“How long will that take before we know anything?” Brooklyn held on to her burrito, dripping with sauce on her plate.
“We’ve already isolated and quantified the DNA, which can be an unusually high time suck, along with finishing the PCR process. So that’s good.” Emory had gone from laughing to technical and professional. “And the genetic analyzer is running now. That’ll take about twelve hours to complete. Then a few more hours for analysis, and we should have a match—if one exists—in law enforcement databases.”
Emory stopped to take a deep breath. “I’ve also started working on DNA we extracted from the victim, and DNA from the finger found in the box to help Kelsey determine if it is from our victim. That also should finish in about the same time frame.”
Reid picked up a chip. “Any other areas we should know about?”
She nodded. “We’re examining the few scraps of the victim’s clothing that survived the fire for touch DNA from his killer, butthat will be very time-consuming and could take weeks before we find any samples of value or if we find any at all.”
“Any questions for Emory?” Blake asked.
Nos were murmured, and shakes of heads traveled around the table.
“I’m only a phone call away,” she said. “Nice to meet everyone.”
She gave Blake a sweet look, then exited the room.
“Okay, next up, Grady,” Blake said. “Do you have an update or did you just come for the food?”
“Food,” he said around a bite in his mouth. He swallowed. “Not sure I can add any more, unless anyone came up with questions since I saw you.”
Head shakes traveled around the table again.
“Then it’s up to you, Sierra.” Blake sat and grabbed his burrito.
She took a long sip of her drink, then got up to join Blake at the head of the table. She picked up stapled packets and started them down each side of the table. “The top report is a detailed analysis of the accelerant from the fire. As you can see we detected tetraethyl lead, which means it’s gasoline, as suspected, but we also noted the properties of the gasoline in the report. My team is still comparing this to the gas station samples you supplied, but at this point we don’t have a match to a particular station.”
“If you don’t find a match to a local station, could the gas have been sitting in a can on the property for some time so the station’s gasoline might now be different?” Colin asked.
“Ooh, very good question.” Sierra’s eyes widened. “Yes, that’s quite possible as is the possibility that it wasn’t purchased locally. I should be able to get the final results on the local stations to you this afternoon. If we don’t have a match, then if you want to expand your area of comparison, I’m glad to processadditional samples.” She tapped her packet. “Next, I think you’ll be interested to see the analysis on the animal fur found in the enclosure, so turn the page for that.”
Colin quickly flipped to look at the animal results, then flashed his gaze up to Sierra. “A jaguar? Tarver was housing a jaguar in his kennel?”
“Yes,” Sierra said. “He had the big cat in conditions way too restrictive for such a fine animal, but yes, he was keeping a jaguar in that kennel.”
“Or could someone before him have done that?” Colin asked.
“Good question, again,” Sierra said. “We can’t age the hair, so yes, it could’ve been there for some time. However, I can tell you the sample we took wasn’t degraded. But fur, just like human hair, takes a long time to decompose. The caveat to that is, it all depends on the location of the fur and the conditions it’s exposed to. A nice dry kennel like where we located it would aid in the fur surviving intact longer. But—” she paused, her finger raised—“we also recovered animal scat with a high moisture content.”
“Which means it’s fresh,” Colin said, as using scat in tracking was their team’s wheelhouse. “And if the scat is from a jaguar, it makes the fur likely fresh too.”
“Exactly.” Sierra smiled. “So, if your suspect has been at that house for more than a week, he was likely keeping the jaguar.”
“We don’t know how long he’s been there, though.” Dev looked at Nick. “You find any connection to Kane regarding animal trafficking?”
Nick set down his water bottle. “I’ve been searching for something to tie him to it, but haven’t found anything. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, but I suspect I would find it on the dark web, and it usually takes me longer to find data there.”
Colin didn’t have to ask about the dark web. Not when he’d spent years perusing the part of the internet where the averageJoe didn’t have any reason to access, but where criminals thrived. With much of the data encrypted and hard to extract, Nick had his work cut out for him.
“Sheriff Day might know about wildlife trafficking in the area where Tarver was living,” Dev said. “I’ll check in with her to see if she has any information.”
“What about fingerprints, Sierra?” Blake asked. “Anything concrete yet?”
“Next page of my report.” She turned the page on her packet and held it up. “I received results from AFIS. We found the same print on every item, and the database confirms it’s a match to Kane Tarver.”
“Not a surprise,” Colin said. “But good to see it confirmed in black and white.”
“Which means odds are good that he shot the victim.” Brooklyn’s voice was so low and strangled, Colin had to sit on his hands not to reach for her.
