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“What are we looking at?” asked Noah.
Gretchen made a noise of frustration. She reached past the manager and after some manipulation, rewound the footage and paused it when the object appeared. “This is not a car,” she said.
Josie leaned in closer, trying to make it out. “But it looks like a wheel. Sort of.”
“Because it’s a bike!” Gretchen said triumphantly. With her index finger, she traced the lines that reached out to the edges of the blurred half-circle. “These are the spokes. This is part of the tire. That—that square thing—it’s a foot or a pedal, I think.”
Noah said, “This is a bike leaving the parking lot of the Collinses’ office. That’s what you’re telling us.”
Gretchen’s face was flushed with excitement. She ran a hand through her spiky gray-brown hair. “Yes! It would explain why we’re getting nowhere with the damn license plate readers.”
“It would explain how the search dog was able to follow the killer’s scent for over five miles,” Josie added. “From the city park to Archie Gamble’s house.”
Gretchen said, “Did you find a bike on Archie Gamble’s property?”
“A few,” Josie answered. “In the garage. I’m not sure whether any of them were in good enough shape to be riding all over the city, but I didn’t look very closely. I didn’t know it was important.”
Gretchen said, “We’ll get another warrant for them.”
“And what?” said Josie. “Prove that Archie Gamble owns a bicycle? Probably the majority of people in this city own one.”
“But are they riding them around in January?” asked Noah.
Josie shrugged. “Some people are—the weather’s been inconsistent. Even if I can get a judge to sign a warrant to take Archie Gamble’s bicycles into evidence, we can’t prove that he was at either crime scene. We’ve got an officer sitting outside his house.”
“He could have gone out the back,” Gretchen suggested.
“Sure,” Josie said, “but we can’t prove anything. We’ll spend hours and manpower on this and all we’ll have is a couple of bikes and still no leads. We need to find this guy, or if Gamble is somehow behind this, we need to gather enough proof to charge him. This killer is smart. Way smarter than your average criminal. He leaves no prints, no DNA. He’s not on camera anywhere. Even here!”
Noah said, “Can we follow the surveillance cameras of nearby businesses? Try to follow his path? See if we can get a better picture of him? Of the bike? Or maybe we get Luke and Blue back out here and see if we can get them to follow the scent of the killer from here to wherever he went.”
Josie said, “I’m not sure about them. They might need a rest. We could call in the sheriff’s K-9 unit.”
Noah said, “Luke was on the job once. He understands how important this is. He knows we wouldn’t ask if the killer wasn’t moving so quickly. He’s had a day of rest. Besides, he’s nearby. He can be here way faster than the sheriff’s unit. Call him. Gretchen and I will handle the cameras.”
Josie felt Luke’s mutilated hands tremble in her own again. Archie Gamble had nearly unraveled him. What would happen if they came face to face with the murderer—whether it was Gamble or someone else?
“Josie,” Noah said, pulling her from her thoughts. “Did you hear me?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll call Luke.”
FORTY-ONE
By late evening, the excitement of potentially viable leads was gone, slipping away like a camera flash fading to black. Noah and Gretchen had found grainy footage of what looked like a man on a bicycle—too indistinct to tell if it was Gamble or someone else—and tracked him via seven different businesses to a section of Denton that Gretchen called a “dead zone.” It was the same zone that Josie and Luke had passed through between the park and Archie Gamble’s place the day before. Spread out residences, no cameras. They couldn’t pick him up after that in any direction.
Luke had been happy to get back out on the search with Blue, who had picked up the killer’s scent at the Collinses’ office but then lost it in the middle of one of the dead zone streets. Josie had talked to every resident on the block, but no one remembered seeing a man on a bicycle or a man putting a bicycle into a vehicle and driving off—which Josie was pretty sure was what was happening. License plate readers were not in use in this area of Denton or anywhere close enough to warrant searching them. They wouldn’t know what vehicle they were looking for anyway.
Now, seated at their desks in the stationhouse, they worked silently at their computers. No one had the energy or optimism for banter. Mettner came in to relieve Gretchen and spent several minutes catching up on the new developments in the case. Gretchen was about to leave when the stairwell door whooshed open and Hummel stepped through it, two paper evidence bags in hand.
Josie stood up and immediately cleared off her desk. He snapped on a pair of gloves before he dumped the first bag. It was the remnants of the puzzle box that had been found at the Trudy Dawson scene. Two splintered sides, one with the wooden bow on it and the other with the long, rectangular compartment. This time, he expertly caught the ball bearing as it rolled toward the edge of Josie’s desk. “Same thing,” he said.
Noah and Mettner walked over and crowded behind them. “You still can’t get it open?” asked Mettner.
Hummel rolled his eyes. “Unlike this bastard, I don’t have time for games. We dusted it. Got some partials, one full print, but no hits in AFIS.”
“What was inside it?” asked Josie.
Hummel held up the other evidence bag which was larger than the first. Inside was some sort of envelope, creased where it had been folded several times. Hummel handed the bag to Josie. Then he gathered up the pieces of the puzzle box and deposited them back into their bag. Once he finished, Josie handed him back the bag with the envelope. He shook it loose and smoothed it out on the desk. Its creamy surface was gray and smudged with fingerprint dust. “Again,” he told them. “The prints were a bust. We were able to eliminate some as Trudy Dawson’s. Dr. Feist gave us a set of elimination prints from her. As you know, I also have some for Beau Collins. Other than that? Lots of prints and partial prints, no hits in AFIS.”
