The man screwed up his face. “Are you daft? No wonder this town’s gone to shit with you protecting it. I said earlier in the afternoon. I wouldn’t bother to mention if it was right before. Of course the cops had to come here on some sort of call. This was hours before. I saw a car drive by and figured there were some goings on, but when I came down, it was just that lady cop. She was going in the building. I don’t want to go anywhere near there, so I turned around and went back home.”
Kevin frowned. Jo? Why had she been here earlier in the afternoon? He guessed it made sense. She’d probably come to scope the place out so that they’d have an exit strategy in case Dupont’s meeting was an ambush. Yep, that made perfect sense. But if that was the case, why hadn’t Sam or Jo mentioned that in the reports?
“Right. Well, the police are watching this place. Like you said, there’s a lot of drug activity, and we want to keep the neighborhood safe, so we check in every so often,” Kevin lied. He wanted to make an excuse for Jo, because if Sam and Jo hadn’t mentioned her being here earlier, he was sure there was good reason for it.
The man screwed up his face and thought a minute. “Yeah. Right. That makes sense. That what you doing now?”
“That and looking for clues.” Kevin pointed to Lucy.
The man nodded. “Okay, then. Hope you catch the guy that did it.”
Kevin watched the man leave until he disappeared around the corner.
Kevin hoped Harvey wouldn’t make an official report about what he’d just said. No one needed to know that Sam and Jo had omitted the part about her being there earlier in the day. It might have been an honest mistake, but official investigations could get sticky, and honest mistakes could get twisted out of context. Kevin would keep that information to himself.
Lucy’s excited bark brought his attention back to the task at hand. She stood at the edge of the woods where a narrow trail started. She looked back at Kevin and then at an oak sapling in front of her. Her nose was high in the air, a position that Kevin had come to recognize as a sign that she’d sniffed out something of interest. Kevin knew that dogs had a strong sense of smell, but in the short time he’d worked with Lucy, he’d noticed that hers seemed almost as if it had been developed to an extraordinary level.
Kevin jogged over. “What did you find?”
Lucy pointed her ears forward and looked up at a leaf at about waist height. Kevin’s eyes followed her gaze. The sapling had bright-green leaves, but the one Lucy looked at was stained with a rusty-brown smudge. He bent closer, his heartbeat picking up a notch. The smudge was the color of dried blood. A fingerprint? He couldn’t see any whorls, but it was the right size.
Was that Dupont’s blood? Was it from the killer? And if so, should he bag it as evidence, because if they were going to close this as a suicide, how could there be a fingerprint from the killer on a leaf? Maybe he should destroy it.
But if for some reason Sam decided to investigate, this fingerprint could come in handy, and he couldn’t guarantee that he would come back to find it washed off by rain or devoured by bugs. He could put it in his evidence bag and hold it just in case, but then how would he explain coming back here to find it?
He took the evidence bag from his pocket and turned it inside out. It was better to turn the print in. It might help them find the person doing Thorne’s dirty work. If Sam decided to go the suicide route, they could always use it to prove that one of Thorne’s minions had been here after the mayor killed himself. And that proof might be the thing that could help them build a case against Thorne, no matter what route they decided to take in the investigation of Dupont’s death.
Chapter Four
Sam didn’t like the way things were going with John Dudley, the medical examiner. They stood side by side in the basement morgue. The temperature was set on chill, the room all stainless steel and gleaming white tile. The caustic smell of antiseptic and death permeated the air. Sam would never get used to that smell. Apparently, it didn’t bother John. He seemed downright gleeful as he pointed to an x-ray of Dupont’s head on the lighted display box.
“The bullet came in at this angle.” John tapped on the x-ray then pointed to a photo of the crime scene that sat inside an open manila folder. “The angle just doesn’t coincide with the way the gun fell. I had those fancy CSI yahoos up at the county crime lab reenact it. You know they have all kinds of gadgets to do that with. ’Course, there wasn’t even a hint of a fingerprint on the gun.”
“I know,” Sam said. Sam should’ve known that John would consult with the county lab. He kicked himself for moving the gun in the first place. What had he been thinking?
“Right. Well, I have to admit I’m baffled as to why the gun was there. Dupont didn’t do it, so it must have been the killer. But why?” John asked. “Another thing was the way Dupont’s pocket was half out. Like he’d been handing something to the killer. Or the killer took it.”
Sam gritted his teeth. This could be a complication. They’d searched Dupont at the mill hastily before anyone else had arrived. He hadn’t mentioned that in his report.
“Maybe the killer was looking for cash, got scared off when he heard us coming in, and dropped the gun,” Sam suggested.
John shrugged. “Maybe. Seems more like he planted it there.”
Sam raised a brow. “Planted?”
“Yeah. Maybe he wanted the scene to look like a suicide, or maybe he wanted to set someone else up for it.”
“Yeah, that thought did cross my mind.” Great, now he’d lied to John. Technically, it wasn’t a lie. Sam did think he was being set up, and maybe that was the reason the killer had left the gun. He never should have moved the gun. But John had one thing right: it was odd the gun had been left behind. There was only one reason—to frame someone. Sam feared that someone was him.
Sam took the autopsy file from John and drove back to the police station. There was no question now. He’d be investigating Dupont’s death as a murder.
Worried about what might be uncovered officially once he followed the case through properly, Sam trudged up the granite steps to the brick police building and pushed the double doors open. Reese scowled at him from behind an old metal teacher’s desk they’d appropriated when the junior high had been renovated.
“I’m going to get back at you all for leaving me here with Jamison,” the receptionist warned.
Sam shrugged, sheepish. “Sorry about that. But that guy can really impede things. I didn’t want to get caught up in an argument with him. We have work to do.”
“He was asking all kinds of questions. Digging into the specifics of what you guys were up to. Asking about private conversations. As if I’d tell.” Reese rolled her eyes.
Sam smiled. “Thanks.” He trusted Reese. She wouldn’t let Jamison or anyone else know the details they wanted to keep secret.
“But I am going to get back at you.” Reese’s gaze drifted over Sam’s shoulder. “In fact, that’s going to happen any minute. Harry called, and I told him you’d love to see him.”
“What? Please tell me you’re joking.” Sam spun around to see Harry Woolston walking up the steps. His sharp blue eyes sparkled under bushy white eyebrows that matched the thick shock of hair on his head.
Harry had been police chief when Sam was just a boy. He had to be pushing eighty. He liked to come in and relive his glory days. Usually, that consisted of meddling in Sam’s investigations, though sometimes he did help out. But right now the last thing Sam wanted was Harry’s help.
Too late for that. The door swung open, and Harry stepped in. “Sam! How’s it going? You making headway in the Dupont case?”
“A bit,” Sam said.