Free Take the Fourth by Jeffrey Walton Page A

the department. That newbie found a few files in a forgotten box by a forgotten file cabinet in a rarely used room. He noted a few fingerprints and decided on his own to send them to the good folks in Washington. There was not one officer left in the department who worked on any of these cases.
     
    Greg did a double-take when he saw the name, the name belonging to the fingerprints, the name that should not belong on a missing person report, and the name he knew all too well. He had mistakenly put two and two together and came to the wrong conclusion; that conclusion being the owner of the fingerprint was missing. He read the summary and corrected himself. He then went on to read the entire report. He noted the date, the time, and of course the name and location. These fingerprints were lifted at the last known scene of the missing person, they were found on a vessel drifting afloat in the Chesapeake. The report claimed that Ms. Nash was an avid boater, who enjoyed sunset cruises and tossing an occasional trap into the waters for the tasty Maryland Blue Crab. The report claimed Ms. Nash was by herself at the time, confirmed by the neighbor who stayed at home to watch her daughter in return for a few crabs and by another boater who waved to Ms. Nash upon passing her within a mile from her home. Ms. Nash’s husband was still at work. The boat was found the next day with a small amount of blood belonging to Ms. Nash and a few dead crabs. One of the crabs in particular contained some of Ms. Nash’s blood within its claw. There were no traps on board and a few pieces of chicken used as bait. Also on board were two wine glasses and no wine bottle. The glasses contained one set of prints belonging to Ms. Nash, the other to an unidentified person. No other liftable prints from the unidentified person were found on the vessel. The case remained opened since a body was never found but the conclusion was that she fell overboard during the retrieval of one of the crab traps. The officer working the case wrote a brief note saying no foul play was involved and deemed it an accident but never officially closed the case due to the missing body. The blood was caused by a poorly placed hand and the claws of a captured crab.
     
    After Greg read the entire report, he reread it again just to be on the safe side. He knew this file could be detrimental to the name belonging to the fingerprints even if it was over twenty years old. He also knew this was a call out of his hands, so he called the Deputy Director of Science and Technology, he called Jorja.
     
    “Yes, Greg”
    “I just received a hit off our incoming IAFIS file… and”
    “And what?”
    “You’re going to want to see this, and see it now”
    “Anybody we know?”
    “Yes, everybody is going to know.”
    “Send it.”
    “Will do, it’s on its way. Just remember I’ll need you to embiggen more power to me in order to change the timestamp a sap.”
    “Embiggen?”
    “Yes embiggen, it’s a perfectly cromulent word.”
    “Cromulent? Now you’re making things up.”
    “No, no, no… that’s in the Webster’s Dictionary, look it up.”
    “Never saw those words on my SAT’s.”
    “That’s because they didn’t exist until about 1995 or so.”
    “Oh let me so guess… . your favorite yellow family, the Simpsons?”
    “You got it, season seven,” with that he hung up before she could even ride him about it and sent the file via the normal encryption to Jorja’s desktop.
     
    Almost instantaneously it was on her computer monitor. Almost instantaneously she was in shock. Almost instantaneously she knew she had a big decision to make. Greg was more than right; everyone knew the name of this person. It was indeed a VIP and possibly a future VP. It was the name of Senator Anderson’s best friend. It was Jorja’s uncle. It was Floyd Carson. “But why were they on a missing person’s report?” Even before she read the report summary she came to the conclusion to