Marisol picked up her duffel bag and slung it over her shoulder. "Okay."
Ray was eatinga sandwich at his desk when Noah and Callie walked in. Turkey on rye, from the look of it, with a pickle balanced on the wrapper beside it. He chewed and listened while Noah laid it out.
"The makeup artist saw him with Hailey Benton the night she went missing. At the Strutz Agency. Hailey was partially undressed, drugged or drunk. Bridger was in the bathroom. The girl ran. He went after her bleeding from the head."
Ray set his sandwich down. "But you said you checked him in the database and it came back clean."
"It did. But everyone is clean until they're caught," Noah said. "And that was only ViCAP and CODIS. Not a full background check. If what our witness says is true and he isn't who he sayshe is, we figure he assaulted Hailey at the agency. She struck him and ran. He chased her down. An altercation occurred and she got away and ended up on the road where the bus driver eventually found her."
"And your witness is illegally in the country?"
"It appears so."
Ray leaned back in his chair. "So what's to say she didn't do something wrong at work, Samuel fired her, and she's looking for a way to cause him trouble before she skips town?"
"Sure, but you should have seen this girl, Ray. She was scared. Really scared." Noah sighed. "Look, let's see what else we can pull on him. Full background check. Not just criminal databases. Employment history, previous addresses, civil records, everything."
Callie stepped forward. "Can we get a search warrant for the agency and his vehicles?"
Ray shook his head. "Right now we don't have enough for that. An eyewitness account from an undocumented immigrant who was being paid under the table by the suspect. Any defense lawyer worth his salt will shred that in five minutes." He picked up the pickle and pointed it at them. "Besides, the last thing we want is for him to pull a Derek Hollis on us and disappear. We still haven't found his ass." He took a bite of the pickle and chewed. "No. See what you can dig up first. Then we go from there."
Noah and Callie exchanged a look. Ray was right about the legal footing. An undocumented witness, a handwritten letter with no name on it, and a suspect with a clean record. It wasn't enough. Not yet.
"We'll run the background," Noah said. "Deep. Everything."
"Good. And keep your witness close. If she bolts again, we lose the only person who puts Samuel Bridger in a room with Hailey Benton."
They left Ray to his sandwich and walked back through the office. Callie was already pulling up the background request forms on her phone.
"If Bridger has a history," she said, "it's somewhere. People don't start with a twenty-year-old girl on a couch. There's always something before."
"Then we find the something before," Noah said.
The Ashford estatesat on forty acres north of High Peaks, set back from the road behind a stone wall and a line of old-growth maples that made the property invisible to anyone driving past. The house itself was built in the style of an Adirondack great camp, all exposed timber and native stone, except on a scale that said the original architects had been given a budget and told to ignore it.
Luther Ashford was in his home office with a glass of bourbon and a stack of folders that needed his attention. The room was paneled in dark walnut. Bookshelves lined two walls. A fireplace occupied the third, unlit, with a bronze Roman statue on the mantelpiece. The fourth wall held a painting, a landscape of the Adirondacks in autumn that had cost more than most houses in the county.
He set the bourbon down and crossed the room to the painting. He lifted it from its hook and set it against the wall, revealing the safe behind it. A Gardall TL-30. Six-digit electronic code. He punched it in and the door opened with a soft mechanical click.
He pulled out the folders he needed. Financial statements. Property documents. Paperwork that existed on paper and nowhere else, because some things were better kept outside ofany system that could be subpoenaed. He tucked them under his arm and was about to close the safe when he stopped.
He looked again.
The shelf where the evidence bag had sat was empty. The clear bag containing the blue latex glove, the one he'd kept for years, the one that had cost him favors and leverage and a sergeant's career to acquire, was gone.
"Huh," Luther said.
He closed the safe. Rehung the painting. Returned to his desk and sat down. He didn't reach for the bourbon. He reached for his keyboard and pulled up the surveillance system that covered every room in the house. He clicked through the camera feeds until he found his office, then began scrolling backward through the timeline. Nothing but hours of an empty room. Hours of him entering and leaving. Hours of the cleaning staff dusting surfaces.
Then he found it.
Three days ago. Late evening. The side door to his office opened. A figure entered, moved with purpose, crossed the room directly to the painting. They knew where the safe was. They lifted the painting, approached the keypad, and punched in the code without hesitation. The safe opened. A hand reached in and removed the evidence bag. The safe closed. The painting went back on the wall. The figure left through the same door.
Luther leaned back in his chair. He watched the footage a second time. Then a third.
He picked up the bourbon and took a slow sip, feeling the burn spread through his chest. He set the glass down and stared at the frozen frame on his screen.
He wasn't angry. That was the interesting thing. The safe had been breached, the most sensitive piece of leverage he possessed had been stolen, and what he felt wasn't rage or panic. It was curiosity. A sharp curiosity about how they had known his code,what they intended to do with the glove, and whose hands it was in now.
