Candice was the first to reach me. I wouldn’t let go of Dennis. I cried over him as if he were a dear friend, because in the last moment of his life, we’d connected in a way, and I’d seen him as clearly as anyone but his maker could. He was a man who’d made more mistakes than most, and regretted them all. He’d been trying to do the right thing by meeting me. Of that I was certain.
“Hey,” Candice said, in a way that suggested she’d already said it to me a few times. “Abby, the paramedics are here, honey. You’ve got to let go.”
And then she was gently reaching over me to take Dennis’s limp torso out of my arms and lay him on the ground. As she did that, something slipped to the ground and rolled next to me.
Through my tears I stared at it. I knew immediately what it was, but the emotion and trauma of the moment prevented me from fully processing the object tucked within a Ziploc bag. I picked up the Baggie, hugging it to me as I got to my feet, and took a few steps with Candice to get out of the way of the paramedics. That’s when I noticed that Oscar and Cox had joined us. Oscar was out of breath and soaked through with sweat. “The shot came from that building,” he said, pointing to a rather dingy-looking apartment complex with tall wire fencing around it. It looked vacant and ready to be torn down.
“Did you get a view of the shooter?” Candice asked him, wrapping her arm around me protectively.
“No. He was too far away,” Oscar said. “By the time I got to the other side of the street, he was long gone.”
Cox motioned to Oscar and the pair stepped away to talk to the police officers who’d now also arrived on the scene. Candice shuffled me away from Dennis and the paramedics. “You okay?” she asked me.
I lifted my hand to wipe my cheeks and noticed there was blood on it. My stomach lurched and it was all I could do not to lose my cookies. “Not really,” I told her when I could speak.
“Come with me,” she instructed, and moved me over to Oscar’s car. Reaching inside, she came up with a bottle of water and handed it to me. “Drink,” she ordered. I did. “Hey,” she said, eyeing my left hand. “What’s that?”
I lifted the baseball from Noah’s room so that she could see it. On the baseball was some blue scribble, in the form of an autograph, but also, there was a rust-colored fingerprint. The rust was obviously from dried blood, and the fingerprint was obviously that of the man who’d killed Noah Miller.
“Oh, my, God,” she gasped, taking the Baggie from me to really inspect it. “You were right. Gallagher really was there that night.” With pressed lips, she looked back at where Dennis’s lifeless body lay. “He was confessing to Noah’s murder.”
My radar said differently. “You think he was about to admit he was the killer?” I said. “No way, Candice. Dennis just got shot trying to let me know who murdered Noah. I’ll give you that he was there that night, but if that fingerprint comes back as Dennis Gallagher’s, I’ll retire from crime fighting.”
Candice tucked the Baggie into her purse protectively and said, “Until we establish jurisdiction, I don’t want APD to even get a hint that we’ve got this.”
My attention was drawn back to Gallagher. The paramedics were unwrapping a white sheet to place over his body as bystanders began to gather and gawk, and then I moved my gaze to Oscar and Cox. They were arguing with what looked to be an APD detective who’d just arrived on scene. It dawned on me then that if we lost jurisdiction over the investigation of the murder of Dennis Gallagher, then we’d have to turn over the baseball, which would end up at the bottom of a case file, never to be scrutinized too closely, especially if it revealed who really killed Noah Miller, since by the time the forensics came back, Skylar would most certainly be dead.
I got out my cell and called Dutch. “We need you,” I said. “As soon as possible. And bring Brice.”
Dutch and Brice showed up about the time that Candice was putting me into her car and offering me another caramel Frappuccino. “Take slow small sips,” she advised. “You look pale.”
I nodded numbly and took a pull on the drink. My thoughts felt muddled, and in spite of the heat, I wasn’t hot. Candice went to the rear of the car and pulled out her gym bag, then came back to me and offered me a T-shirt. “Here,” she said, blocking my view of Dutch and the others. “Before he sees you and freaks out.”
