8
Mandy read through her father’s notes three times. She scribbled some questions of her own. Then she sat back, trying to summarize her thoughts with bullet points, but mostly doodling lines that reflected the inner maze of her own thinking.
No matter how she spun it, there was one logical—not to mention respectful—first step. She dialed the cold case unit in Concord.
“Detective Sam Adams.”
“Seriously?” She just caught herself from blurting out, as in the beer? Though perhaps it was, as in the founding father?
Long pause. “How can I help you?”
Mandy hastily regrouped. In a win-win for all, the cold case unit, a joint effort between the attorney general’s office and the state police, was generally staffed by a couple of retired major crimes detectives who provided in-depth expertise while easing costs by being paid hourly wages that didn’t interfere with their pension draw.
Meaning the person on the other end of the line was probably more likely to know Mandy’s father than her.
Sure enough, the moment she introduced herself:
“Chief Grady is…retired.”
Mandy caught the pause. Understood the reasoning behind not leading with “Don’t waste my time, chicky; that man is dead” as an opening gambit.
“My father passed away,” she allowed. “And now, here I am.”
Longer pause. “How can I help you, Chief Grady?”
All in all, not the worst start. “I’m calling regarding the Dixon case.”
No response. Maybe the well, duh was implied.
Here was the awkwardness for Mandy. Technically, the Shereford PD retained jurisdiction in the Dixons’ vanishing act, meaning Mandy didn’t have to justify relaunching efforts.
And yet, she did. It was a matter of protocol, not to mention such things as retesting evidence collected by the state police required access to the state’s labs and, hopefully, state funding.
God knows the Shereford PD didn’t have that kind of budget.
As it was, Mandy got to request her department’s funding up close and personal at the town’s annual meeting, where the six hundred residents went through the town’s wants and needs line item by line item.
Nothing like looking out at a crowd of mostly law-abiding citizens, but also the drunk and disorderlies, domestic abusers, cheaters, and liars, while waiting for them to say, yeah, I’ll agree to the police chief’s 5 percent salary hike.
Another full-time deputy? Absolutely, let’s do it!
Mandy had grown up with this model. She had yet to meet another local LEO who didn’t go positively wide-eyed at such a hands-on approach. You want to dial direct as a taxpayer, isolated towns in New England were the way to go.
Now she decided to go with a straightforward line of attack.
“As you may be aware, the Dixon property recently changed hands—”
“I’m aware.”
“Given the fresh attention, I’ve been reviewing my father’s notes, considering new avenues of investigation. I was wondering if you had any recent developments on the case?”
“You have your father’s notes?”
There was a tone again. As if Mandy were a teen just caught with a pack of smokes.
“I’m the police chief…” she dragged out.
“Sorry.” Which, given the clipped tone, might be more like sorry, not sorry.
Detective Adams continued: “One of our ongoing challenges has been centralizing all information from old cases. Given there are very few PDs big enough to handle major incidents, most investigations are joint. Resulting in the state collecting info, the local town gathering info, the ME’s office capturing info.
A lot of the reports are duplicates, but as the guy whose job it is to pore over the files, I can tell you it’s not unusual to find that one department knows X, while another recorded Y, and a third mentioned Z. Once I put all those letters together…”
“You know how to get to Sesame Street?”
Another long pause. “Your father was Ian Grady? I see his legacy lives on.”
“Thank you!” Mandy said, and genuinely meant it.
“So, you’re taking a fresh look at a thirty-year-old case. According to the sign on my door, that’s what I’m here for. How can I help?”
“Well…I know most breaks in historic cases come from new interviews of previous persons involved. Loyalties may have changed, or life circumstances. Reviewing the Dixons’ disappearance, however, I don’t see any parties of interest—not suspects or witnesses, nor family, friends, anyone of significant importance in the Dixons’ lives. Actually, kinda startling.”
No reply.
“Which leaves us with physical evidence,” Mandy gamely soldiered on. “Not a lot at the scene, but what could be collected was pretty decent.”
