Jimmy stepped in behind Lando and bobbed his head toward the back of the house. “Nice wall of windows from floor to ceiling. These old houses seemed to have their own set of charm, don’t they?”
“I guess,” Lando said as he studied the open floor plan with new eyes. He’d never really noticed much about Ben’s layout before now. But he could tell by the things left out that Ben had expected to return from his meeting alive. A TV guide was left open to Sunday night’s schedule and a crossword puzzle with blocks yet to fill.
“Got the cat fed,” Dale proclaimed. “Found one of those bags of dry cat food in the pantry. We’ll have to call Inez LeMond to come and get him, though. She runs the only no-kill shelter around these parts for abandoned pets. Unless you know someone who wants a cat.”
“Not me. You take care of contacting Inez,” Lando told him, still looking around the house, assessing the best place to start their search. “Let’s split up. Jimmy, you take Ben’s bedroom. Dale, you take the living room. I’ll start in Ben’s office. We’re looking for anything that links back to the Copeland murders, or anything that would tell us who might’ve killed Ben.”
The men headed into different parts of the house, prepared to carry out a thorough search.
But it didn’t take long for Lando to realize the task might be more daunting than he’d previously thought. He opened the door to the room that housed Ben’s office, expecting a desk and some bookshelves, but what he discovered instead was an entire room dedicated to the Copeland murders. Their family pictures were plastered all over the walls, showing them in various stages of life. The other section of the wall held crime scene photographs depicting the family in death. He also spotted the missing fifth box sitting on the floor next to the desk, marked Five of Five.
He went over to the box, picked it up off the carpeting, and then slid it to a corner of Ben’s desk. Easing off the lid, he peered inside only to discover the box was mostly empty. That’s when he noticed the row of evidence bags laid out in order on the credenza. One bag held what looked like the murder weapon—the head of a hammer. But where the hell was the handle? Lando wondered as he started pawing his way through the other stuff on the desk.
After not finding the handle among any of the plastic baggies, he readjusted his focus to the pictures on the wall. He paced in front of what could only be described as Ben’s shrine to the Copeland family. There were pictures of Sandra from high school tacked next to photos of Todd wearing his choir robe while singing in church. The photographs of the kids ranged from school pictures to snapshots taken in the couple’s backyard.
Lando stood back and scratched his head, then yelled for the others. Jimmy appeared first, then Dale.
“Hey, that’s the missing box,” Dale exclaimed. “What the hell is this, Lando?”
“I have no idea what’s going on, and because of that, here’s what we’re gonna do. Which one of you is the better photographer?”
Dale and Jimmy traded looks.
“That would be me,” Jimmy offered.
“Fine. Then grab a camera, a quality one with a wide-angle lens. Purchase as much film as you can. I want every single angle of this wall photographed just as it is. Then, I want the entire room photographed, piece by piece, wall by wall. I want it all documented right down to each piece of paper, so we’ll have a backup before we touch or remove anything.”
“You do realize it will take days to get that done, right?” Jimmy clarified. “At the minimum three.”
“That’s okay. I don’t care how long it takes. We’re not in a hurry.” He pivoted toward Dale. “I want you to set up a perimeter around the house, make sure one of us is on duty here twenty-four-seven to protect the integrity of the victim’s house as we found it.”
Jimmy walked around the room. “Why would Ben Zurcher have all this stuff here?”
Dale was just as puzzled, but he was upset. “Yeah, well, the bigger question is how he got his hands on that box of evidence. I wasted a couple of hours looking for that earlier. Did someone allow Ben to walk in there and just carry it out? How long has