he snipped seven stitches

The first five black boxes, each a different size, and their contents had been examined for fingerprints. He had dusted three of the deliveries himself, without success. Because the black boxes came without a word of explanation, the authorities would not consider them to be death threats. As long as the sender’s intention remained open to debate, this failed to be a matter for the police. Deliveries 4 and 5 had been trusted to an old friend in the print lab of the Scientific Investigation Division of the Los Angeles Police Department, who processed them off the record. They were placed in a glass tank and subjected to a cloud of cyanoacrylate fumes, which readily condensed as a resin on the oils that formed latent prints. In fluorescent light, no friction-ridge patterns of white resin had been visible. Likewise, in a darkened lab, with a cone-shaded halogen lamp focused at oblique angles, the boxes and their contents continued to appear clean. Black magnetic powder, applied with a Magna-Brush, had revealed nothing. Even bathed in a methanol solution of rhodamine 6G, scanned in a dark lab with the eerie beam from a water-cooled argon ion laser generator, the objects had revealed no telltale luminous whorls. The nameless stalker was too careful to leave such evidence. Nevertheless, Ethan handled this sixth delivery with the care he’d exhibited while examining the five previous items. Surely no prints existed to be spoiled, but he might want to check later. [7] With the cuticle scissors, he snipped seven stitches, leaving the final three to serve as hinges. The sender must have treated the apple with lemon juice or with another common culinary preservative to ensure a proper presentation. The meat was mostly white, with only minor browning near the peel. The core remained. The seed pocket had been scooped clean of pits, however, to provide a setting for the inserted item.