I think about that a moment. “Is there any way to tell if the doll is old or new?”
“I can have one of the other lab guys take a look at the paint. Might be able to give you a ballpark.”
“That’d be great.”
“Back to the car,” she says. “We found yellow nylon fibers on the rear bumper.”
“From the rope?”
“We’ve still got to do the matching, but I’m betting they’re one and the same.”
“Any idea how the fibers got there?” But my imagination is already running with possibilities, none of them good.
“We inspected the rope and found that it had some recent damage, as if it had been abraded. A few of the nylon strands were sort of scraped off; some were broken. Could have been from the bumper or even the wooden beam in the barn.”
Disturbing images flood my mind. “As if someone tied one end of the rope around the victim’s neck, looped it around the beam, and tied the other end to the bumper of the vehicle and strung him up.”
“I’d say that’s a possible scenario.” She pauses. “But get this: Remember the tear in the victim’s jacket?”
“I do.”
“We found fibers from that jacket on the trunk latch.”
“So maybe he caught his jacket on the latch?” I ask.
“Jacket is canvas, which is a pretty sturdy fabric,” she tells me. “I’d say the jacket caught on that latch while he was being forcefully pulled from the trunk.”
“You mean with his own vehicle?”
“I can’t say for certain, of course, but that’s a possibility.”
I think about that a moment and try not to shudder. “Anything else?”
“Saved the best for last, Chief. We found an iPhone registered to Michaels.”
My interest surges. Michaels’s daughter had told us her father owned a cell phone. Glock and I did a cursory search of the vehicle, but once we discovered the blood in the trunk, I decided it would be best not to risk contaminating possible evidence, so we stopped and turned everything over to BCI.
“Where did you find it?” I ask.
“Trunk. Under the mat. Looks like while he was inside the trunk, he dropped it or was incapacitated and couldn’t get back to it.”
“Did you get any phone numbers off of it?” I ask.
Paper crackles on the other end. “I put all the names and numbers into a spreadsheet. You want me to e-mail it to you?”
“That’d be great.” I give her my e-mail address and disconnect. In the outer office, I hear Jodie talking to someone on the phone, laughing. She’s got her radio turned up too loud, but I don’t mind. My exhaustion from earlier is gone. I’m energized by the prospect of new information. I launch my e-mail software and a flurry of messages pours into my in-box, the last of which is from the BCI lab with a PDF attachment. I open the document. It’s a spreadsheet with names, phone numbers, dates, and a slew of unrelated numbers that are meaningful only to the technician who entered the data. I hit the Print key as I skim the document on my monitor.
There aren’t many calls, incoming or outgoing. Apparently, Dale Michaels wasn’t much of a talker. In the month leading up to his murder, he received thirty-two calls, most from his daughter, Belinda Harrington, and lasting a few minutes. I skim over several names and numbers I don’t recognize, then go to the second page. There are twenty-six outgoing calls, several to his daughter. Local businesses. A car dealership. The farm store. Some of the names I don’t recognize.
I go to the final calls Michaels made. One to Belinda Harrington on the morning of March 6. At 11 P.M. on March 7—which was probably the last day of his life—he made a call to The Raspberry Leaf, which is a local art gallery. A few minutes later, he made a call to Jerrold McCullough, whom I don’t know. Shortly thereafter, he made his final call to a name I do recognize. Artie “Blue” Branson is a well-known pastor of a local multidenominational church—and the last man in the county I’d have paired with Dale Michaels.
In his early fifties, Blue spends every Sunday preaching the gospel from his pulpit at the little frame church he built with his own hands. The rest of his time is dedicated to counseling troubled souls—drug addicts, prostitutes, and ex-cons—and providing for people who can’t provide for themselves. Known for his trademark black suits and sporting a goatee, Blue looks like a modern-day version of Johnny Cash, but he and his church have done more good for the impoverished than anyone else in the area.
I look at the list, but there’s only that one call to Blue. It lasted fourteen minutes. Did the two men know each other? Were they friends? Was Dale part of Blue’s congregation? There could be a dozen or more reasons for the call, but the timing of it bothers me, and I’m compelled to take a closer look.