“Just to be clear—you’re saying Myles Thompkins didn’t commit suicide.”
“Yes. That’s what we’re saying,” Doc said, looking from Max to me. “The autopsy will read homicide.”
Stunned, I sat down in a chair at the table. I’d of course considered this outcome, thought it probable, but hearing it made it real. Another murder. “You okay?” Max asked.
“Sure,” I said, although I felt my mind spinning. Nothing was as it should be in this case. Nothing seemed clear-cut. “Just thinking.”
“Considering who we look at for this?” Max suggested, and I nodded. “I’ve been going over the same question. I’ve only come up with one name.”
“Carl Shipley,” I said. “He has the motive. Carl had a thing for Laurel. He knew of Myles and Laurel’s relationship, that they’d been in love. Carl was jealous.”
“Yes,” Max said. “That’s my best guess, too.”
“Max, when we searched Carl’s trailer, did we take his computer?” I asked.
“No. We weren’t authorized to do that. It wasn’t covered by the warrant,” he said. “All we were allowed to take was anything that appeared to have blood on it, that was tied to the crime scene, Jacob Johansson or his family.”
The room grew quiet, the only sound Doc shuffling through the photos, putting them back in the file. When he finished, Max and I thanked Doc, and he hurried out the door to attend to the patients he had waiting in his office.
Once we were alone, I said to Max, “What have we got to justify a warrant to get Carl’s computer?”
In the conference room, Max and I laid out all the files, everything we had. “I don’t think there’s enough here,” Max said. “I don’t think the judge will buy it.”
“He has to,” I said. “Not getting Carl’s computer isn’t an option. We have to find out if Myles’s suicide note is on it.”
To work through it, we started debating it all. I took one side. He played the judge. I argued for the warrant, and he assessed the evidence as the judge would. “Based on the autopsy, we have reason to believe Myles Thompkins was murdered—forcibly submerged in the river,” I explained to Judge Max. “We have a suicide note that was not typed on Thompkins’ computer. We checked with the lab this morning, and it was also not printed on his printer. We’re looking for the computer and printer where the note was generated.”
“But what evidence do you have that it was Shipley who wrote the note and murdered the guy?” Max as the judge asked.
“We have motive. Carl Shipley was stalking one of the Johansson murder victims,” I explained. “Myles was Laurel’s true love. They’d continued to be close after the marriage to Jacob Johansson. But Carl Shipley had a thing for Laurel.”
Max paused, then he frowned. “This isn’t enough, Clara. The judge won’t go for it.”
“Jeez, Max!” I said it so loud I figured everyone in the sheriff’s offices could hear me, so I lowered my voice. “Ease up here. Don’t make this hard.”
“This is hard. We don’t have a lot but conjecture going for us. We need enough justification or Judge Crockett will turn us down,” Max countered. “What else do we have?”
“I don’t know, you tell me,” I snapped. Max shot me an irritated frown, and I backed off a bit. Not an excuse, but my mood wasn’t improving; I was on edge and frustrated. “We have to think of something. There has to be a way to get that warrant!”
“We need to look at all of this again,” Max said. “There must be something we know that the judge would accept as sufficient probable cause. We need to find it and bring it to him. We need that warrant.”
For half an hour we threw out idea after idea, batting around possibilities but getting pretty much nowhere. In a last-ditch effort, I called the lab, hoping they had more of our test results and that there was something there that we could use. Some things were still missing, mainly the fiber and hair evidence. They said that they were backlogged and it could be days for some of it, another week if we were lucky for the DNA.
“That’s not fast enough,” I shouted into the phone. “Come on. You can turn it around faster than that. We’ve got a killer out there somewhere.”
“Chief Jefferies,” the clerk started, as Max put his hand on my arm to try to calm me. “We are doing the best we can. We have cases in the lab