At his desk, Lefebvre took out his notebook and reviewed a list of initials he had made during the long night. Once again he pictured himself in Seth’s room and tried to recall exactly who had been present when the watch beeped. With the exception of a few reporters, Tory Randolph, and Seth himself, they were all members of the Las Piernas Police Department or police commissioners. Lefebvre still strongly resisted the idea. He told himself that other evidence still indicated Dane.
Then he thought of the sound of the watch in the stairwell.
Whoever wore the watch had seen Seth’s reaction and had returned, probably to finish what he had started on the Amanda.
Why, Lefebvre wondered now, was the watch set to go off a few minutes before eleven?
Gazing off into space as he recalled the previous evening, he soon came to an answer. The guard’s shift changed at eleven. Any member of the department could easily learn which officers had guard duty at the hospital. With very little research, the attacker would know that the least alert guard was on duty from three to eleven. And near eleven, as the shift changed, both guards would be on hand — presenting two guards to overcome at Seth’s door, instead of one inattentive man who often strayed away from it.
He went back over the description Seth had given of his attacker. Eliminating only those who most obviously differed from that description, Lefebvre narrowed his list of potential suspects. He reviewed the remaining names.
Two were on the police commission: Dan Soury and Michael Pickens. Soury, who chaired the commission, had a thick, full beard. He could not have grown that out so rapidly in the weeks after the murders. He crossed Soury off the list.
Three were from the Homicide Division: Captain Bredloe, Pete Baird, and Vince Adams. He recalled that Bredloe and Randolph had been at odds on occasion, but Lefebvre did not know of any disagreement that would have led to murder. No matter how he tried, Lefebvre could not picture Bredloe in the role of the attacker. Besides, Bredloe was tall and broad-shouldered, and Lefebvre thought Seth would probably have described the attacker as a larger man if Bredloe had been the one.
Baird and Adams had investigated a homicide case believed to be connected to Dane, but had not been able to come up with any solid evidence. They weren’t alone — Lefebvre himself was working on such a case.
Lefebvre started to cross off the name of Robert Hitchcock, Elena’s partner. Then he realized that he could not account for every moment of Hitch’s time on the night of the murders. A long shot, but still…
The next three men on his list — Dr. Alfred Larson, Paul Haycroft, and Dale Britton — all worked in the crime lab. Larson managed it, Haycroft worked for him, and Britton was part of the crime scene unit that had examined both the Cygnet and the Amanda. Britton had seemed quite taken with Tory Randolph, while Larson and Haycroft had been ill at ease during their part of her show in Seth’s room yesterday.
The last three men on his list were uniformed officers. Earl Allen, Duke Fenly, and Ned Perry. He was well acquainted with “the aristocrats,” as Earl and Duke were known. They were large men, often called upon to help transport violent criminals. Again, too large, thought Lefebvre. Still, he would need to take a closer look at their activities on the night of the murders. He knew very little about Perry, only that he had been one of the first to respond to their call for backup on the Amanda. He had seemed uneasy in Seth’s room, but Lefebvre had been uneasy, too — so he wasn’t ready to hold that against him.
He decided to start with the uniformed officers. Their movements would be the easiest to check. He went downstairs and asked for their schedules and records of calls between about eleven o’clock on the night of June 3 and one in the morning on June 4 — roughly the time of the murders. The sergeant who supplied the information didn’t hide his curiosity over the request, but didn’t hesitate to comply with it. Lefebvre ignored the curiosity and thanked him for his help.
Looking at the logs, he noticed that Perry and his partner had been busy with a nearby domestic violence call during the time of the attack on the Amanda. Duke and Earl had been near the downtown area, arresting a felon on a parole violation. Their time had been completely taken up with these activities. Relieved, he crossed all three names off his list.
While he was downstairs, he put in a request for an additional guard on Seth’s room, but despite his arguments of urgency, the sergeant told him that they were stretched thin now, and if he could manage it at all, tomorrow would be the earliest — if the request was approved by higher-ups.
Lefebvre hid his annoyance and went back to the homicide room.
He found it much more crowded and filled with the hum of conversation. He returned a few greetings, then sat down at his desk and took out a pen and paper. His notebook was full of disjointed reminders, notes made in the anxious hours of the previous night. Seeking an orderly approach to the problem, he started to make a list of the avenues he would pursue from here.
The first of these was to take a look at the physical evidence against Dane.
This brought to mind a problem that had nagged at him throughout the night — the anonymous tip he had received, telling him about Dane’s supposed meeting with a triggerman — the one that had brought him to the marina in the early hours of June 4. If Dane had not killed Trent and Amanda Randolph, then Dane had been set up, and the informant who had called Lefebvre was very likely the murderer. What bothered Lefebvre most was the awareness that this was not the first time he had been contacted by the informant.
On two other occasions, he had heard that obviously disguised voice — the caller had spoken as few words as possible, almost as if he had been sending a telegram. Just before midnight, on a night when he had been working late at his desk, going over department files on Whitey Dane, Lefebvre had received the call. “Dane on Cygnet paying shooter. Returns to Marina South soon. Slip three-zero-five.”
Even if he had never heard the weird, altered voice before, even if two previous tips from that same caller had not led to important arrests, Lefebvre would have gone down to the marina. But because he thought of this informant as reliable, that night he paged Elena and Hitch. Yes, they said, Dane had a boat called the Cygnet and moored it in slip number 305.
If Seth had not heard the watch, Lefebvre never would have questioned the snitch’s information. Over the last few hours, he had wondered about the previous cases. Although he remained convinced that they were good arrests, he made a note to look at those files as well. Perhaps there was some link between them, some person within the department or commission who was connected to all the cases.
He looked over the list of names again and wondered how long it might take him to ferret out the man he sought. For Seth’s sake, he hoped it would be soon. He neatly folded the page, placed it in his top desk drawer with the pen, and locked the drawer.
Lefebvre felt a certain pride in the Las Piernas lab. A year or so ago, there had been pressure to close it down and to rely on the county forensic science services. He had nothing against the county lab, but they were over-burdened and would be far less convenient to use. And the thought of losing scientists like Paul Haycroft was one he’d rather not contemplate.
Haycroft was studying photographs of blood-spatter patterns when Lefebvre walked into the lab. Although both Larson and Haycroft had solid, broad-based experience in a number of areas of forensic science, this was Haycroft’s specialty. The department’s success in solving cases where bloodstains were present was higher than average, and Lefebvre knew this was due in part to Haycroft’s ability to interpret the evidence.