The ghost was back again.
Callie came back from the canvass and stood beside Noah at the end of the dock. The light was dropping. The mountains on the far shore were turning from green to black. The water had gone from gold to gray.
"Michael Torres," she said. "Former deputy. Real estate after.”
"Everyone in law enforcement knows him. He worked this county for ten years,” Noah said.
"Any connection to the other victims?"
Noah kept his face level. “Obviously. They all worked in the same county for decades."
Callie nodded slowly. She was thinking. He could see it in the way she looked at the ridge, then at Torres, then back at the ridge. She was running the names, looking for the intersection.
"His file says he was investigated during the Hale case," she said. "He was involved with the victim."
"That was a long time ago."
"I know." She paused. "Still... it's the same case. And Maggie covered it."
“Yeah, along with hundreds of other stories. That's a lot of overlap." He turned to face her. "It's a small county. Everyone's name shows up on everyone else's files."
Callie studied him for a moment. She didn't push. She made a note on her legal pad and walked back to the forensic technician by the tackle box.
As time passed,Noah stood alone at the edge of the dock and felt a cold knot in his chest. The names sat in his head differently now. Closer together. Something was forming.
His phone buzzed. A text came in:McKenzie just got word. Aspen was at the Sheriff's Office this afternoon. Walked in voluntarily at 3 PM for a follow-up interview. He was in the building with two officers when the shooting occurred. At least if the coroner’s time of death is correct.
Noah read it twice.
Todd Aspen had been sitting in an interview room at the Sheriff's Office at the exact time Michael Torres was shot on a dock thirty miles away. His alibi was airtight. Two officers were witnesses. There were time-stamped entry logs. There was no version of reality in which Todd Aspen fired the shot that killed Torres.
Aspen was off the board.
The task force was back to nothing.
Noah pocketed his phone and walked back down the dock. The wood creaked beneath his boots.
They now had three victims. Something connected them.
Noah reached the gravel lot and stood beside the Bronco. The mountains were going dark. The first stars were showing through the gaps in the canopy. He put both hands on the roof of the truck and leaned forward, breathing slowly.
C’mon. What are you missing here?
17
Someone had already taken Aspen's photograph off the board.
Noah noticed it the moment he walked into the war room. The space where Todd Aspen's face had hung for two weeks was a rectangle of bare cork, slightly lighter than the surface around it. The crime scene photos had been rearranged. Torres's column now sat beside Maggie's and Burt's, three sets of photographs in a row, three trajectory maps, three locations marked on a regional overview map pinned to the side wall.
The room was full and the energy was wrong. Not the focused urgency of the first briefings. Not the grinding momentum of the Aspen weeks. This was something else. Controlled panic. People who were used to having a direction and suddenly didn't have one.
Ray stood at the head of the table, arms folded. McKenzie was in the back corner with his phone pressed to his ear, voice low. Callie had her files spread across the table and was making notes, cross-referencing, her pen moving fast.
Savannah entered two minutes after Noah. She walked to the front of the room, scanned the board, and said nothing for a long moment.
"All right," she said. "Torres changes things. Let's talk about what we know."
She ran through it efficiently. Michael Torres, fifty-four, former deputy, current real estate agent, shot at approximately 5 PM on a private dock at Hollow Pond. Single round, long range, same caliber, same absence of forensic evidence. The shooting position was across the lake on a ridge approximately five hundred yards from the dock. The second team reached the ridge that morning and confirmed a firing position consistent with the previous two scenes. It was a rock shelf. Stable ground. Tree cover. No shell casing. But, here’s what we do have. Our shooter made a mistake. The terrain at the approach was softer than the previous sites. The team recovered a boot impression in damp soil approximately thirty yards from the firing position. Size eleven. Aggressive tread pattern, consistent with a hiking or tactical boot. Partial only. Not enough for a definitive match right now but enough to confirm a physical presence on that ridge. We also have the print from the vigil if that was our guy who touched the photo. Nothing showed up in CODIS. But we are so close to catching this guy.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “Now as for Aspen," she said, and paused. "Cell tower data and Sheriff's Office entry logs confirm he was in the building in Lewis at the time of the Torres shooting. He was being interviewed for several hours by two officers. There is no scenario in which he fired that shot. He's cleared."
