Grave Secrets

“Not necessarily. Cattle, goats, chinchilla, mink, muskrat, badger, fox, beaver, dog, indeed many forms can have a single-ladder medulla in the fine hairs. Muskrat has a chevron-scale pattern, so I knew it wasn’t muskrat.”

“Scales?” Galiano asked. “Like fish?”

“Actually, yes. I’ll explain scales shortly. Cattle hairs frequently have a streaky pigment distribution, often with large aggregates, so I eliminated cattle. The scales didn’t look right for goat.”

Minos seemed to be talking more to himself than to us, reviewing verbally the thought process he’d used in his analysis.

“I also excluded badger because of the pigment distribution. I ruled out—”

“What could you not rule out, Señor Minos?” Galiano broke in.

“Dog.” Minos sounded wounded by Galiano’s lack of interest in mammalian hair.

“Ay, Dios.” Galiano puffed air out of his lips. “How often would dog hair turn up on clothing?”

“Oh, it’s very, very common.” Minos missed Galiano’s sarcasm.

“So I decided to double-check myself.”

He walked to a desk and pulled a manila folder from a slotted shelf.

“Once I’d eliminated everything but cat and dog, I took measurements and did what I call a medullary percentage analysis.”

He withdrew a printout and laid it on the counter beside me.

“Since cat and dog hair is so frequently encountered at crime scenes, I’ve done a bit of research on discriminating between the two. I’ve measured hundreds of dog and cat hairs and set up a database.”

He flipped a page and pointed to a scatter graph bisected by a diagonal slash. The line divided dozens of triangles above from dozens of circles below. Only a handful of symbols crossed the metric Rubicon.

“I calculate medullary percentage by dividing medullar width by hair width. This graph plots that figure, expressed as a percentage, against simple hair width, expressed in microns. As you can see, with few exceptions, cat values cluster above a certain threshold, while dog values lie below.”

“Meaning that the medulla is relatively wider in cat hairs.”

“Yes.” He beamed at me, a teacher pleased with a bright student. Then he pointed to a clump of asterisks in the swarm of triangles above the line.

“Those points represent values for randomly selected hairs from the Paraíso sample. Every one falls squarely with the cats.”

Minos fished in the folder and withdrew several color prints.

“But you asked about scales, Detective. I wanted a good look at surface architecture, so I popped hairs from the Paraíso sample into the scanning electron microscope.”

Minos handed me a five-by-seven glossy. I felt Galiano lean over my shoulder.

“That’s the root end of a Paraíso hair magnified four hundred times. Look at the outer surface.”

“Looks like a bathroom floor.” Galiano.

Minos produced another photo. “That’s farther up the shaft.”

“Flower petals.”

“Good, Detective.” This time Galiano was the recipient of the proud smile. “What you’ve so aptly described is what we call scale pattern progression. In this case the scale pattern goes from what we call irregular mosaic to what we call petal.”

Minos was what we call a jargon meister. But the guy knew his hair.

Print number three. The scales now looked more honeycombed, their margins rougher.

“That’s the tip end of a hair. The scale pattern is what we call regular mosaic. The borders have become more ragged.”

“How is this relevant to cats and dogs?” Galiano.

“Dogs show wide variation in scale pattern progression, but, in my opinion, this progression is unique to cats.”

“So the hairs on the jeans came from a cat.” Galiano straightened.

“Yes.”

“Are they all from the same cat?” I asked.

“I’ve seen nothing to suggest otherwise.”

“What about the Specter sample?”

Minos leafed through his folder.

“That would be sample number four.” He smiled at me. “Cat.”

“So everything comes up feline.” I thought a moment. “Is the Paraíso sample consistent with any of the other three?”

“That’s where it gets interesting.”

Minos selected another page, scanned the text.

“In sample number two, the average length of the hairs was greater than in any of the other three samples.” He looked up.

“Over five centimeters, which is quite long.” Back to the report.

“Also, the hairs were more consistently of the fine variety.” He looked up again. “As opposed to coarse.” Back to the report. “And the surface architecture of each hair showed a mixture of smooth-edged regular mosaic and smooth-edged coronal scale types.”

Minos closed the folder, but offered no explanation.

“What does that mean, Señor Minos?” I asked.

“Sample two derives from a different cat than the other three samples. My guess, and it’s only a guess, won’t go into my report, is that cat number two is Persian.”

“And the other samples are not from Persian cats?”

“Standard shorthairs.”

“But the Paraíso sample is consistent with the other two samples?”

“Consistent, yes.”

“How was sample two labeled?”

Again Minos consulted the folder.

“Eduardo.”

“That would be Buttercup.”

“Persian?” Minos and I asked simultaneously.

Galiano nodded.