“Quality not quantity,” Adams agreed.
Out with it then. “I think it’s worth rerunning the DNA. I know they did initial testing in ninety-eight, but compared to where the science has come since then…”
“We ran it again ten years ago.”
“And compared to where the science has come since then,” Mandy repeated.
“Familial DNA, specific markers. Hell, I don’t understand the technology.
I just know if we don’t have people to interrogate, then all the more reason to make the evidence do the talking.
Given the sheer volume of blood on the floor of the great room, I’m guessing the state still has plenty of viable samples stored in their evidence locker? ”
“Fair assumption.”
“And the state has designated funds for covering such testing costs,” Mandy hinted.
“Price not so much the issue as time frame. Most labs are backed up a solid three to six months. In this line of work, we can ask questions, but have to practice patience when it comes to answers.”
“Oh.” And she meant that seriously. As in Oh. She’d worked herself into being all Woman on a Mission, complete with a Fresh Head of Steam. Three to six months later…
Shit.
“I have another avenue to pursue,” she ventured.
“Can’t wait to hear it,” Detective Adams assured her, sarcasm free of charge.
“Regarding the mess of bloody footprints—”
“I’ve seen the photos.”
“Forensic podiatry. My father had gotten into it. Except—”
“The footprints fall into the middle ground of possibly male/female while the pattern makes no sense.”
“Exactly!” Mandy warmed back up again. “And where’s the source of the blood? Let alone so much blood, and does any of the crisscrossing make sense? My father was working on a theory that maybe the bloody footprints were planted.”
“Planted?” For the first time, Detective Adams sounded intrigued.
“He was looking into modeling software. Could you separate out the layers to see first track A, crossed over with second track B, then determine top layer C.”
“And then you’d know how to get to Sesame Street?”
Mandy burst out laughing; she couldn’t help herself. “Okay, gotta ask. Sam Adams lager, or Samuel Adams founding father?”
“My parents refused to tell me.”
She laughed again, then caught herself. Because the beer didn’t come out until the mid- to late eighties. Meaning if it had been on his parents’ radar screen…how old was he?
“Your father was thinking of modeling software? Utilizing what data?”
“Total Station info. Major Crimes brought one to the scene. Thirty years ago, that kind of laser-driven forensic mapping was already being used to create three-D models of everything from the Oklahoma City bombing to plane crashes. I’m guessing that’s a pretty rich data file?”
“New Hampshire used Total Station primarily for MVAs back then, but yeah. The Dixon disappearance was a high-profile event, given the family’s prominence, not to mention—”
“The FBI’s inevitable descent?”
“As efforts go, this investigation was top shelf all the way. Unfortunately, the Total Station is a finite measuring tool. As in what you see is what you see.”
Mandy suffered a sinking feeling. “You mean…can’t sift through the data? Build new and improved models…”
“Remember the saying—garbage in, garbage out?”
“Shit.” She hadn’t counted on that. Her father was probably rolling over in his grave right now—his own daughter, falling victim to TV forensics.
“On the other hand, there’s another approach,” Detective Adams spoke up. “Not tech or software driven at all.”
“Seriously?”
“We have a whole new generation of forensic photo experts. People who can study, say, an image of muddled footprints and tell you this one was laid down first, that one second, that one third. I’m with you—don’t understand how they do it, just grateful they can.”
“No shit. Wait…” She was slowly starting to get it. “You’ve looked into this.”
“The Dixon property sold months ago. Generated some headlines in the news.”
“Oh.” Oh, oh, oh.
“We should have fresh reports on the new DNA testing any day now.”
“Why, you little…brilliant detective.” Mandy could practically feel the man’s slow-spreading smile.
“How else can I be of assistance, Chief Grady?”
“You could come to Shereford. Meet the Collinses in person. Step foot on the property.”
Now there was no mistaking his interest. “It would be my pleasure.”
Mandy swore she didn’t blush.
But he might’ve suspected it anyway.