Page 20 of In Cold Blood

“No. They only told me he was shot multiple times and never had a chance to draw his weapon. They warned me before I saw him down at the morgue. After that, I was in too much of a state to process anything else. So, anything else they told me was just white noise.”

Noah nodded. Having worked with survivors of all manner of crimes, he wanted to be careful to not dredge up anything that might cause even more pain, but in some ways it was inevitable. “In the days and weeks leading up to his death, did Luke ever mention anything out of the ordinary? A case he was working on? Suspicions he had? Did he have any confrontations with locals?”

Kerri shook her head. “No. We agreed early in our marriage that he wouldn’t bring his work home with him. That once that door closed, he didn’t discuss work. It was best for both of us and the kids. Of course, if there were days where I could see it affected him, he would tell me things but... well, he tended to skirt around the finer details.”

“Did he seem bothered that week?”

“That week. That month. Yeah. He was a lot more withdrawn.” She paused for a moment. “He told me to let him know if I thought I was being followed.”

“Were you?”

“Not that I noticed.”

“Did you ask for more details?”

“I asked him if I should be worried. He said no. It was just precautionary since the recent busts.”

“Busts?”

“He was heading up the drugs unit. With Axel’s help, he’d shut down a lot of narcotics entering the county.”

“So the office told you that?”

“The Sheriff’s Office? No. Luke did. He wanted us to be safe.”

Noah nodded. “These precautions. You think it was related to that?”

“He didn’t say directly but I kind of figured it was. It was around that time.”

Noah took a sip of his coffee and leaned forward. Kerri nursed her cup, turning it ever so slowly in her hand and looking down into it.

“So you never saw anyone following you?”

“No. If there was, they were very careful to not be seen. Look, Noah, it’s Adirondack County. You know this place. It’s full of tourists. Locals try to stay out of the way in the busy seasons. Nothing bad happens in this town or at least used to.”

He nodded slowly, thinking back to what Alicia had said about a bad element and how things had changed.

It was a known fact that incidents in a community often didn’t find their way into the local press. Even in the sleepiest of towns in America, police departments kept some things back. One, because of ongoing investigations, two because they felt the public didn’t need to know, but mostly it was because they didn’t want to scare people away. Give the town a bad name. It wasn’t uncommon to find organized gangs seeping into suburban neighborhoods, rubbing shoulders with the locals and folks being none the wiser. Criminals were getting smarterevery year, flying under the radar and coming up with new ways to circumvent the strong arm of the law.

Still, if he’d been involved in several large drug busts, that certainly could have attracted a lot of unwanted attention. “What about Axel?”

A genuine smile appeared at his name. “Yeah. Luke was pumped to get that dog. The first K-9 in the county. The only one in the county to be exact. A dual-purpose K-9 trained for patrol and narcotics. Luke said they wouldn’t have found half of what they had without him.”

“And yet whoever ambushed Luke didn’t kill the dog.”

“Kind of hard. Axel wasn’t with him that night.”

“What?”

“Axel was ill. I mean, Axel went with Luke all the time but when he had to go to court, training, or deal with some administrative duties he would often leave him here at the house. Then there were times when Axel strained a leg or wasn’t feeling well. But that was pretty rare. No, he had come down with a serious case of food poisoning. At least that’s what the vet said. Throwing up and all.” She glanced off toward a dog bowl on the ground in the mud room. “I’m not sure Axel would have helped Luke anyway, as he wasn’t using the Tahoe that night. And, according to the police report, Luke never managed to pull his firearm. Those bastards had to have planned it.”

“Those? So they think there was more than one?”

“Possibly.” She nodded then took a sip of her coffee. “Something to do with the distance and spray of gunfire.”

He mulled over what she’d told him. “You said he didn’t have his vehicle?”

“It was in for repairs. The Tahoe was the only one with a dog cage in the rear. He used one of the pool cars that night. One that didn’t have a dashboard camera.”