Jericho got back to the station to find the preliminary fingerprint report waiting for him. He opened the emailed file with trepidation. Were things about to get much simpler or much more complicated?
There were the standard words of warning about the preliminary nature of the results, but Jericho skimmed over those. He wasn’t looking to introduce evidence into court, he just wanted to know if he had the right person sitting in a holding cell.
And apparently he did. He stared at the screen and realized he’d been expecting the report to come back with someone else’s prints. He’d honestly thought Will was innocent, but the prints were crystal clear.
Still his brain raced, trying to explain things away. Maybe Will had picked up the weapons at the same time he discovered the body. That made sense. But then he’d taken them into the forest and buried them, which was a pretty obvious indicator of guilt.
Maybe he hadn’t been the person who buried them? Will could have gone to the house, found the body, touched the weapons, splashed around in the damn blood like he was pretending to be a paint roller, then left, and someone else had come in, taken the weapons with Will’s prints on them, and buried them. That . . . that was stretching it.
If you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras, he reminded himself. The simplest explanation was almost always the right one. He needed to base his decisions on facts, not wishes. So he’d let the prosecutor know about the fingerprints, the prosecutor would lay charges, and Jericho would focus on finding more evidence for the trial. That was how the system worked.
He set one of the deputies to getting the phone records for the number he’d gotten at the church, changed into his workout clothes, and took an extra-long run on the way home. If he was tired enough, maybe he’d be able to stop thinking.
But as he ran, his brain kept working. What had Will been thinking? Feeling? Had he been afraid or angry?
He could practically hear Wade lecturing him.There isn’t just one reason for most things, Jay. The world is a complicated place, and people do things for complicated reasons.
At least thinking of Wade let him obsess about something different for a while—like what the hell Sandi Granger had thought she was talking about, warning Jericho away from Wade forWade’ssake. Jericho needed to stay the hell away from Wade, sure, but that was to protect himself, not Wade. Wade was fine. He was fluid, completely malleable, able to adapt to any conditions he encountered. Wade wasalwaysfine. That was part of what made him Wade.
Unlike Will. Will, sitting in a jail cell, about to be charged with murder. Jericho wanted justice for Lorraine Mackey, and it was his damn job to find the killer. But putting Will away just didn’t feel right.
Too many deaths, too few real solutions to anything. Wade had spoken the truth: the world really was broken.
Jericho finished his run, went home, and did sit-ups and push-ups in all variations until every muscle in his body was shaking, then took a glass of bourbon into the shower with him. After that, he managed to fall asleep.
He got to work early the next morning and went over the evidence against Will. When the telephone report came in on the number he’d gotten from the church, he wasn’t surprised to find that the last call that had been answered by her phone had come from the hardware store, about a quarter of an hour before closing on the night she’d been killed.
“Okay,” Kayla said with a sigh, after he shared the latest updates with her. “I’ll pass it along to the prosecutor, but she was planning to charge Will already, with only the fingerprints. The phone call, and whatever else we come up with now—they’re for the trial, assuming he’s found competent. They’re ways to prove what we already know.”
“I don’t think he did it,” Jericho said.
Kayla stared at him. “What? I know you were unsure, Jay, but you just gave me another piece of totally damning evidence, and it’s convinced you that hedidn’tdo it?”
“It’s too tidy. The world is messy, Kay. When do things fall together this smoothly in a real investigation?”
“It’s not like he’s a criminal mastermind. That’s why it hasn’t been that hard to catch him—don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
“No, it’stootidy. He called from the hardware store? He doesn’t talk, Kay. Not really, not on demand. I’m not sure he can even dial a phone—I’ll have to ask Mr. Appleby about that.”
“The call came from the store—that’s confirmed. So if it wasn’t Will, who the hell was it? Are you suggesting Mr. Appleby was visiting prostitutes in his spare time?”
“The phone in that store is beside the cash register, and Mr. Appleby often works alone. If he was somewhere else in the store helping a customer, it’d be easy for someone to lean over and make a call. There aren’t any security cameras that will help us with this, and the call only lasted fourteen seconds. Enough for an ‘I’m coming over,’ but not long enough for anyone to notice some stranger behind the counter.”
“You’re suggesting someone framed Will? Why would anyone do that?”
“To cover their own crime. He’s an easy target, right? Can’t speak up to defend himself, has a history of violence. We haven’t found the appointment book, yet, but if we do, maybe we’ll find Will’s name in it; that’d be another piece of incriminating evidence, but still only circumstantial.”
Kayla pinched the bridge of her nose and leaned back in her chair. “It is too early in the day for me to be this exhausted.”
“I know it’s a stretch, Kay, but the case honestly doesn’t feel right.”
“Because it’stooright. That’s what you’re telling me. Your determination to make my life more complicated than it needs to be has actually extended to the point that when we’re faced with a simple, straightforward answer, you reject it automatically. Is that an accurate summary of your position?”
“Do you really think he did it? I don’t mean what your brain tells you, but your gut. Your instinct. When you look at Will Archer, do you see a killer?”
“Courts don’t care about mygut, Jay! They care about evidence.”
“We’re not in court. We’re here, in your office, you and me. Right here—do you truly think Will Archer killed Lorraine Mackey?”
