I studied the carpet for any evidence that someone might have entered the room.
“What is it?” Jake asked.
“We have no footprints leading from the front porch to the side of the house where the snowmobile was parked, so, assuming the killer rode it from the scene, he exited the scene through the laundry room. The family left their shoes, not just their boots, near the front door. Neither Ardis nor Lizzie was wearing shoes, so it appears the family habitually-”
“Takes off their shoes in the house.”
“Yes.”
Jake went on, paralleling my thoughts: “And if Donnie was the shooter, he would’ve had his shoes off in the house.”
“It’s likely.”
“However, if someone else was the shooter, he wouldn’t have taken off his shoes. After all, why would he?”
“That’s right.”
“So, mud on the carpet?”
Or water stains or shoe impressions…
It was more likely we’d find mud or impressions by one of the entrances to the home or on the pristine white living room rug. “Maybe.”
I inspected the carpet but couldn’t tell if the shoe impressions I saw were the same size as Donnie’s boots in the mud room. Natasha should be here any minute to process the crime scene. I’d have her check it out.
I descended the stairs, stepping past Ardis’s body as reverently as I could. “We’ll want to check the neighbor’s clock,” I told Ellory. “See if it has the correct time. If we really are talking about 1:48 p.m.”
“I’ll have an officer do it.” He stared past me toward the landing. “You think he forgot something maybe?”
“Who?”
“The shooter. That he might have been on his way out, realized he forgot something upstairs, went back to the landing to get it, and then fired the last shot through the living room window when he got there.”
“I really couldn’t say.”
Jake, who was still on the landing, answered, “That would make sense.”
While Jake came down the stairs to join us, I questioned Ellory about some of the issues that the rather disappointing and incomplete police report had left unanswered.
“Were the lights in the house on or off when you arrived?”
“They were on. All of them, except the study.”
“Were the exterior doors locked or unlocked?”
“The doors were unlocked, but that’s not so unusual.” He said the next few words with uncertainty, as if he’d stopped believing them: “There’s not much crime around here.”
“Appliances. Which were on?”
“You mean like the oven?”
“Yes, and the computer, television, the washer, dryer, a cooking timer-anything.” All of these things tell us what was happening, where people were, what they were doing, or when they were doing it.
He thought. “Not the washer or dryer. Or the TV. We checked the computer for a suicide note; didn’t find one though.”
“The computer is in the study?”
“Yes.”
I retrieved my laptop from the mud room. “Do you by any chance know the last webpage that was opened?”
He was looking increasingly disappointed in himself the more we spoke. “I didn’t look.”
“It’s okay. Thanks.”
In the small office nook attached to the living room I clicked to the internet history while Ellory asked Jake, “You’re a profiler. What’s your take on this?”
The web history was password protected. The Bureau has ways past that, however. I surfed to the Federal Digital Database and entered my ID number.
“Rage,” Jake said. “Donnie’s-or whoever committed these crimes-their behavior exhibits uncontrollable rage. We find this type of thing with people who snap. Something pushes them over the edge-job loss, marital problems, the death of a child.”
I downloaded the program I needed, and a few seconds later, using a 32-byte MD5 hash, I’d cracked the password and I was in.
Jake continued, “Almost always in cases like this, we find what we call a trigger event or a precipitating stressor. Do we know if there was any sudden trauma in his life recently?”
“No,” Ellory answered. “If there was I don't know what it would be.”
The web history had been deleted, but the hard drive hadn’t been wiped. It wasn’t difficult to click into the terminal window, enter a few lines of code that Angela Knight, my friend in the Bureau’s Cybercrime Division, had taught me, and pull up the files.
Someone had been surfing through the naval archives of Ohio Class fleet ballistic missile submarine, or SSBN, deployment records from the 1980s. I could hardly believe the information was made available to the public, but then again, the data was three decades old. A few mouse clicks told me that the Cold War archives weren’t considered matters of national security any longer, and a Freedom of Information Act request had apparently been filed by a group known as Eco-Tech four months ago.
Interesting.
Following up on that, I discovered that Eco-Tech had done some consulting for half a dozen Fortune 500 companies and two foreign governments-Brazil and Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, Jake kept his questions coming to Ellory. “Did Donnie have any mental or emotional problems that you’re aware of?”
“Not that I know of.”
I checked the time the sub archives were last opened.
Just minutes after the murders.
After the murders.
Odd.
Donnie was in the Navy. Maybe he was searching the sites.
But why then?
I heard a car crunch to a stop out front, possibly Agent Farraday. After I finished downloading the web history and email records to my laptop, I headed for the front door.
“Job dissatisfaction?” Jake asked Ellory behind me.
“Nope. He works at the sawmill over on Highway K. Far as I know he had no problems at work. Nothing like that.”
Boots on again, I stepped onto the porch. The frigid air bit at me, and I tugged on my wool hat. Natasha Farraday exited the car.
Natasha smiled. Early thirties. Dark hair. Demure. Spot-on professionally. Even though we’d never dated, I’d sensed for a while that she had a thing for me. However, because of my relationship with Lien-hua, who also worked for the Bureau as one of its top profilers, I’d made sure to keep things with Natasha completely on the friends-only level.
After she greeted me, a stern-looking fiftyish man with shaggy, wolfish eyebrows followed her out of the car, stuck out his hand, and introduced himself as the county coroner. “Jeddar Linnaman, good to meet you.”
I wasn’t sure I’d heard that right. “Jeddar?”
“Full name’s Jedderick, like Frederick but with an extra d. Everyone just calls me Jeddar.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Agent Farraday told me all about you, Dr. Bowers. It’s an honor to work with you.”
The PhD wasn’t something I liked drawing attention to. “Thank you. Just call me Pat.”
After filling in the two of them on what we knew, I asked Natasha to pay special attention to the carpet fibers in the house and prints on the laundry room doorknob. “We’ll also want to compare the boots by the door to the size and visible wear patterns of the sole impressions outside the laundry room.”
“Got it.”
“The computer was accessed after the murders, websites having to do with submarine deployments. I’m going to want to pull all the sectors to get a byte-level data analysis.”
“That’ll take time,” she said, mirroring my thoughts.
“Yes.”
Depending on the size of the files and the computer’s processing speed, it could take up to twenty-four hours to upload the entire drive to the Cybercrime Division’s FTP server.
“Go ahead and do a cursory review of recently accessed files,” I said. “I’ll get the emails and web history to Cybercrime, but I’d like your eyes on the registry as well; see what else you can find.”
She agreed, then, carrying her forensics investigation kit, she entered the house with Jeddar Linnaman.
Already there was a lot to think about, and I needed to sort some things through. Taking a walk helps me collect my thoughts, so I stayed outside, zipped up my jacket, donned my leather gloves, and stepped into the night.