Summary

Back at her desk, Ballard got a call from Towson informing her of the favorable LA Times article written about her by Castor. He then tried to hit on her, but she skillfully deflected him. Ballard was browsing through photos of the Trent killing when the department’s property clerk approached her and said she needed to collect a bag of evidence that Chastain had left on hold for her. Inside were some of Haddel’s belonging and a business card that read “Eric Higgs VMD” (371). She searched the acronym VMD online, and waded through the results to find Vacuum Metal Deposition, a special process used to find fingerprints on evidence with a porous surface. There was a chemistry professor named Eric Higgs who specialized in it at the nearby UC Irvine, and when Ballard called him he told her that he had...