airtime tonight at dinner, isn’t it?” Lando whispered in Gemma’s ear as they left the landing.
“Oh, yeah. Count on it popping up.”
For the rest of the day, the buzz at City Hall made clear that Ben Zurcher somehow managed to obtain access to the evidence room and get his hands on the Copeland murder files, files he had no business keeping in his possession.
Back in Lando’s office, going over the evidence with Gemma, he kept trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
“I’m telling you he kept the entire contents of Box Number Five out in the open, just scattered around his office,” Lando stated. “He’d covered the walls with Copeland photos. If that wasn’t bad enough, Ben didn’t even have the good sense to try to hide any of it.”
“How is that possible?”
“I’m working on figuring that out. Do you have any idea how many times I stopped in to check on him? I was trying to be a good neighbor. I used to drop off food from the restaurant, little treats like homemade brownies, cakes, pies, whatever Mom had on hand. And all that time, Ben had this fixation on the Copeland case and never once said a word to me about it. Now I know why he never bothered to show me around the rest of his house.”
Gemma’s brows knitted together. “When was the last time anyone looked at the Copeland files, though? Didn’t anyone notice a box of evidence was missing?”
“We did have a lag time after Louise left and Suzanne started her new job. Maybe Ben was able to get past the front desk and into—”
“A locked evidence room?” Gemma said, filling in the blanks. “I’ll tell you what I think happened. At some point, before she was arrested, I think Louise Rawlins let Ben Zurcher in there to take whatever he wanted. It sounds exactly like something she would do to needle you. Louise always worked against you when you weren’t looking. Don’t deny it.”
“Why would I do that when it’s true? Sometimes right under my nose.” He paced off a few steps and back again. “The how of it doesn’t really matter, though, does it? Letting evidence walk out the front door reflects poorly on my oversight.”
“How does that work exactly? You can’t help it if Louise let him have access. I don’t see how that’s your fault. Someone obviously broke the law getting into an evidence locker and stealing what was there. How is that your fault?”
“It happened on my watch. Poor management on my part.”
“Who’s fixated on that besides you? Nobody.”
Lando chewed the inside of his jaw. “Did you really see what happened out at the Copeland’s farmhouse that night?”
“Why would I lie?”
“I’m not questioning that. It’s just that your version pretty much lines up with the evidence.”
Gemma tightened her jaw before looking away. “What I can’t figure out is why the family was murdered in the first place? Are you sure Caulfield checked out every suspect he had and verified they had an alibi for that night? Caulfield wasn’t exactly known for his due diligence.”
Going on no sleep for the past sixteen hours, Lando worked out the kinks in the knotted muscles of his neck. “You know as well as I do, I can’t be sure of anything Caulfield did. He wasn’t exactly the epitome of efficiency. But like you said, Louise loved the guy. She was very loyal to Reiner. Maybe she did let Ben in to take whatever he wanted.”
“That would explain a lot,” Gemma pointed out. Arms crossed, she plopped down into a chair. “We might be looking at this all wrong. Why did Ben take Box Number Five and not all of the others?”
For the first time, Lando looked baffled. “Yeah. Good question. What was so special about Box Number Five?”
“Answer that, and you may unlock the entire mystery. What was in it anyway?”
“Mostly photos of the crime scene. A bunch of baggies filled with stuff found in the bedrooms that didn’t seem to belong there. The items seemed out of place with what the Copeland girls had on hand.”
“Really? Like what kind of stuff?”
Lando picked up a list of things Dale had compiled from Ben’s house. “They found blue and red fibers that didn’t match anything in the house. They found small plastic dolls that the girls didn’t own, had never owned. And they found a pair of shoes that didn’t fit anyone in the house.”
“Interesting. That’s almost as mysterious as why the killer