Back at his desk,Noah closed the door to his cubicle and pulled the victim files from his drawer. He spread them flat and sat with them.
Savannah was chasing Aspen. The task force was chasing Aspen. The DA's office was preparing for Aspen. The entire weight of the investigation was leaning in one direction.
Noah leaned in another.
He looked at Maggie Coleman's file first. Her professional history at the Adirondack Daily Enterprise spanned three decades. Hundreds of stories. Thousands of columns. Every major case in the county had passed through her newsroom. He pulled a legal pad from the drawer and started writing.
Focus not on enemies. Not on threats. Look for the overlap.
It was too extensive. That was the problem.
He kept writing notes. An accidental drowning in Mirror Lake, 2016. A domestic violence homicide in Keene, 2017. A suspicious fire in Saranac Lake, 2018, where a man died and the arson investigation stalled. The Hale murders. 2014. Rebecca and Jacob Hale, found in their home. Travis Rudd became the primary suspect and then disappeared. Maggie's paper covered the investigations. Burt performed the autopsies.
He set the pen down and leaned back. Through the window of his cubicle he could see Declan at his desk, working the Aspen file, pulling phone records and financial history. Two cubicles down, another investigator was on a call with the Army records office, verifying Aspen's service dates and discharge status. The machine was pointed at Todd Aspen and turning at full speed.
Noah looked back at his list. He thought about what McKenzie had said in the war room. The shooter was acting out of belief, not impulse. A man driven by something specific, something personal, something that had been building for a long time. He kept the legal pad on his desk. He would work through the list when the office cleared out.
The afternoon passedin the rhythm of an active investigation. Calls came in. Updates circulated. The ballistics lab confirmed they had received Aspen's rifles and would process them within seventy-two hours. Seventy-two hours. Three days in which the investigation would hold its breath while a man who may or may not be a serial sniper lived freely.
Savannah sent a department-wide email reiterating the focus on Aspen and requesting all field teams coordinate through her office. The message was clear. This was her case and it was moving her way.
Noah spent an hour on the phone with a records clerk at the county courthouse, pulling case numbers for the twenty-three overlapping files. Some were archived digitally. Others were in storage. A few required formal requests. He wrote down the access details and planned to start pulling physical files the following day. The physical copies often contained details that never made it into the digital version. It was slow work, the kind of work that didn't make briefings and didn't generate updates. It was invisible work.
Callie called late in the afternoon. He could hear the Tahoe's engine in the background.
"Unearthed anything interesting beyond what we have?” he asked.
"A few things but Savannah is pushing hard on Aspen," she said.
"I know. I was in her office this morning. She's got Declan pulling Aspen's phone records, his bank statements, his hunting license renewals. She wants a complete financial and movement profile before the ballistics come back."
"I keep thinking about the rifles. The way he opened that safe. The way he stepped back and let us take them." She paused. "I've arrested men who hid weapons in attics, buried them in yards, threw them in lakes. I've never had one hand them over and tell me to test whatever I needed."
"Neither have I."
“Listen, I’ve got to go.” She hung up.
At four-fifteen his phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen.
Natalie Ashford.
He stared at the name. The phone vibrated twice more, then went still. She left no voicemail.
He set the phone on the desk and looked at it the way he might look at a letter he wasn't sure he should open. Natalie hadn't called since the breakup. Whatever this was, it wasn't personal. It was strategic. Luther's daughter didn't make calls without a reason.
He thought about Ethan. Someone was getting to his son. The new clothes. The closed door. The business card that had migrated from a jeans pocket to a wallet slot. The web was tightening, thread by thread.
Noah groaned. He should have answered. He should have found out what she wanted, because knowing what the Ashfords were doing was always better than guessing. But answering meant engaging, and engaging meant being pulled back into a conversation he had ended for good reasons. And right now he couldn't afford to split his attention any further.
12
The article was waiting for him when he got home from his run.
Noah set his keys on the counter and opened the Daily Enterprise on his phone the way he did most days, scanning headlines, checking for coverage of the sniper case, gauging the temperature of the town. The article was third from the top, below the fold but not buried. The headline was careful.
SNIPER INVESTIGATION RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT BCI OVERSIGHT
He read it standing at the kitchen counter with his coffee in hand.
