“C’mon, let’s see what you have for us.”
They joined McGaven and Eva in the examination room. McGaven had obviously said something funny because they were laughing.
“Okay… first,” said John, now the professional forensic specialist. “The blood on the bat belongs to both Meredith and Bruce Collins—most of the blood and hair belonged to Meredith Collins.”
Katie let out a sigh. That’s what she needed to hear. It was enough evidence along with the Young brothers’ eyewitness accounts to have brought Bruce Collins to court—but even though he was dead they would still be able to close Meredith’s murder case. Even though they didn’t have forensic evidence to conclude that he had murdered Misty too, the circumstances and eyewitness accounts of the Young brothers would close the case.
“However, with Misty Collins’s remains we couldn’t find any evidence to conclusively say Bruce Collins murdered her too. It can be argued that mother and daughter holding hands was a pretty significant suggestion they were murdered at the same time.” John sighed. “This was a very unusual case andsurrounding circumstances.”
“That case can close now. It’ll be up to the county prosecutors on how they want to officially do so,” said Katie.
There was a moment of quiet as everyone digested the sad brutality of the case. At least they had solved part of it. Though they still had to work out who had tortured and killed Bruce Collins, and who had killed Ian Griffin.
John moved to another workstation where he pulled up the video image from the coffee place of the man in black. “Here’s the image you brought me, which was very grainy. Typical of these types of still images.”
“Don’t keep us in suspense,” said McGaven, staring intently at the screen.
“This is what appeared when the software cleaned it up.” He put the known image of Junior against the cleaned-up image from the coffee place side by side.
Katie was extremely surprised. They were looking at an image of a man in his early forties who bore more than a striking resemblance to Ian Griffin Jr. The image from the coffee shop made him look a bit older than in the original photo and his face was gaunt, his eyes looking like he had seen awful things.
“Wow,” said McGaven.
“So we now know the man in black is Griffin Jr. but we have to find him,” Katie said.
“And that’s why Officer Andrews is on Grand’s tail,” said McGaven.
“Sounds like you have your bases covered,” said John.
“Have you been able to find any matches on the bullet that killed Griffin Sr.?” Katie said.
“No. But if you bring me the gun…”
“The theory is that Griffin Sr. killed Bruce Collins, but we don’t have anything that corroborates that. Any idea what was used to scrape his bones the way they were?” she said.
John brought up a close image of Collins’s ribs. “Thesemarks are deep and distinct, but I just can’t work out what was used to make them. His body had been beaten badly with all the broken bones. It must’ve been a slow death. Those deep scrapings on the ribs were done postmortem.”
“That shows a lot of rage if it continued after his death,” she said. “Usually something so violent is done by someone close, or someone he knew. Not to mention they tortured him first.”
“Torturing him for information?” said McGaven.
Katie nodded. “It’s possible.” She thought about it. “It bothers me. I understand his killer would be getting even for the murders of his wife and daughter. But if it was Griffin, how did he know? He reported them missing at first. Did he just suspect?”
“There are allegedly four individuals who knew what happened,” said McGaven. “Maybe one of them told Griffin.”
“The four boys,” she said. “We don’t even know for sure if all four of them were there that night.”
Back in the detectives’ office Katie finished updating the board. Looking at everything, she still couldn’t see what the motives were for the various deaths.
“I can hear you thinking from here,” McGaven said as he keyed up reports.
“We have all these horrible murders that have taken place from two decades until about six months ago—and that’s not counting Sydney Butler’s recent death.”
“Okay, that much we know.”
“But we don’t have a clear understanding of the motives behind the murders—besides Meredith and Misty Collins.” She looked at the list. “It’s like everyone wants something.”
“You mean like money or property? Family secrets?”
