The other men all swore at the same time.
See, after years of history showing that not all cops were on the up and up, it’d become mandatory for law enforcement officers to submit a sample of their DNA and their fingerprints.
Mrs. Bane had just told us that she believed her husband was Judd’s dad, and that the man he’d grown up thinking was his father had killed him for having an affair with his wife—a woman twenty-one years younger than Mr. Bane.
If the used rubber had DNA on the outside and inside that matched Judd’s on both sides, it might confirm that Alan Bane was Judd’s dad.
“Did she give you any of the items you asked for?” Logan asked, staring at the box Carter had placed on DB’s desk.
“Hairbrush is in there, so’s a ton of other things,” Carter confirmed. “We’ve got a date planner Alan kept on the desk in his office, scraps of paper she didn’t understand, and some of his sweaters and jewelry.
“There’s even a note on the top of it asking the person who found it to drop it in to the police after she died, and another one to us where she outlines her theory if she can’t talk to us before she dies.”
Yeah, she didn’t know for sure who’d done it, but her biggest suspicion was Terry Bailey, Judd’s dad, or the pastor, Perry Wise.
Apparently, after Alan had gone missing, she’d received letter after letter telling her if she didn’t stay quiet that the person would kill her daughter, who was at college at the time.
Mrs. Bane had also had some animals that it was widely known she’d adored, and they’d threatened them, too. The message was received loud and clear when she was stopped by the sheriff at the time in town who’d asked her how she was, and when she’d gotten home, she’d found one of her cats dead on her doorstep with a note saying it was a warning.
It was fucked up.
Unfortunately for the person behind it all, she’d kept the notes in her diary and had passed them to us today.
“Okay, so we need to speak to Judd. Logan, get the hairbrush to the lab to see if they can get any DNA from it to do a cross-match on.”
“Uh, we also have the threatening notes, DB. She kept them in her diary this whole time,” I told him, holding up the book encased in a transparent evidence bag. “Mrs. Bane was the only person to touch them aside from the person who wrote them.”
Both Logan and DB looked at the diary in my hand like it was a ticking time bomb for a moment, but then both of them snapped out of it. Yeah, having evidence like that after all of this time was insane, but sometimes shit just fell into your lap like that.
“Okay, we get them analyzed for prints and DNA, too.”
“How do you think Bailey’s going to react?” Carter asked as we walked back to the office we were working out of.
“His dad’s an asshole, and they’ve always had issues, so he might be relieved.”
He hummed as he shut the door behind him and then moved to put the box of stuff from Mrs. Bane in the safe.
“Who do you think had the biggest motive to kill Bane?”
Carter had been in the process of sitting down, but at the question, he got up again and began pacing.
“Both Perry Wise and Terry Bailey had motives for it. Perry Wise was in love with Gynnie Bane and didn’t want the relationship to end. It would be ironic if he killed Alan, seeing as how she refused to see him again after the death.
“Terry Bailey seems to have the biggest cross to bear with Bane, though. Can you imagine finding out your wife’s having an affair with an older man, and that your kid’s probably his?”
No, I couldn’t imagine it. That was some ‘90s daytime chat show drama.
“Anyway,” Carter added, finally taking a seat, “it’s up to what the evidence comes back with. We need to go through the box and see what else there is.”
Seeing him shifting awkwardly, I found something to smile about for the first time in a couple of hours.
“You finally wearing the bodysuit Hurst gave you?”
“Yeah,” he hissed, lifting one cheek off the chair and then wiggling around some more. “Fucking thing’s so uncomfortable.
“I went into the men’s bathrooms at Kleins last night, and I was the only one at the urinals who had to reach between my legs to undo the buttons on my crotch so I could piss.”
I didn’t both to hold back my laughter. I don’t even think it’d be possible to.
“How many guys saw you do it?”
“Three, but then two more saw me do them back up again. And to make it worse, one of them was Cole Townsend, and the other was Kingston Heart.”