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Moscow, Idaho

I t’s evening when Brett Payne gets the phone call from the FBI suggesting that a “Bryan Kohberger” might be worth looking into.

It’s the call he and the team have been waiting for. “The DNA from the knife sheath was the one thing we had that we thought was a very strong piece of evidence,” Payne will later say.

The next morning, via Microsoft Teams, the FBI walks him through how they constructed the family tree and why they believe Kohberger should be looked at.

Payne doesn’t know much, if anything, about investigative genetic genealogy.

He’s never used it before, so he finds the details they give him “above [his] head.”

But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that the tree includes the Kohberger family, based in Pennsylvania.

On December 23, the investigators have enough information for Payne to apply for a warrant to pull Bryan Kohberger’s phone records to check the location of the cell towers pinged by his phone in the early hours of November 13.

Payne learns from AT the bare shower rod, empty towel rack, and white tilework are visible in the background.

His dark hair damp, he’s grinning and giving a thumbs up, his face deathly pale.

He’s wearing over-ear headphones and a clean white dress shirt, buttoned all the way to the top.

In order to see if Kohberger had stalked the King Road house or anyone in it, Payne and the team get another warrant and review earlier records of the phone’s calls as well as its locations.

Since Kohberger opened the account in 2022, the phone appears to have been close to the King Road house on at least twelve occasions. All except one occurred late at night.

So, finally, the puzzle is coming together .

Now it’s time to find a way to prove the very compelling, but still circumstantial, theory that Bryan Kohberger is their man.

The simplest and most obvious way to do this is to check his DNA and see if it matches the DNA on the knife sheath.

The FBI reaches out to its Philadelphia field office.

Plans for a surveillance operation in the area are set in motion.

The chief knows better than to count his chickens. But this year, Christmas feels more bountiful than he had dared hope. He even manages to take the whole day off to be with Julie and the family.

And because he’s feeling optimistic, he writes back to his emailer in Florida, the one who tells him this will be unsolved like the JonBenét Ramsey case:

“I want to wish you a merry Christmas. God bless you.”

The guy writes back: “You better hope God blesses you because if not, you’re going to go down in history as one of the worst.”

We shall see, thinks the chief. We shall see.