Do you understand the significance?”

“Without a history in CCRE, we have no way of knowing who this person is.”

Lucy nodded. “Right. You've got someone's, prints and SID number in AFIS, but there's no name or other personal identifiers to match him up with. And that would indicate to me that somebody dropped this person's record from CCRE. In other words, CCRE has been tampered with too.

“Let's go back to Ronnie Waddell,” I said. “Can you reconstruct what was done to his?”

“I've got, a theory. First, you need to know that the SID number is a unique identifier and has a unique index, meaning the system won't allow you to enter a duplicate value. So if, for example I wanted to switch SID numbers with you, I'd have to delete your record first. Then after I've changed my SID number to yours, I’d, reenter your record, giving you my old SID number.

“And that's what you think happened?” I asked.

“Such a transaction would explain the TUs I've found in the journal tape for December ninth.”

Four days before Waddell's execution, I thought.

“There's more,” Lucy said. “On December sixteenth, Waddlels record was deleted from AFIS.”

“How can that be?”

I asked, baffled. “A print from Jennifer Deighton's house came back to Waddell when Vander ran it through AFIS a little over a week ago.”

'AFIS crashed on December sixteenth at ten-fifty-six A.M. exactly ninety-eight minutes after Waddell's record was deleted,” Lucy replied. “The data base was restored with the journal tapes, but you've got to keep in mind that a backup is done only once a day, late in the afternoon. Therefore, any changes made to the data base the morning of December sixteenth hadn't been backed up yet when the system crashed. When the data base was restored, so was Waddell's record.”

“'You mean someone tampered with Waddells SID number four days before his execution? Then three days after his execution; someone deleted his record, from AM?”

“That's the way it looks to me. What I can't figure is why the person didn't just delete his, record in the first place. Why go to all the trouble to change the SID number, only to turn around and delete his entire record?”

Neils Vander had a simple answer to that when I called him moments later.

“It's not unusual far an inmate's prints to be deleted from AFIS after he's dead,” Vander said. “In fact, the only reason we wouldn't delete a deceased inmate's records would be if it were possible his prints might turn up in any unsolved cases. But Waddell had been in prison for nine, ten years - he'd been out of commission too long to make it worthwhile to keep his prints on line.”

“Then the deletion of his record on December sixteenth would have been routine,” I said.

“Absolutely. But it would not have been routine to delete his record on December ninth, when Lucy believes his SID number was altered, because Waddell was still alive then.”

“Neils, what do you think this is all about?”

“When you change somebody's SID number, Kay, in effect you have changed his identity. I may get a hit on his prints, but when I enter the corresponding SID number in CCRE, it's not his history I'm going to get. I'll either get no history at all, or the history of somebody else.”

“You got a hit on a print left at Jennifer Deighton's house,” I said. “You entered the corresponding SID number in CCRE and it came back to Ronnie Waddell. Yet we now have reason to believe his original SID number was changed. We really don't know who left the print on her dining room chair, do we?”

“No. And it's becoming dear that someone has gone to a lot of trouble to make sure we can't verify who that person might be. I can't prove it's not Waddell. I can't prove that it is.”

Images flashed in my mind as he spoke.

. “In order to verify that Waddell did not leave that print on Jennifer Deighton's chair, I need an old print of his that I can trust, one that I know couldn't have been tampered with. But I just don't know where else to look.”

I envisioned dark paneling and hardwood floors, and dried blood the color of garnets.

“Her house,” I muttered.

“Whose house?” Vander puzzled.

“Robyn Naismith's house,” I said.

Ten years previously, when Robyn Naismith's house was processed by the police, they would not. have arrived with laser or Luma-Lite. There was no such thing as DNA printing then. There was no automated fingerprint system in Virginia, no computerized means to enhance a bloody partial pint left on a wall or anywhere else. Though new technology generally is irrelevant in cases that have long been closed, there are exceptions, I believed Robyn Naismith's murder was one of them.

If we could spray her house. with chemicals, it was possible we could literally resurrect the scene. Blood dots, drips, drops, spatters, stains, and screams bright red. It seeps into crevices and cracks, and sneaks under cushions and floors. Though it may disappear with washing and fade with the years, it never completely goes away. Like the writing that wasn't there on the sheet of paper found on Jennifer Deighton's bed, there was blood invisible to the naked eye inside the rooms where Robyn Naismith had been accosted and killed. Unaided by technology, police had found one bloody print during the original investigation of the crime. Maybe Waddell had left more… Maybe they were still there.

Neils Vander, Benton Wesley, and I drove west toward the University of Richmond, a splendid collection of Georgian buildings surrounding a lake between Three Chopt and River roads. It was from here that Robyn Naismith had graduated with honors many years before, and her love of the area had been such that she had later bought her first home two blocks from the campus.

Her former small brick house with its mansard roof was set on a half-acre lot. I was not surprised that the site should have been ideal for a burglar: The yard was dense with trees, the back of the house dwarfed by three gigantic magnolias that completely blocked the sun. I doubted the neighbors on either side could have seen or heard anything at Robyn Naismith's house, had they been home: The morning Robyn was murdered, her neighbors were at work.

Due to the circumstances that had placed the house on the market ten years ago, the price had been low for the neighborhood. We'd discovered the university had decided to buy it for faculty housing, and had kept much of what was left inside it. Robyn had been unmarried, an only child, and her parents in northern Virginia did not want her furnishings. I suspected they could not bear to live with or even look at them. Professor Sam Potter, a bachelor who taught German, had been renting the house from his employer since its purchase.

As we gathered camera equipment, containers of chemicals, and other items from the trunk, the back door opened. An unwholesome-looking man greeted us with an uninspired good-morning.

“You need a hand with that?” Sam Potter came down the steps, sweeping his long, receding black hair out of his eyes and smoking a cigarette. He was short and pudgy, his hips wide like a woman's.

“If you want to get the box here,’ Vander said.

Potter dropped the cigarette to the ground and didn't bother stamping it out. We followed him up the steps, and into a small kitchen with old avocado-green appliances and dozens of dirty dishes. He led us through the dining. roam;, with laundry piled on the table, then into the-living room at the front of the house. I set down what I was carrying and tried not to register my shock as I recognized me console television connected to a cable outlet in the wall, the draperies; the brown leather couch, the parquet floor, now scuffed and as dull as mud. Books and papers were scattered everywhere, and Potter began to talk as he carelessly collected them.

“As you can see, I'm not domestically inclined,” he said, his German accent distinct. “I will stick these things on the dining room table for now. There,” he said when he returned. “Anything else you would like me to move?”