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It's 2:30 a.m., but the lights burn over Detective
Goswell's desk as she wades through boxes of old records 
from the 1970s, looking for arrest reports with intact fingerprints to compare with the prints she lifted from the Cliff College belt buckle found on the Sayers House corpse.
Elizabeth hears the door open, but she doesn't look up. She is afraid of losing momentum, or of losing her place, or perhaps of losing the tenacity to keep her eyes open. She knows Maud is there before she hears her voice -- the telltale smell of lavender precedes her.
In reply, Maud sets a grilled mushroom sandwich on the desk in front of Elizabeth, then moves to rub her partner's shoulders. Elizabeth stares at the sprouts mashed back against the sourdough crust by the tight Saran wrap. Maud's ministrations run down the taut cords of her upper back, slowly easing the tension of which, just moments before, she had been unaware.MAUD I brought you a sandwich.
ELIZABETH Why aren't you asleep?
Maud works on the knot she's hit near Elizabeth's shoulderblade as Elizabeth unwraps her sandwich and takes a bite.MAUD You're as tight as a fanbelt. Why don't you knock off and come home?
ELIZABETH He's got to be in here somewhere.
MAUD How do you know he's got a record?
ELIZABETH I don't, but these are the only fingerprints I've got.
MAUD There must be hundreds of records there. You'll never get through them all comparing them by hand.
ELIZABETH It's not so bad. He had a real distinctive kring and middlepocket to the right on his thumb.
MAUD What?
ELIZABETH Fingerprint talk... Mmmm, right there.
Elizabeth takes another bite, then suddenly comes to a realization.ELIZABETH I'm wracking my brain trying to figure out who Virgil could have killed. I mean, he had that big fight with Dick over your letter, but then Dick's still alive.
MAUD There was certainly bad blood between Virgil and McGeorge Archibald when Virgil was appointed department Chair over Archibald.
ELIZABETH Well, Archibald's still with us, too. And besides, who's going to commit murder over a promotion that's all work and no raise?
MAUD His brother wasn't so crazy about him, either. You know, all that tribal politics stuff.
ELIZABETH Yeah, well there's no shortage of people who Virgil had run-ins with, but they're all still around... This sandwich is great. What's in here?
MAUD Rabbit food.
Elizabeth swallows her mouthful without chewing it up, almost gagging in her haste to articulate her thought.ELIZABETH Mmmeyeth eez mot za mlljr.
MAUD What?
Elizabeth starts rifling through the files on her desk at a furious pace.ELIZABETH Maybe he's not the killer! What if that's Virgil down there in the morgue?MAUD You mean he never took off?ELIZABETH Maybe he tried to, but someone got to him first and killed him for the bird!
She continues to shuffle through the files until one of them catches her eye. With a squeal of delight, she extracts a piece of paper with a small card Scotch-taped to it.ELIZABETH I know it's in here somewhere. Remember when Dick knocked his tooth out?
She digs into the morass of papers on her desk until she finds the copy of the corpse's fingerprints. Then she compares them side by side.ELIZABETH Here they are. Virgil's prints. And there's that distinctive kring and middlepocket.
ELIZABETH
Bingo!
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