I looked down at myself and saw the bloodstain on my own shirt. “Thanks,” I said, whipping out of the shirt as quickly as I could, thankful that I’d donned a sports bra.
No sooner had I tossed my shirt in the backseat than Dutch appeared behind Candice. “You okay?” he asked me, his sunglasses hiding the worry in his eyes, which I knew was there all the same.
“Yeah,” I told him. “I’m fine. What’s happening over there?”
“We’re taking the case,” he said. “APD’s not happy, but they’ve agreed to allow us to investigate since Gallagher was about to deliver sensitive information in an ongoing FBI investigation.” He said that like he’d already had a crack at saying it, and I had to hand it to him—Gallagher hadn’t been involved in an ongoing FBI investigation as much as he’d been the subject of an informal investigation. We were pushing the boundaries on this one, and don’t think I wasn’t grateful to Brice, my husband, and all the bureau boys backing me up right then.
Candice turned to him and said, “It’s official, then?”
Dutch nodded. “Yep. We’ve got a few more guys coming down to help canvass the area. See if anybody can give us a description of the killer.”
“We may not need that,” Candice said, pulling the Baggie out of her bag. “Gallagher was trying to give Abby this when he was shot.”
Dutch’s brows rose above the rim of his sunglasses and his head swiveled to me. “You were next to him when he was shot?” He said that like an accusation.
“No!” I said quickly. “I was way over on the other side of the street.” I pointed to where I’d been standing when the shot rang out.
“Is that blood on your hand?” he demanded.
I dropped my hand to my lap quickly. “No,” I lied.
“Goddammit, Abby!” he swore. And I knew he was convinced that I was lying both about where I’d been when the shot rang out and about the brown rust stains on my shaking hands. Dutch turned in a half circle and roared, “Rodriguez!”
I set the Frappuccino I’d been holding with my free hand in the cup holder and got out of the car. Before Oscar could come over to get yelled at, I stepped right up to my husband and poked him in the chest. “Hey!” I snapped. “Big guy. Chill the fuck out, okay? We have more important things to worry about right now other than who was where and what was what!”
Dutch put his hands on his hips. “Tell me the truth,” he said after I’d poked him a second time for good measure. “Where were you when Gallagher was shot?”
I sighed dramatically and pointed again to the spot across the street. “There,” I said. “I swear to God I was right over there.”
Dutch swiveled his head from where I was pointing to where Gallagher still lay. The distance was at least thirty yards. “Okay,” he said. “The shot wasn’t meant for you.”
I rolled my eyes. “Duh.”
Dutch turned again and I took the opportunity while his back was to me to wave Oscar away with a frantic hand motion. No way did I want him anywhere near where my husband could grill him about why I’d been the closest to Gallagher at the time of the shooting.
Oscar looked a bit confused, but then he seemed to get it, and he gave me a hurried salute and did an about-face, hustling back toward Cox.
Meanwhile, Candice had stepped up to Dutch and was looking in the same direction he was. “Hell of a shot,” she said.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Dutch agreed.
“Military training?” she asked.
“Most likely,” he said. Then he lifted the Baggie holding the baseball. “Wow,” he said. “If
that isn’t the most perfect fingerprint.”
“If our shooter spent time in the military, we’ll be able to get a match,” Candice said. The FBI had access to military fingerprint databases.
“That needs to be done soon,” I said. “The clock is running out and we’ve got to get as much as we can to Cal.”
Dutch eyed the ball through the Baggie. “We won’t be able to get a positive ID on the blood for at least forty-eight hours, Abs,” he said, as if he wanted to prepare me for another round of bad news. “Even if we put this at the top of the lab’s list, the fastest they could have it back to us would be Wednesday.”
“Why does that matter?” I asked. “If we can get a match on the fingerprint . . . oh, now I see. The fingerprint means nothing if we didn’t find the ball at the crime scene.”
“Exactly. All we have is circumstantial evidence indicating it might be the baseball taken from Noah’s room. Until the blood comes back as an exact match to his, there’s no way to tell where it came from.”
