Hall of the Mountain King, ch 3

Gus Keller sat at his desk in the Special Crimes Investigation Bureau office building. Keller was the real name of the man who had attempted to pass himself off as Mr. Largo to Taran Tula. He had been a desk agent at the Washington office of the Special Crimes Investigation Bureau for two years, recruited right out of college because of his knowledge of European language, and had gradually become knowledgeable in the art theft field, from the missing art from World War II, to the Entartete Kunst, to the paintings and sculptures stolen on practically a monthly basis for the last several decades.

When the real Mr. Largo had been captured, with a sheet of paper which had told the SCIB of his plans to meet with the infamous art thief-cum-assassin Taran Tula, he had been the only one with the appropriate knowledge of German and art, and he had been yanked from his desk and sent out into the field…where he had failed.

Oh, his superiors hadn’t said that, but he knew that’s what they thought.

In front of him on his desk lay the fingerprint cards for five women.

There is something called the CSI effect. Because most people believe that the TV shows such as CSI, CSI Miami and CSI New York represent actual police procedure, they think DNA can be identified within minutes, and that a single partial fingerprint can be used to definitely identify a suspect.

Such is not the case.

In any study of fingerprints, there are “points of similarity” that are considered. Anything over six points of similarity are considered a match.

That’s what Keller had, the fingerprint cards of five women who had fingerprints with three points of similarity to the partial print that he had lifted off the spoon that Taran Tula had held while eating her ice cream, a month ago.

He intended to visit them, one by one, and see if he could recognize any of them as Taran Tula.

Their names were as follows, listed alphabetically:

1. Michele Bravo – fingerprinted as a child as a military family member
2. Amanda Cooper – arrested for shoplifting
3. Rita Ellison – an employee of a defunct civilian military contractor. She’d been fingerprinted when she’d applied for a top secret clearance
4. Sophia Sanchez – a sergeant in the US Army
5. Debbie Morgan – an employee of a current civilian contractor to the military

Keller gazed at the five names….where to start….hell, why not alphabetically? He’d start with Michele Bravo.