Page 85 of Burning Justice

“This mud,” he answered, putting the pieces together. “It’s oily.”

She gasped, and her eyes went wide. “That New Mexico state trooper said Hawkin left oily mud in the back of his patrol car.”

“Yeah, and oil can be fingerprinted.” He’d never worked that kind of case, but he’d heard from a Coast Guard agent that it could be done.

“What do you mean, it can be fingerprinted?”

“The Coast Guard has a lab that can compare oil samples. It’s similar to human fingerprint comparison.” He whipped out another evidence bag and scooped up a mud sample, one with a discernible sheen on the surface. “Wait here.”

He headed back into the field where the body had been dumped and grabbed another oily mud sample. Back at the road, he held up both plastic evidence bags, turning them until the sunlight hit on the oil’s iridescence.

“If these spent shell casings match the ones from Piggly’s, that puts the same gun at both locations. If this oily mud matches what’s in the back of Trooper Sanchez’s patrol car, that would put David Hawkin at this location, too.” And push them way past coincidental and into the solid, indictable evidence zone.

That was, if Trooper Sanchez hadn’t had his patrol car cleaned yet. Maybe they’d get lucky.

Chapter Twenty-Five

At seven a.m., the Denver Special Ops Task Force office was quiet. Only a few agents working heavy cases were in at this hour, Brett being one of them.

The other two desks in the office reserved for the K-9 squad were empty. Not even Deck or Evan had come in yet. The only sounds came from the hole puncher as Brett punched holes in the copies of the chains of custody and packing slips.

He slid the pages over the metal fasteners in his official case file and pressed down on the metal tabs. With any luck, the express carrier he’d just relinquished the spent shell casings to would arrive at the ATF lab in Walnut Creek, California, by the end of the day. The mud samples, having been shipped to the Coast Guard laboratory in New London, Connecticut, probably wouldn’t arrive there until tomorrow morning.

Blaze slurped water from a bowl in the corner of the office, then settled on his bolster bed.

Heavy boots echoed in the hallway. A moment later, Deck sauntered in.

“Heard you guys had a busy day yesterday.” Deck leaned down to give Blaze a pat on his head. “Heard you did real good, buddy.”

Blaze gave a throaty sigh, as if discovering critical evidence in a homicide investigation was all in a day’s work.

Deck sat on a corner of another desk. “Rumor has it the dead guy up north was a person of interest in your arson case.”

More boots sounded in the hallway, then Evan stalked in, carrying a stack of files. “Morning, ladies.”

“Thor and Blue in their kennels?” Their dogs all knew each other, but sometimes three alpha canines in one room was too much dog for one small office.

Both men nodded.

Evan dropped the files on his desk. “What’s with the dead guy?”

“Johnny Nash was our best lead.” Brett stood to open a file cabinet and tucked his case file in the top drawer. “We’re pretty sure he torched a warehouse down in the Springs, but he could have confirmed that Michael Hawkin paid him to set the Torrance Lane fire.”

Deck whistled. “Didn’t realize all this was connected to that case.”

Evan sat behind his desk. “What’s the connection?”

“Johnny Nash is—or, rather, was—the connection.” Conveniently, the man was dead. Yet another in a long list of coincidences and convenient aspects of the case that was getting longer every day. “Gemma found a common thread between that fire and more than twenty others over the last few years. That’s what convinced me to work with her on this.”

For the next ten minutes, Brett brought his friends up to speed on Gemma’s research and their recent findings, including David Hawkin getting arrested in New Mexico.

“Could David Hawkin or Charles Pilcher have hired Nash?” Deck asked.

“For that matter,” Evan suggested, “could Pilcher or David Hawkin have set the Torrance Lane fire?”

“I don’t see Pilcher getting his hands dirty, but I do see him as the brains behind Kobuk Titling and all the phony documents.” Brett rested his arm on top of the file cabinet. “I suppose it’s possible that David Hawkin could have done it, but he’d already moved to New Mexico and started his own business by then. He was never a suspect, and nobody ever interviewed him. But what Sally Nash said about a contractor up north owing her brother a favor for a problem Nash took care of for him points to Michael Hawkin right here in Denver.”

“What about Nash?” Deck asked. “Are either of the Hawkin brothers good for his murder?”