Page 38 of In Cold Blood (High Peaks Murder, Mystery and Crime Thrillers #1)

“Yeah. His good name might be marred if the investigation goes in the direction it is,” he said.

He didn’t need to explain. She understood.

She’d read the Cliff Notes and what had been held back from the family.

It was done out of respect and because they still lacked evidence.

As Noah rose, he sniffed hard. “I drove the length of this road a few times today. Something you said yesterday made me look at the report again.”

“Again? You’ve read the police report?”

He regarded her through narrowed eyes.

She understood. “Right. Your father.”

He nodded.

“Should have known.”

“Anyway, yesterday when you swung by after my truck got trashed, you mentioned having the truck dusted for prints. I didn’t see any mention in the report of them doing the same with Luke’s cruiser. ”

She looked at him, surprised. “The only thing I can think of why it wasn’t done is because they assumed there would be no reason. Nothing was destroyed or taken.”

“Right, which raises another point. The drugs were alleged to be found in the trunk of his cruiser. The ones taken out of evidence. If it was a drug deal gone wrong, why didn’t they take them before leaving?”

“They?”

“Well, there was obviously more than one person who shot him, Callie. That’s clear from the autopsy report.

He was hit from multiple sides. However, the theory that is being put forward is Luke was there to conduct a drug deal that went wrong.

So… if that’s true, which I don’t believe it is.

But if it was, why didn’t they take the drugs? ”

She nodded. “Yeah, that part never added up to me either. However, it’s possible they were interrupted… right? I mean by the witness. Maybe they were about to remove them and she approached the scene. They heard her vehicle or saw her coming and left.”

“But she left too.”

“Yeah, after she called it in.”

“Exactly. You see, I’ve been thinking. The witness didn’t give her name. No one knows who she is or what vehicle she was driving.”

“Right.”

“Think about this. In many ways, this is like those who commit a crime and have vanished. No one knows who they are. But what if there was a way to find the witness using the same method that we do now for solving cold cases — DNA.”

“Go on.”

“She called into dispatch on the radio, right? Which meant she had to have touched either the radio on Luke’s chest or the one in the vehicle.

Now of course that depends on whether she was wearing gloves but if she wasn’t.

In the heat of the moment, she might not have thought about wiping her prints off.

She calls it in, panics when they ask for her name, and then gets the hell out of there. ”

Callie nodded. “Okay. So, if we had her DNA, we could run it through CODIS but if she’s not in the system, then what?”

“We find a relative of hers through genetic genealogy and pin down her location that way.”

Her eyebrows shot up.

“Right now, Callie, she’s the best lead we have on what happened that night.

Maybe she saw it. Maybe she didn’t. Maybe she was responsible.

But until we can speak to her, we’re walking in the dark with nothing more than conjecture.

” He lifted his finger, looking up the road.

“Another thing. The other night. What was the next thing you suggested?”

“Um. To do a video canvass of the neighborhood.”

“Exactly. Was that done immediately while you were here at the scene?”

“If it was, I wasn’t involved. I was here to secure the scene with several deputies who showed up. And to be fair, this stretch of road doesn’t have businesses or homes on it.”

“There are only a few ways in and out of here,” he said.

Noah took out his phone and googled “New York 73.” He accessed Google maps and showed her the 27.

55-mile-long state highway that ran through Adirondack County.

“Underwood is here, Saint Huberts is here. Both have homes that may have video surveillance. That should have been canvassed. We need to find out if it was and if it wasn’t get on that ASAP. ”

“That’s if whoever did this came out those ways. They could have come off at State Route 9 and headed north.”

“In which case they would have gone by,” he pinched the screen, “these homes here.” Noah looked at her.

“I had a feeling you weren’t involved in the decision-making for canvassing the neighborhood because those were two things you mentioned straight off the bat.

That would have been something you would have documented. ”

“I did suggest it. I wasn’t the reporting officer. Deputy Sheriff Hendrix was. He was here first. The rest of us simply added statements to that report based on what we were assigned to do.”

“Then where is it in the report?”

“It would have been in there unless he hadn’t gotten to it or it wasn’t added yet.

You got to remember; we were dealing with a lot that night.

One of our own was shot. We didn’t know if we had an active shooter on the loose.

The first thing we did was secure the scene.

Others were patrolling the area. Another officer may have documented evidence.

Another may have taken photos. What probably doesn’t help was I was the one assigned to help Parish, not Hendrix.

Whatever had been gathered to that point would have been turned over to him. So we’d need to ask Hendrix.”

“Why were you selected?” he asked. “You haven’t been with the office long.”

She took a deep breath. “I assume it’s because Luke and I were close. Workwise, I mean.”

She noticed the way Noah looked at her as if wondering if it was more than that.

Noah sighed. “Seven days. And there is nothing to suggest a canvassing of the neighborhood was done?”

She shrugged. “It must have been assigned to one or two of the other deputies. I can find out.”

He blew out his cheeks as he ran a hand over his head.

“This is why I wanted in on this from day one. I had a feeling the ball might be dropped. Timing is everything on a case. Businesses and homes don’t hold onto recordings for long.

Some are overwritten within twenty-four to seventy-two hours.

For others, it’s a week. We need to get on that. Hopefully, something can be found.”

“And if it has?” Callie asked.

“Then we might have a good lead. If a camera picked up a vehicle, we’d have something strong to work with,” he said, beginning to pace.

“We could follow it out further using video canvassing down the remaining roads. We know Luke was working from twelve to twelve. We have the time he signed off, and the time when the witness called in. That gives us a good window. If we find footage and it’s not clear, we can send it to a forensic examiner and see if they can pin down a make, model, possibly a year.

” He took a deep breath. “If we can track the movements of that vehicle from where it was seen to wherever it goes, it might give us a license plate to run. From there, who knows, maybe they might have been stopped in the past, or maybe there is a cellular number on file. If we can get a search warrant to see what cellular devices utilized towers in proximity to this area on that night, that could nail things down.”

He was throwing a lot at her all at once but already she could see the benefit of having him involved.

“Parish never made it to prints. His focus was on interviewing people that Luke had crossed paths with, starting with the Sheriff’s Office and working his way out. He was?—”

“Following the money trail of the drugs,” Noah said.

“Yeah.”

“As much as I think anything is possible, I can’t believe that. We’ll have to look into it but right now our best shot of finding out what happened on this road is to find that witness’s vehicle or her through DNA. We find that we may find the truth.”