"If she'd only been honest with us," May lamented. "Jack looked like I'd stabbed him in the back. I feel so terrible we had to bring her in."
"May, if everyone was being honest with us, every case would be solved within a day," Owen consoled her, making her feel grateful for his support. "With any luck, she tells Jack about it now. Maybe she’ll be truly happy with this Ron guy. It sounds like she made a wrong choice but then met the right guy. Life is complicated. Now, let's go see what this new information is."
May focused on her driving, but on the route to the crime scene, she also focused on clearing her mind. She couldn't afford to let this case derail her. She had to treat it like any other crime even though, yes, it was personal.
In a few minutes, by the time they were back at the house, her mind did in fact feel clearer.
Deputy Eaton, who led the forensics team and who’d made the call earlier, was waiting at the door for them.
"I've got a few new forensics results," he said, once they had joined him. He looked tired, as if the stress of investigating the forensics of this particular case had also taken its toll on him.
"What have you found?" May asked.
"We found the probable route of entry. It was through the garage window. Look here."
May felt intrigued as Eaton paced across the garage floor.
"See here. The window was closed again from the inside, so it wasn't obvious at first. But the catch was forced, and it was done so by a very specific looking tool. We've seen it before."
"And where have you seen those marks?" May asked, looking closely at them. They did look like they had three identical grooves in every scrape.
"It's a type of crowbar that was able to dig into window frames and door frames, which the security and fire departments in this area were issued with, to get inside crime scenes and disaster scenes more quickly," Eaton said.
May blinked. "Is that so?"
"Yes. It would be a few years ago now. Some of them have moved on since then and updated their tools or chosen different ones. But a few years ago, they all used these."
"Were they also commercially available?" Owen asked.
"Not really. Only via secondhand stores. They were custom made for emergency departments. But yes, I guess they would have been available in secondhand stores if the departments did sell them later on."
"That's still significant," May said, feeling very grateful for forensics' thorough job as she looked at the odd scrape marks.
In fact, she was now wondering if this provided a point of comparison. "Do you think there have been any other cases where a similar tool was used?" she asked.
"Why do you say that?" Owen queried.
May shook her head. "I'm wondering if there's a supplier of these tools who sells them off to people looking to commit crimes. Seeing they are so effective at getting inside a place. Or it could be a disgruntled security guard or fireman who left the profession. Also, what if this killer himself has committed a crime before now?"
The thought was giving her cold shivers.
"We'll need to look up previous cases, I guess," Owen said. "I can get on my laptop now and do that."
May was estimating the distance between the garage door and the neighboring house.
"It might have made a noise. I'm going to go and ask the neighbors in the meantime. Perhaps they heard or saw something."
While Owen went back to the car, May headed to the next-door house, to find out if anyone living there might have heard something when the killer began using that noisy, scraping crowbar.
She wished she could have spoken to Jack about the case. But he had walked away, and she was scared to contact him now. Jack was hurting and mad at her. She couldn't tell him about the whole debacle she'd uncovered. She felt very anxious, and that anxiety made her feel more and more disheartened.
She had a bad feeling about this case.
Knocking on the door of the neighboring house, May hoped she'd get a lucky break here—that someone had been observant and had noticed things.
She had to press the doorbell twice before someone came to the door.
"Yes?" A woman's voice asked from the other side of the door. May thought the voice sounded very wary.
