he found, but that’s about all we’ve got. The bottle used for the molotov cocktail was an ordinary beer bottle. But I sent it off to the lab anyway, hoping for DNA. If we’re lucky, we might even get fingerprints off it. I’ve been thinking about what you said. If the Copelands were targeted, financial gain had to be the reason.”
“That means a family member. Was there life insurance?”
“All financial information is yet to be determined. We are talking about a twenty-year-old case. Maybe you could carve out some time this afternoon to help me go through the stuff we pulled out of Ben’s office.”
For the first time all day, Gemma brightened. “Really? That would be great. I’d love to go through the stuff and see what you’ve got.”
“Then let’s do it. We’ll box up the food and get back to the office. I feel like I’m already playing catch up. Every minute counts.”
Gemma nodded and signaled for Lydia to bring them a box. “We could’ve met in your office. Imagine catching a killer who’s already murdered five people.”
Lando frowned. “We don’t know that yet. You shouldn’t make assumptions like that. We need to find a concrete link between Ben’s murder that leads to the Copelands. The note Ben held in his hand isn’t enough. Until we find something tangible, we have two separate homicide investigations.”
9
That afternoon, the separate murders began to blur together as Gemma and Lando organized Ben’s notes.
After slipping on a pair of latex gloves, they laid out everything from the fifth box of evidence—or everything they believed came out of the carton Ben had stolen—then stood back to study the photographs of the Copeland crime scene.
Lando pointed out the killer’s point of entry. “Their backdoor had been jimmied from a previous break-in. The incident is listed in the files. As a result, the backdoor didn’t lock properly. No doubt the same one you used to get in a couple of days ago.”
“It was eerie walking into that kitchen. Right away, I began to see what the house looked like in 2000, see the spot where the kids helped their mom bake cookies at the counter. The same thing happened to me in the dining room. I could see the family eating dinners there, sitting around the table on special occasions like Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, enjoying themselves. They seemed like a happy family, inside and outside. I didn’t pick up on any tension like wife-beating or serious squabbling going on or any abuse of the kids. Nothing sinister like that.”
Lando knew she was doing what she could to help. Although twenty-year-old visions of a happy family seemed important, something had gone wrong, something that led a killer to murder the Copelands in their beds.
When he found Gemma staring at him, waiting for him to comment, he cleared his throat. “Just because they came off as squeaky clean doesn’t mean there wasn’t another angle. We have to find what brought the killer to this specific door, find the reason they were killed.”
Gemma glanced at the pile of notes on his desk. “Wading through that mess of a paper trail is the only way.”
“Many of the evidence bags contain pieces of paper that came from the crime scene. Other bags contain items found all around the Copeland house. The problem, as I see it, is knowing Ben had all this in his possession. Maybe for years.”
“Which means he probably contaminated everything we’re looking at.”
“That’s the issue. A defense attorney would make it a big deal. We should keep that in the back of our minds as we proceed. But if Ben was able to figure out who killed the Copelands, then so can we by using this same stuff.” He picked up a baggie that contained a bloody sock. “When you see stuff like this with blood still on it, know that it needs to be re-sent to the lab for DNA testing.”
“Uh, I hate to ask the obvious, but why hasn’t stuff like that already been sent before now?”
Lando shook his head. “This case hasn’t seen any attention since right after it happened. Ben was the only guy who thought to peek into a box to see if he could figure it out.”
For five hours, the two sat across from each other, digging through an assortment of plastic bags and paper sacks, organizing the evidence into piles depending on what went to the testing lab.
Lando kept an inventory list. Whenever they examined an item, it was checked off