Sentence:  The killer , if in our present group , would certainly be interested in knowing that much , and even though with the fingerprint evidence what it <WSD>was</WSD> I could see no way he could use this bit of information to improve on his situation , there might always be some way . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  have the quality of being; (copula, used with an adjective or a predicate noun)