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“Good morning, Slade, Fiona,” said the chief.
“Morning, Jimmy,” replied Slade, keeping his hand on the small of Fiona’s back. “Went?”
“Yo,” replied the young officer, coming out of the breakroom.
“I need the case number for an unresolved incident that occurred up at the falls a number of years ago. Plus, I’m going to need any boxes of notes, newspaper clippings, and the physical evidence. The kid’s name was…” he turned to Fiona.
“Mike Ray,” Fiona supplied.
“Got it. I made sure you had access to our system. You should be able to enter the name and approximate year, and it’ll pull up what the system finds,” said Jimmy. “That’s an old case; what’s your interest?”
“We think Daniel’s murder and the intimidation tactics someone’s trying to use on Fiona may be related.”
The chief nodded. “Well, Went’s on it, and if you need additional help, just let me know.”
“Thanks, Jimmy,” said Slade before ushering Fiona into the conference room the police had set up for them. “Can you hop on the computer and see if you can pull up the file?” Fiona nodded.
Went joined them after a short period of time, lugging a box of physical evidence. “There are more boxes, and Kenny and Randy are bringing in what they found both up at the site and at Fiona’s.”
“Good. Let’s keep the two cases separate. Cold case on the left as you come in and Daniel’s murder on the right. The conference table is the neutral zone. We’ll start collecting overlapping evidence on it and up on the board. We just need to make sure we label everything, so they don’t get commingled.”
“Got it,” said Went.
“Hey, Slade, we’ve got this stuff from the falls and Fiona’s place. We spent most of yesterday afternoon, evening, and this morning getting everything catalogued,” said Randy.
“The boss called, and they need us to head up to Clayton Lake. Seems there’s been a nasty incident. So, unless you need us…” added Kenny.
“No; you’re good to go. Thanks for your hard work on this case. I appreciate it,” said Slade.
“Then as soon as we get unloaded, we’re going to head to Clayton Lake. But if you have questions, you know how to get hold of us.”
Slade went to help Went with the boxes of evidence kept in the station’s basement. Unlike most cold cases involving murder, it looked like nothing had been done with them since the case had been listed as inactive.
“Doesn’t look like anyone has touched these since they came down here,” observed Slade.
“No. A couple of us talked about doing it on our own time, but the chief said none of us were homicide detectives, and we had enough to do as it is. We’re a pretty small department, and he was right, but I’ve always wanted to.”
Slade nodded. “A good homicide cop never wants to have to declare a case inactive and set it aside. The ones you couldn’t close tend to eat at you.”
“I’ll bet.”
They grabbed the last of the boxes and hauled them upstairs. When they entered the room, Fiona’s brow was furrowed in what Slade believed to be frustration and annoyance.
“What’s wrong?”
“Well, I found the right file…”
“Mike Ray?”
She nodded. “But everything except the identifying information—name, age, gender, et cetera—the last names have all been redacted. And there’s a lot of other stuff that was redacted: witnesses, things relating to his death. For instance, the cause of death is listed as a fall from a substantial height, but none of the injuries, or bruising, or anything that might have contributed is provided. It’s weird.”
Slade leaned over her shoulder staring at the screen, taking control of the mouse to scroll down the report. Weird didn’t begin to cover it. It looked as if someone had redacted the report to obscure information, including the attendees at the party who were all potential witnesses. What good was the official report when most of the pertinent information had been blacked out? Who would have the authority to do such a thing?
And what was someone so desperate to hide?
CHAPTER15
SLADE
