just getting out this morning. He had heart surgery.”
“Send us the registration form and anything you have on this guy,” I said. “Doesn’t sound like he’s our killer, but I want to verify that he has nothing to do with this.”
“Will do,” the tech said.
“You think the seller might recognize a photo of the person he sold the gun to?” Max asked. “We could get together a couple of photo lineups, put our suspects in, email them to his local PD and ask them to go over them with him.”
“We asked that. The guy says no chance. He buys and sells guns like a hardware store owner flips hammers, dozens every year,” the tech said. “Sometimes, he buys new, gets tired of them and sells them, like he did with this gun. Other times he buys used, repairs and marks them up, then sells them for a profit. He says he keeps no records.”
This wasn’t good. We’d just lost what could have been a valuable lead. “Thanks,” I said. “Anything on the knife?”
“We sent photos of the blade over to Doc Wiley,” the tech said. “He says it could be the weapon used to murder Laurel Johansson. The serration of the blade is consistent with the cut in her throat. We’ve sent samples of the blood found on the knife for DNA.”
“Fingerprints?” Max asked.
“Nada,” the tech said. “Like the gun, the knife handle has been wiped clean.”
“What about Jacob’s wound?” I asked. “Does it match that, too?”
“Not sure yet,” the tech said. “We’re waiting on photos and X-rays from the hospital to compare. We should have that for you soon.”
“Okay, and the bloody print and the boot, anything there yet?” Max asked.
“Not sure. I’ll check and email it over when it’s ready,” the tech said. “I know they’re working on it. I saw a colleague scanning the print into the system.”
“We’d appreciate that,” I said as I plopped down in the chair, thinking.
“We’ll watch for it,” Max said. “And thanks again for turning all this around so fast.”
As we hung up, Kellie walked in with the copies of the letters I’d found sewn into Laurel’s curtains. Max took a stack and I grabbed the rest. We started shuffling, the earliest letters top left on the conference room table, the most recent bottom right. We had three rows, twenty-one letters in all. Unlike Laurel’s letters, which were sent religiously once a week, Myles sometimes skipped a week, even two. While hers were written on Sundays, Myles dated his on Wednesdays. None of his was terribly long, just a page or two, a couple at the most three pages, and we read them in order, starting with one that was written shortly after Laurel was promised to Jacob. At the top, he addressed each TO THE WOMAN I LOVE.
WHY WOULD THE PROPHET DO THIS TO US? Myles wrote. The letters were block printed in a precise hand. DOESN’T HE UNDERSTAND LOVE? HOW CAN THIS BE A REVELATION FROM GOD, WHEN GOD IS LOVE? HE WOULD KNOW THAT WE AREN’T TO BE SEPARATED, WOULDN’T HE? I CAN’T ENVISION A GOD WHO WOULD DENY OUR LOVE FOR EACH OTHER.
The letters were heartfelt and kind. Myles inquired about Laurel’s health and urged her to stop her hunger strike and eat:
I WANT YOU ALIVE MORE THAN WITH ME. I WANT YOU TO LIVE, LAUREL, MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE. IF YOU DIE, I WILL, TOO. FOR HOW COULD I LIVE WITHOUT YOU IN THIS WORLD? THAT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE.
Laurel had written little about Jacob in her letters to Myles, and he ignored him as well, rarely calling him by name. At times, when Myles had to, he referred to Jacob as “your husband.”
YOUR HUSBAND SHOULD NOT MAKE YOU DO SUCH HARD WORK, LAUREL, he wrote a few months after she married. DOESN’T HE HAVE WORKERS TO FEED THE BISON? THEY’RE POWERFUL ANIMALS, AND UNPREDICTABLE. IT WORRIES ME THAT HE SENDS YOU OUT INTO THE FIELDS WITH THEM. WHAT IF ONE WERE TO CHARGE YOU?
I turned to Max. “Just a minute,” I said. “I’m going to get the copies of Laurel’s letters.”
I hurried to my office and claimed them off my desk, whisked them back to the conference room and we laid them out also based on date, intermingling them with Jacob’s letters. When we read them in succession, we quickly realized that they rarely flowed one to the other. Laurel and Myles weren’t answering each other’s questions or concerns from the previous letter in their own. “Look