The county Evidence Room is located between the Department Communications Center and the Archival Storage Room of the L.G.P.D. precinct basement. The single windowless room is brightly lit by a single ceiling-mounted fluorescent fixture. Floor-to-ceiling metal shelves line the walls. The shelves are filled with boxed tagged-and-bagged evidence that, for the most part, is collecting dust and spider webs. As he unlocks the padlock to the Evidence Room’s metal door, Captain Jimmy Mack steps inside, makes his way across the floor not to one of the many metal shelves, but instead to a table set up against a far wall near the fire extinguisher. There sits a single white Banker’s box that, thanks to the overtime teamwork of both Medical Examiner Fleming and the Glens Falls CSI, contains a dozen plastic jars filled with physical evidence. In a show of prosecutorial force, there will be blood matching both the victim’s and the killer’s DNA. There will be hair samples belonging to the killer (several long blond ones), plus one pair of black gloves discovered inside the recovered Lexus Sedan that, despite the dunking in the Hudson River, still contain trace gun powder residue.
