Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 127715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
Harry was stunned. “You found it?”
“Yep.”
“How did you find it?” Harry asked, shocked he had, since there was no record of what happened to it in the case file, and no record of it in their evidence locker.
“Those morons gave it to Ballard’s mother.”
Harry had no idea what to think of that, it was so wrong in so many ways.
First, through ballistics testing, it was proved to be the instrument of Ballard’s death, which turned out to be a homicide, and considering there was definitely a cover-up, not “losing” it or finding some other way to sully the path to using it as evidence was so fucking stupid, Harry didn’t know how to process it.
Second, giving it to the victim’s mother like it actually was her son’s property (when it wasn’t), and it was the weapon that took his life was…
Harry couldn’t find words to describe it.
Stupid. Cruel. Insane. Inept.
Those were the words that sprang to mind.
For fucks’ sake, with the minutest amount of scrutiny, this wasn’t anywhere near a successful cover-up. It was only Dern’s negligence that meant it had gone on this long.
“Ran the serials, Harry,” Sean cut into his thoughts.
Harry nodded for him to go on.
“Chased it back…here,” Sean said.
Harry stared even as he felt his pulse stutter.
“Here?”
“Missing from the evidence locker.” Sean’s eyes dropped to the stack of files they had yet to dive into that had been pulled in the audit. “It was the weapon that shot Terence Dinklage.”
This being why the shooting of Terence Dinklage, a man who didn’t die, but he did lose the use of his legs, had been pulled in the audit. The weapon missing from the evidence locker.
That crime had never been solved, regardless that Terence reported he had an ongoing and escalating dispute with his neighbor about the eastern boundary of his property.
After one of many heated arguments about that very thing, later that day, when Terence was on his riding mower, mowing an area of his eight acres that was close to that boundary, he’d been shot in the back.
Two days later, the gun had been found in a dumpster in town and turned in by a traveling hippie who had been dumpster diving behind the Double D, foraging for food.
It was registered to Dinklage’s neighbor, Albert Tremblay, who had conveniently reported it stolen a week before the incident.
However, this was another case Harry had pulled, because he questioned the veracity of the dates this theft was reported, considering it was entirely too coincidental, and one thing cops hated and many flatly refused to believe in were coincidences.
No prints were found on the weapon.
The case hadn’t tanked because the gun had disappeared from the Fret County evidence locker. No matter how adamant Dinklage was that it was Tremblay who shot him, he’d been shot in the back. He didn’t see the shooter. And Tremblay’s wife reported he was in all that afternoon, watching a Mariners game on TV.
Another sheriff might have pushed it, dug deeper, but Dern didn’t.
Worse, Farrell was lead on both cases. This could either explain the lazy detective work or be another indication Farrell was bent.
This incident occurred about six months before Ballard was shot.
And tracing that weapon back to their evidence locker meant the only real likelihood of who could get their hands on it was a cop.
Following that thread, it shone the light even brighter on Abernathy, or as an outside possibility, Farrell as the shooter in the Ballard case.
“You know what this means?” he asked Sean.
Sean winced, as any good cop would when confronted with the actions of a bad one.
“Yeah,” he replied.
Harry pulled the stack of files closer and yanked out Tremblay’s theft and Dinklage’s shooting.
He tossed them on his desk in front of Sean and said, “Look through those. Then talk with Dinklage and Tremblay. Specifically Tremblay, and find people who know him. I want to know all about the dispute those two had. I also want to know if he has any ties to Dern, Farrell or Abernathy.”
“You mean, start from the beginning?” Sean asked, sounding surprised.
“When I had time, I was going to talk to you, Wade and Karen. We need at least another investigator, with the growth in this county, it’d be better to have more. This means I need one, or all of you, to sit the detective’s exam.”
“We got money for that?”
Harry tapped the stack. “We’re up to our necks, Sean, and I suspect that isn’t going to end anytime soon. I’ll find the money to promote when you pass.”
“You think I’m ready for that?”
Sean was one of Harry’s hires. He’d done three years as a beat cop in Seattle before his wife got pregnant, and both of them decided they wanted to raise their kids somewhere safer and quieter than the big city, and not incidentally, Sean’s job would be safer too.