Chapter 21
The Guardian lab had turned the DNA on the blade in seventy-one hours.
Marcus had called in the favor the same night Lane was processed.
Not because he was certain Lane wasn't their guy.
Because he needed to know fast either way, and Nashville's crime lab had a three-week backlog that the investigation couldn't absorb.
Guardian's forensic division operated on a different timeline.
He'd made the call, filed the paperwork, and had the samples transferred before midnight.
Seventy-one hours.
He'd been watching his phone since this morning.
The result came in at 2:17 p.m. on a Tuesday in the middle of a full task force session while Webb was presenting the updated service territory analysis and Reyes was arguing a point about the Fargo timeline that was a good argument but would have to wait.
Marcus's phone buzzed on the table.
He picked it up. Read the summary from Guardian's lab director. Read it again. His gut clenched. Motherfucker. He drew a deep breath and pushed the anger and frustration down. Now was not the time. He set the phone down.
“Webb,” he said. “Hold on. We’ve got the DNA results.”
Webb stopped talking, and everyone shifted their attention to him.
He looked at Paulson first, then Reyes, then let his eyes move around the table. Haven was watching him from across the room. He shook his head slightly. He saw the emotions flit across her face before he turned to speak to the rest of them.
“Lane's knife’s DNA doesn't match any of our victims, but it does match his.” he said. “Guardian's lab confirmed it twenty minutes ago. The sample is clean. Robert Lane did not use that knife on our victims. We have nothing except proximity. No trace DNA on the body, and no evidence that he’s the killer.” He hated that he was right. He had a gut feeling Lane wasn’t their man.
He also hated the fact that the man wasn’t their killer.
Frustration spiked through him. He glanced over at Haven. She was staring at the table.
The room was quiet for a long moment. Then Paulson sat forward.
Reyes exhaled through his nose, slow and controlled, the exhale of a man absorbing a result he'd been half-expecting and wished he hadn’t gotten.
Webb swore under his breath, which wasn't appropriate for the room but was more than appropriate for the current situation.
“Wait, the staging,” Reyes said. “If Lane didn't do it—”
“Someone staged Carla Owens before Lane found her,” Marcus said. “Which means our suspect was on that trail. Recently. Within the window.” He paused. “And Lane came along after and recognized what he was looking at and decided to stand over it instead of getting help.”
“Why?” Paulson said.
“That's what I still need to know,” Marcus said. He looked at Carver. “Lane walks. The DNA clears him, and we can't hold him. But before he walks, I want another conversation. Without the lawyer in the room, if possible.”
“His lawyer will be in the room,” Lieutenant Carver said as she walked into the room. “I got the DNA notification. His lawyer is not negotiable once he's invoked.”
“Then with the lawyer in the room.” He picked up his pen. “I need to know how Robert Lane knew what a staged scene looked like. That question doesn't go away because the DNA cleared him. It gets more important.”
Carver looked at him for a moment, then picked up her phone. “I’ll get it arranged.”
* * *
Lane's lawyer was a woman named Dorfman. She was smug looking and wore a dress that was about two sizes too small for her frame. She sat beside Lane in interview room two with a legal pad and an expression that said she'd already won.
Marcus sat across from Lane. Haven sat beside Marcus.
The rest of the task force was behind the glass.
“The DNA cleared your client,” Marcus said to Dorfman. He kept his voice level. Factual. “He's not being charged in connection with the murder of Carla Owens. He's free to go.”
Dorfman nodded. “Finally. We're done here.” She started to pick up her legal pad.
“Almost,” Marcus said. He looked at Lane. “One question. Not for the case. For my own understanding.” He paused for a second. “How did you know what you were looking at?”
Lane looked at his lawyer. “I can tell him.”
“You don’t owe them anything. You just spent the last three days in a cell.” Dorfman turned to look at Marcus. “For nothing.”
“It's a voluntary question,” Marcus said.
“Your client doesn't have to answer it. I'm asking because a woman was left on a ground cloth on a running trail, and your client stood over her instead of getting help, and I'd like to understand why.” He kept his eyes on Lane.
“Not for a charge. Not for a filing. I just want to understand.”
Lane looked at the table. Marcus watched tears form in the man’s eyes.
Dorfman put her hand on his arm. “Robert, you don’t need to tell them.”
“It was the same,” Lane said. Quietly. Like something coming out that had been waiting way too long to be said.
Dorfman's hand tightened on his arm.
Lane looked up at Marcus. “My sister. Two years ago. They found her the same way. Arms crossed. Eyes closed.” His jaw tightened.
