Back on camera at the semi-trailer, Carmen said, “Thank you, J.C. Over the summer, our Crime Seen! team has been very busy following leads.”
Dingle was waiting with hand-held to follow her up the stairs of the trailer and inside. A pan of the lab revealed bustling activity within, staged but convincing (Carmen had spent much of the previous afternoon rehearsing her forensics stars, much to their dismay).
Nearest was Michael Pall, sitting at a computer monitor. The diminutive DNA scientist wore a white lab coat with his name on the left breast over the UBC logo set within a magnifying glass (Harrow had put his foot down, and the Killer TV logo was conspicuously MIA). Under the lab coat, Pall wore a light blue button-down dress shirt and a darker blue tie with a geometric pattern.
Carmen guided Pall down a path of easy questions concerning the DNA of the corn leaf found at the Ferguson crime scene. They were not on prompter, but the exchange was very much canned.
“Does that mean we know where the killer is from?”
“No,” Pall said, “that’s too big an assumption. But we’re making progress.”
“How so?”
“We know where in Kansas that particular corn seed was sold. It will help us narrow down where the killer might have traveled.”
“Anything else?”
Pall gestured toward a table on the other side of the lab, where Billy Choi sat at a computer screen displaying two bullets side by side. Under his UBC-insignia lab coat, Choi wore a navy blue T-shirt emblazoned with a huge badge and the words NYPD HOCKEY.
After introducing Choi as the resident firearms expert, Carmen said, “What’s the story of these bullets, Billy?”
Playing to the camera, Choi said, “These two slugs represent evidence developed using NIBIN.”
“NIBIN?”
“National Integrated Ballistics Information Network.”
“Which is?”
To Harrow, the pair seemed to be competing for the camera, trading smiles, but the audience probably thought they were just flirting a little.
Choi was saying, “NIBIN’s an imaging system and database of firearms-related evidence developed by the FBI and the ATF in partnership. Each had their own ballistics imaging programs — Drugfire at the FBI and IBIS at ATF — but NIBIN allows the two to communicate, and share information.”
“What have you learned using this technology?”
Choi pointed at the bullets on the screen, and the camera moved in, Harrow’s monitor filled now with the two bullets. “The bullet on the right came out of Stella Ferguson — from a nine-millimeter automatic, a completely different type of bullet than the one used in the murders at the Harrow home.”
“Does that mean different perpetrators in these two cases?”
“No, just that a different weapon was used. May or may not be the same killer, but there are significant similarities in the crimes... Still, the weapons don’t match.”
“To the layperson,” Carmen said, “these bullets look the same.”
“Actually, they’re not.”
As Dingle’s shot widened, Choi moved to another monitor, where a picture of a third bullet was waiting. “This slug came from Ellen Harrow. It’s bigger, the striations completely different.”
Looking at a bullet pried from his wife’s chest, televised or otherwise, sent acid rushing into Harrow’s stomach, and, involuntarily, he pictured his wife and son on the floor back in their home.
What was the son of a bitch who did it thinking, if he was watching this?
“What about the bullets on the other monitor?” Carmen was asking. “You said you had a match for one in the Ferguson murders — but not the Harrow case?”
“No,” Choi said. “This is new — that comes from a double murder in Rolla, North Dakota, two years ago.”
“Where has that led you?”
“Check back next week,” Choi said, delivering a scripted line very naturally.
The show was running smoothly, and Harrow was of course pleased.
But he also knew that by serializing this investigation on live TV, he was giving the killer a tutorial on what evidence they were finding, and how close they were coming to him. Of all the risks they were taking, this was the worst — instead of closing in on the killer, they might well drive him to ground, and never track the bastard down.
Carmen turned to camera and asked, “J.C., why didn’t the police in Florida pick up on this connection?”
Back on, Harrow said, “Carmen, they did run the bullets through NIBIN, but Rolette County in North Dakota — like many rural areas — hasn’t widely participated in the program. Only recently, through the state crime lab in Bismarck, did the information get into the database. The match we found has only been available for the last few weeks.”
“J.C.,” Carmen said casually, but scripted, “I understand you interviewed the surviving member of the Ferguson household.”
“Yes,” Harrow replied, framed against the stucco home in the moonlight, “this afternoon I spoke with Placida city marshal Ray Ferguson, here in his home.”
Microphone lowered, Harrow watched the monitor.
In a two-shot, sunlight filtering in sheer-curtained windows in the background, Harrow was seated in a straight-back chair facing a sofa where Ferguson sat.
Paunchier and generally older-looking than Harrow — though possibly as much as five years younger — Ferguson wore boots, jeans, and a blue denim shirt with a gold badge embroidered over the left breast. Jowly, with empty blue eyes and a wide nose, he had thin, bloodless lips over a strong chin.
“Marshal Ferguson, we’re sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you, sir,” Ferguson said, with a tiny nod. His baritone was soft spoken, with a touch of drawl. “I consented to this, Mr. Harrow, because I know you suffered such yourself.”
“Marshal Ferguson, would you tell us about that night, almost a year ago to the day?”
Ferguson had been expecting the questions, but the words hit him like tiny punches. His eyes glazed over.
“Marshal, I apologize for my bluntness. But I have to ask.”
He nodded. “Well, after work, I came home, and the lights weren’t on. Which surprised me, ’cause it was well after dark. Stella’s car was in the driveway, and that was when I first got spooked, really spooked. Just knew something was wrong.”
“Go on.”
“Rest of the block was quiet, but what really shook me was that the lights, in the other houses? They were all on. I’d kinda hoped that somehow it was... you know... a power outage or some damn thing.”
As he watched the monitor, Harrow winced when a close cut to the marshal’s trembling hands in his lap underscored the man’s misery. His own hands began to tremble, and he marveled that he’d been able to summon his inner cop enough to conduct this interview.
“I just ran into the house,” Ferguson was saying. “Or anyway I did after I got the door unlocked, which was another thing — Stella never locked the door when she knew I was coming home.”
Neither had Ellen.
“I suppose,” the marshal said, “he locked up after himself, to keep somebody from discovering what he’d done too soon. Of course, he’d have known I’d have a key. Do you suppose he wanted me to find them, Mr. Harrow? Did he do the same to you?”
“Please go on, sir.”
“Sorry,” Ferguson said. “Anyway, I went in, and there they were... all dead. All lying in the entryway, like they were there to... greet me. But it wasn’t... wasn’t me, was it?”
“Then you called the sheriff’s office.”
“Yes, and they arrived within minutes. Coroner told me that Stella and the kids’d only been dead for about an hour. If I’d got home earlier that night...? Maybe they would still be alive.”