I shook my head in frustration. “Do you think it’ll be enough to convince the appellate court to cut us a break?”
“Maybe,” Dutch said. “As long as we can identify who the fingerprint belongs to. It could be enough for Cal to make a solid case that this new evidence warrants at least a stay of a week or two until the evidence can be fully investigated.”
Candice pointed to the Baggie. “Best get that processed ASAP, then.”
We spent the rest of the late morning and early afternoon going through all the motions of documenting my statement and how the ball fell out of Gallagher’s grasp as he lay dying. Luckily, we were able to recover his fingerprints all over the Baggie, along with mine, Candice’s, and Dutch’s, but no one else’s, which was good, because another person’s fingerprints would’ve been hard to explain. Then our fingerprint expert, Agent Don Whysall, hovered over the ball, carefully extracted that one perfect print, scanned it into his computer, and ran it against AFIS, which was the national fingerprint database and which held about seventy million fingerprint records. He also simultaneously ran it against the military fingerprint database.
I sat behind Don and bit my nails. “Anything yet?” I asked after ten minutes without any indication from Whysall that he had something positive to share.
“Nope,” he said.
“But did you run it against all those names we gave you?” I asked. Just to cover our bases, I’d given Whysall a list of names of Skylar’s ex-boyfriends, Wayne Babson and Connor Lapkus, along with her ex-pimp, Rico DeLaria.
“Ran them first,” he said. “Not a match.”
“Crap,” I muttered, then settled down into my seat again and continued to stare at Don’s screen. And then I thought of something. “What about Gallagher?” I asked. “Did you compare it to his prints?”
“Ran that second,” Don said without looking up from his computer, where he was busy typing something. “No match there either.”
My knee bounced for a while as I waited, and then I got up to pace a track right behind Whysall’s chair. “Why isn’t it dinging or something?” I asked him after another fifteen minutes or so.
Don sighed. “Cooper, this could take a while, okay? So why don’t you go sit at your own desk and I’ll call you if and when I get a hit.”
I glanced up at the clock. Skylar’s appeal was to begin at ten the following morning. Cal absolutely needed something from us tonight if we were going to be able to help him put a solid case together in time. “How long will it take?”
“Maybe only another minute,” Don said, and I got hopeful. “Or, could be a couple of hours. If it doesn’t come up with a match, then it could be all night before it’s done.”
“All night?!” I said. “Are you kidding?”
Don offered me a level glare. “Do I look like I’m kidding? Come on, girl. You know how this works. I put the picture in, and it works backward through time to cover all possible matches, from the most recent on back.”
Moodily I shuffled over to my desk and sat there anxiously waiting. Dutch tapped my foot about an hour later. “How ya doin’?”
“Frustrated,” I said, nodding toward Whysall. “I would’ve sworn he’d come back with a hit by now.”
Dutch sat down on the edge of my desk. “The crime is ten years old, Edgar. Whoever committed it might not have committed anything else since. Give AFIS time to work. It’ll offer up someone.”
But I had a bad feeling. “Anything on the canvass?” I asked.
“Nope. Oscar, Candice, and the others are headed back this way. They all struck out. The best description we got was from Oscar, who only saw a blur of movement from the top floor of the abandoned apartment. He says he couldn’t even be sure of the guy’s race.”
I growled. “This case just won’t cut us a break!”
“Hey,” Dutch said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “How about we take a break for a few. Get you something to eat?”
I sighed. “Fine. But we’re coming right back here and waiting until AFIS gives us a match.”
“Deal,” Dutch agreed.
We ate and came right back, but still, there was no match from AFIS. While I sat around rather helplessly, the boys worked Gallagher’s murder forensically. The bullet was recovered and Dutch told me it came from a high-powered hunting rifle. The shooter had used hollow points, which explained why Gallagher had bled so profusely. The bullet had caused unsurvivable damage to his insides. He’d never had a chance.
