Guy Langman, Crime Scene Procrastinator Read Online Free Page A

Hairston is almost, but not quite, smiling. That dude is hard to read.
    “I guess you’re stuck with me, toolshed,” Anoop says loudly in my direction. He is weird with cursing, like, instead of calling you “tool” he’ll say “tool belt” or “toolshed.” One time he called me a “multi-use hand tool.” Now he’s holding both magnifying glassesover his eyes, which are also big and brown. Somehow the result is not quite as fetching.
    “Before we begin,” Mr. Zant says, squeezing into the seat next to my rightful partner, “allow me to explain Locard’s exchange principle. The great Edmond Locard was an absolute lion in the field of forensics.” He continues, reading in a serious voice like a snooty professor. “The forensic scientist Paul L. Kirk best explained the exchange principle as follows: ‘Wherever he steps, whatever he touches, whatever he leaves, even unconsciously, will serve as a silent witness against him. Not only his fingerprints or his footprints, but his hair, the fibers from his clothes, the glass he breaks, the tool marks he leaves, the paint he scratches, the blood or semen he deposits or collects—all of these and more bear mute witness against him.’ ”
    I watch as Maureen turns bright red at the mention of the word “semen.” She probably has a crush on dreamy, hip Mr. Zant. He is so handsome.
    “Now let’s collect some evidence!” Mr. Zant commands, making an upward twirling spiral in the air with the tip of his pen. As I have been trying to do for the whole hour, I catch Raquel’s eye.
    “The game,” I blurt out, “is a-finger!”
    See, because of how Sherlock Holmes said, “The game is afoot.” But we were talking about
finger
prints? So I said “finger”? It doesn’t get better if I explain it. Judging from the look on her face, Raquel doesn’t think so either.
    See why I need a manual?
    Mr. Zant hands out the cards, each with an image of a fingerprint on them. All we have to do is look at them through magnifyingglasses and compare them to a second set. We have to figure out which, if any, are identical. I know I’m going to be bad at it. Attention to detail is not my strong suit. Plus, I drifted off during the discussion of ridges and patterns and whorls. The patterns really are called “whorls”—that I remembered, because I thought he wrote “whores” on the board and started laughing. Especially funny was when he started talking about “double loop whores.” (I mean “whorls.”)
    I’m playing with the magnifying glass, staring at the back of the card for some reason. I notice a dot in the lower-left-hand corner. I look closer. It’s not a dot, but letters, written in a tiny font! Like maybe two-point Times New Roman. I look closely, staring with the magnifying glass. It’s initials.
My
initials: GL.
    “Hey, Anoop, look at this,” I say. He is working hard, of course, examining the ever-living crap out of some whorls. “It says ‘GL’ on the back of my card.”
    “Why on earth are you looking at the
back
of the card?” he asks, peering closely and jotting notes in the fancy little leather-bound notebook he always carries.
    “Just look at the back of yours,” I command.
    He sighs his annoying “I’m humoring you, Guy” sigh again, but he looks anyway. “Huh,” he says. “It says ‘TK.’ ” I look up and see a smile run across Mr. Zant’s face. When he notices me looking, he quickly glances away and pretends to be seriously interested in a chart on the wall explaining which fish of the North Pacific are overfished.
    “Uh, wuzzu?” TK says. He had heard Anoop mention his name, so looks up, perplexed.
    “I wasn’t saying your name, TK,” Anoop says. “I was saying ‘TK.’ ”
    TK narrows his eyes.
    “My name
is
TK,” he says.
    “I just … never mind,” Anoop says.
    “Hey, Raquel,” I say, feeling bold, glad to have a reason to talk to her. “Are there initials on the back of
your
card?”
    She looks up from her