange lettering, Louise moves along the walnut hardwood floors. A quick overview of the condo: six hundred square feet of pure money. “Art-gallery lighting,” Cutty notes, gesturing to the walls. “Venetian plaster accents.”
“You’re starting to worry me, partner.”
“When Ramona has the remote, it’s interior-decorating shows, twenty-four/seven. And this place looks like something out of HGTV.”
A small unit, to be sure, but the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Lake Michigan considerably expand it. To her left, the bedroom, separated by a sliding glass partition with privacy film, giving more of a Chicago-loft vibe. To her right, around the corner, the kitchen.
In front of her, a sunken family room, three steps down from the main-floor level, roomy enough for a sectional sofa in ocean blue, opposite a pair of club chairs in caramel leather, all surrounding a glass coffee table perched on a solid walnut base.
On top of the table, an art book on Chicago architecture; a small ceramic bowl full of black stones; a glass orb that refracts light from the window.
Across the family room is the fireplace, tucked within the unit’s outer glass wall, sleek and linear, a tempered glass front framed by matte-black steel, with glowing blue-orange flames and symmetrical ceramic logs.
A fingerprint tech works the condo’s front door, brushing along the deadbolt, the knob and smart lock, the frame.
She alternates between black and magnetic powder, depending on the surface finish.
The knob produces two solid latents. Each is photographed, lifted, and logged.
Other techs do the same throughout the family room, tapping their vials of black powder and working the bristles in circular motions over the surfaces.
Louise leans into the bedroom. Wall-to-wall plush white carpet.
A low-slung bed, framed in oak with an upholstered headboard in an ivory bouclé fabric.
A thick down duvet, the textured throws in the colors of stone gray and pale blue.
The bed is flanked by twin nightstands with single drawers and small alabaster lamps.
“Lou.” Mendoza, one of the older techs with a dozen years in the unit, stands at the bedroom window with a portable UV lamp.
Louise and Cutty walk over. “What’ve we got?” asks Louise.
Mendoza tilts the lamp a few degrees. “Something on the glass. Look.”
Louise steps closer. At first, it’s nothing but a faint scuff on the pane. Then, under the bluish UV beam, a warm-toned smear blossoms into view—a crescent-shaped streak, the approximate height of a person’s cheek or temple.
Louise exhales through her nose. “Makeup?”
“Bronzer or a contour foundation,” Mendoza says. “High mica content. See the shimmer right there?” She angles the light again, and the smear responds with a muted gold glint. “Not visible under normal light.”
“So someone leaned against the window,” says Cutty.
“More like someone was pushed,” Mendoza says. “You don’t get a smear this uniform from a light touch. There’s pressure in it—see how the pigment is denser at the lower edge? That’s transfer under force.”
“Under force. Meaning a struggle.”
“Most likely, yes. She fell hard against this window.”
“Hmm.” Louise crosses her arms. “Show me what you can do with it.”
Mendoza pulls a sterile swab from her kit.
“Two things, mainly.” She rolls the swab gently across the smear.
“First, touch DNA. Makeup traps skin cells, oils, and sweat. People don’t realize how much DNA they leave behind when their face hits a surface.
If we’re lucky, this picks up enough epithelial cells to give us a partial or full profile. ”
Louise gestures to the faint shimmer still visible under the UV. “And the product itself? The makeup?”
“That’s the second part.” Mendoza takes another swab, labeled for trace analysis. “Makeup formulas are like fingerprints. Pigment blends, mica ratios, binders—different across brands. Even slight variations between shades.”
“Meaning?”
“We can narrow it down to a specific class of foundations. Maybe even a specific brand. This one has a warm-undertone mica shimmer. I don’t know if that’s common or not.
But in theory, if we get a suspect and she’s got that product in her bag, and the chemical signature matches exactly?
” She snaps the tube shut. “That’s practically a courtroom exhibit. ”
Louise’s jaw tightens. “Is there a time window? Like, could this face have been pressed against the glass six months ago? A year? Cuz the owner, she’s owned this place for years.”
“Oh, no,” says Mendoza. “This part isn’t an exact science, but we’re only talking about a time window that spans a couple weeks at most and probably less than that.
High-oil bronzers oxidize. We can usually tell whether this was left today, yesterday, or several days ago.
You guys think the murder was on April first? ”
“Yeah.”
“Has the owner been in this condo since then?”
“Beats me. They haven’t let us access the lobby videos yet. We’re dealing with the building’s lawyers on that. And the owner of this unit isn’t talking. The only thing she said, when she filed the missing-persons report, is that she was in this condo on the afternoon of April first.”
Mendoza smiles. “Is her DNA profile in the system?”
“It is, yeah.”
“Give me a week, tops,” she says, “and I’ll tell you if it was her.”