“Are we still thinking military?” I asked Dutch on one of my many tours around the office’s perimeter.
“Probably,” he said. “The guy was a hell of a shot. Even I’d have trouble making it.”
That won him some raised eyebrows from me. Dutch was an excellent marksman.
“If he’s got military background,” Brice said, taking a seat next to Dutch, “then we’ll definitely find him in the database.”
I crossed my fingers and glanced nervously at Whysall’s desk. His computer continued to whir, but made no pings or dings to let us know that he’d found anything yet.
A bit later when I was sitting at my desk again, Candice brought me some coffee. “Have you talked to Cal?” she asked.
“About ten minutes ago,” I said, glancing at my watch and noting that it was now a little before nine p.m. “He’s worried we won’t have enough to go to court with.”
Candice lifted her cup toward Whysall. “He could still find us a match,” she said.
“He has to,” I whispered. That terrible feeling was taking firm hold in the pit of my stomach again. “We can’t lose tomorrow, Candice. They’ll kill her, and she didn’t do it.”
Candice squeezed my arm. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s do some digging.”
I followed Candice out of the office and down to her car. Once we were in and driving through downtown, I asked, “Where’re we going, anyway?”
“To Gallagher’s.”
My brow furrowed. “To his house? At nine o’clock at night?”
“Yep.”
“Why?”
“He has a kid, remember? The kid must have a mother, and I’m betting they live together, so let’s go talk to her, see if she knew anything about the baseball and maybe even what happened that night.”
“Whoa,” I said, turning in my seat to face her. “Candice, we can’t just go over there and start grilling her. She just lost her boyfriend.”
Candice’s fingers gripped the steering wheel a little more tightly, causing the leather to squeak. “We don’t have time to wait, Sundance. Skylar’s life is on the line, and yeah, I realize she’s likely going to be distraught and she may even tell us to go to hell for barging in on her at a time like this, but we have to try, because waiting around for AFIS to make a connection won’t do us jack unless we can put a few more of these puzzle pieces together. We gotta
figure out how Gallagher came to have Noah’s baseball in his possession, and the only person who may be able to tell us that, now that Dennis is dead, is his girlfriend.”
I thought about that for a bit. “Yeah, okay,” I said. “You’re right. We don’t have time to let her grieve. We gotta figure out what she may know tonight. Hell, when I think about it, if Gallagher talked to her about the baseball, her life could be in danger.”
“Good point,” Candice said, and she stepped on the gas to send us racing for the highway.
We arrived at Dennis Gallagher’s place not long after. He lived, not surprisingly, about a half mile from Skylar Miller’s old house. His neighborhood wasn’t as new, or as nice, but it wasn’t terrible either. His house, in fact, was a surprise.
There were a couple of cars in the driveway, so we parked at the curb, and walked up the short sidewalk to a very cute, well-kept ranch with a xeriscape garden, a front porch featuring two Adirondack chairs painted a light blue, and a flower box overflowing with blooms along the front window.
We stepped up to the door and heard lots of voices coming from inside, along with the sounds of weeping. I grimaced but raised my hand and knocked on the door. It was opened by a short woman with salt-and-pepper hair, pulled back severely enough to allow tufts to break loose and puff about her head, giving her a rumpled appearance. Her eyes were red and watery and she seemed both curious about our appearance at her door and mildly detached. “Hello,” I began. “My name is Abigail Cooper, and this is my assoc—”
The woman gasped and turned around to call into the house. “Elaina! Elaina! It’s that woman! That woman that Denny was gonna meet!”
I will admit to taking a slight step back from the door, and beside me Candice edged closer to my side. The door was pulled open by another woman, whose black hair fell around her exotically. She was quite beautiful, even given her tearstained face, and seeing her was enough to give me pause. How Dennis had landed such a beautiful woman I had no idea, because she was truly striking and he’d been nothing special.
She glanced from me to Candice and back again, and said, “Which one of you is the lady?”