Free Blood by Stephen Fox Page B

will not change the facts I am relating to you today.”
                  On that note, thoroughly bewildered, the officers left the room.
     
                  Barbara Foster was bored.  The baby woke her up three times last night and her attention span today was nil.    Usually she enjoyed her job in the Police Fingerprint Lab.  As fingerprints were received, she would enlarge them using a state of the art copy machine.  If the print was smeared, she would tape a transparency over the copy and trace the highlights of the fingerprint using a fine point marker. This would help eliminate most of the smudging, allowing the computer to concentrate on the lines and whirls.  This was a painstaking task, sometimes taking hours to complete if the fingerprint was badly blurred.  Once the tracing was done, the transparency was scanned into the computer and a copy saved.  Only then could the prints be compared to the local database, encrypted on her computer.
    The local database contained fingerprints of known felons in the Savannah area.  Most crimes are local in nature, and police could get a handle on the local boys very quickly.  If a match was not found, Ellen’s computer could connect through the phone lines to the FBI’s computer in Washington.  Because of the multitude of requests, the wait for results from this source could be days, if not weeks.  Normally Ellen enjoyed the routine, but today everything seemed so dull.  And to top it off, her monthly report was due.  She was required to count and list all of the various duties she had performed over the last month, so that someone higher up could compile the results and justify their existence in some meager way.
    As her hands danced over the keys she thought back to the events of the last week.  First that guy disappeared from one of the cells.  Well, that sure stirred things up around the entire department.  Then the prints had come back linked to a twenty-five year old murder.  The next day the same prints were linked to a fifty-year-old case.  Wow!  Talk about job definition.  This was the sort of thing that made the job worthwhile.
                  A ‘ding’ behind her interrupted her thoughts.  Each of the five computers behind her was searching for a match for a different set of fingerprints and was set to notify her if a match was located.  Two were running prints through the local database.  Two were connected to the FBI records in Washington.  The fifth was working on a hunch.  Some of the girls had been chatting yesterday, and naturally the talk turned to the biggest story in the department for years - the missing prisoner.  Charlene had made the comment that she wondered how many other deaths could be laid at Patrick’s feet.  Margie, never one to miss a chance to join the conversation, chimed in. “Yeah, and in how many places?”  This aroused Ellen’s curiosity.  If they could link him to other crimes, maybe it would help locate the suspect.  They had tried locally and nationally.  The only arena left was international.  A call to obtain permission and the prints were sent to Interpol, an organization of law enforcement officials from 175 countries working together to promote cooperation among member police groups.  Founded in 1923, the headquarters in Lyons, France contains the largest collection of criminal records and evidence in the world.
                  A twist in her chair and Ellen was facing the offending machine.  A glance at the screen told her that this machine contained the prints of James Patrick.  Why that was the name of the suspect that escaped from the jail.  Apparently another match had been found.  Ellen had been excited yesterday when Patrick’s prints had been linked to a twenty-five-year-old crime.  What she saw on the screen today thrilled her and sent her scurrying for her supervisor.
     
                  Sergeant West sneered, “Do