“Different city. Omaha. They never caught anyone. I live with that image in my mind all the time. When I saw the woman, the one on the trail … I guess I was in shock? I couldn’t move for a long time, and then I walked away, but I had to look back at her.
Then you guys acted like you wanted to charge me for killing her …
The detective in Omaha tried to pin it on me because my sister and I’d had a fight before she went running.
It tore my family apart. I didn’t do anything, but I couldn’t prove I didn’t do it.
I haven’t seen my folks or talked to them.
Her husband … The way you two came at me.
I couldn’t do that again. I just couldn’t. ”
Marcus looked at Lane for a long moment. As the man looked back, Marcus saw the look of a man who’d been carrying something for years and had just set it down in a room full of people he didn't trust.
“What was your sister's name?” Marcus said.
Lane's throat moved. “Michelle. Michelle Avery.”
“I need to tell you something.” Marcus leaned forward. “We're working on your sister's case and many others. We're close, and we're going to get this guy.”
A single tear ran down Lane’s cheek. “Can I tell my parents and her husband? She has … had a little girl … I don’t know if they’ll take my call.”
“They’ll take mine,” Dorfman said.
He nodded. “We can’t release any of the details, but let them know we’re working on it.”
Lane sniffed and nodded. “Okay. Thank you.”
Marcus nodded and walked out of the interview room, down the corridor, and straight into the stairwell. He needed time. He stood there for a minute with his hands flat on the wall.
Michelle Avery.
Omaha.
Victim Seven.
Lane had been standing over Carla Owens because he'd recognized the staging from his sister's crime scene photographs.
Because he'd been living with those photographs for two years, the way families lived with crime scene photographs when the case went cold and the only way to keep believing something was going to keep them alive in your mind.
He'd jogged onto a running trail on a Tuesday afternoon and found a woman positioned the way his sister had been positioned and had frozen.
Not a copycat.
A brother.
Marcus stood in the stairwell and felt a tangle of emotions.
Relief because Lane was not their guy and his gut had been right.
Frustration because Michelle Avery's brother had been standing in a cell a mile away from the task force working her case for three days, and nobody had made the connection.
He hadn't made the connection. Fuck, he even had the woman’s file. He only had to look at the next of kin. His background included his family, which was his family … his parents, who had his last name. It listed his sister as deceased, and he hadn’t connected the dots.
He pushed off the wall and went back into the hallway.
Haven was in the corridor. She'd followed him out but had also given him space. Knowing when to give space was a thing that even the most established couples worked on. He saw it with his parents. The fact that Haven knew he needed space to work through his failures and, yeah, disappointment was huge. Once again, she’d proven that she was a perfect fit for him.
And she did it without trying. When she saw him, she didn't ask if he was okay. She already knew the answer to that.
“Michelle Avery,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“He's been waiting for answers. I wouldn’t doubt he was in shock when he saw the body positioned that way.”
“Yeah. He could’ve said something.” He scrubbed his face. “But after what happened with the last investigator …” He let the sentence go. Lane had been rammed without any lube by that detective. His life had been shattered in more ways than one. He didn’t blame the man for asking for a lawyer.
She was quiet for a moment, then nodded to the task force room. “Are you ready to go back in there?”
Marcus thought about it. About Lane in that interview room with his lawyer's hand on his arm and the look of a man who’d paid a huge price for the death of his sister.
Her brother had recognized the staging on a running trail because he'd memorized what it looked like. Then Marcus thought about his own frustration and anger. The cold fact that the killer was still out there and had placed a body once again in Nashville. He was tired, frustrated, and angry, and he wanted a day … maybe just an hour when this case wasn’t his main focus.
Marcus straightened his jacket. “It doesn’t matter if I am or not.
We go back to the list,” he said. “We've lost three days, the fourth manufacturer records are still outstanding, and our subject is out there somewhere.” He looked down the corridor.
At the door to the task force room at the end of it.
At the white board, he could see through the window.
It had twelve names and one witness. It also held four names that they believed had opportunity to be their killer.
“We have to go back to work. There is no other choice.”
He looked down at her. She put her hand on his arm. “There has never been a choice for people like us.”
He stared at her. Those words and that gesture were another reason he was losing it for this woman.
He found comfort in the fact that she saw him.
Saw the pain he was feeling, the anger for missing a small detail, and the disappointment for not seeing it sooner.
She understood him in ways no one else ever could. “Then let’s get this bastard.”