“So what did you find at the scene? Did you catch the killer?”
“Killers,” he corrected. “A group of four were responsible in the end. The first one we caught because we found half of a finger from a latex glove. They knew they were doing wrong and came prepared with the gloves on, but this asshole—the one who shot the gun because there was gunshot residue on it—ripped the finger of his off, so we got a print and DNA. Both were a hit on the national database, so we found asshole number one.
“The second one was a bit more confusing because there was just so much fucking tape, and it’s hard to work with it until it’s been properly processed. There were no fingerprints on it, but my team pointed out he may have used his teeth to tear it after he’d wrapped it around their wrists and ankles.”
“Stupid mistake if he did. You’d think if they came prepared and with a plan to do something that included murder and wearing latex gloves, they’d at least use a knife or scissors to cut the tape.”
Chuckling, he picked up my casted hand and skimmed his thumb over it.
His brothers, Sadie, and his parents had all signed it, but he hadn’t yet. Sadie had even put lipstick on Bronte and pressed her mouth against it, so I had the cutest tiny baby lip print on it that I’d painted over with clear nail polish to preserve.
“That’s true, but killers use the irrational part of their brains normally when they’re doing their thing, and the adrenaline makes them fuck up. There’s no such thing as the perfect crime, no matter how much you try to hide it.”
“I’m not sure if that’s comforting or disturbing, to be honest. I just don’t understand what makes a murderer or criminal tick.”
Moving his thumb off the cast and rubbing it down one of my fingers, he lifted a shoulder.
“There’s a lot that makes them tick. Some are traumatized, some are damaged, some have psychological disorders, and some are just angry. That doesn’t even cover most of the triggers, but it’s not my job to figure that out.
“My job is to find the evidence to help the prosecutors present an air-tight case to the court that helps the victims get justice and gives their families peace if it’s a murder. It also helps to make sure the wrong person doesn’t get blamed and punished.”
Enjoying what he was doing with my hand, I melted into the cushions of the couch. “So, did you find DNA on the tape?”
“We did. We had to unravel it and lay it out, but on the end of the tape on both victims’ heads was DNA from where the guy had used his teeth to tear it.”
“That’s so freaking cool. I mean, not for the victims, but in general.”
“The third one was found because of some DNA inside the woman. When we input all of it into the database created for us, we got to watch a video of a simulated interrogation with the three men. They admitted to there being a fourth guy involved, like what happened in the real case.”
“Well shit. Did you guess there was a fourth guy?”
“Yup,” he drawled. “The different attacks on them raised the suspicion that there was. Rape, beating with fists, hitting with a blunt object, wrapping tape around the heads, shooting… It wasn’t definite, but we never rule it out.”
“I don’t know much about forensic science,” I admitted. “I only know things I’ve seen on television.”
“The ones based on real life cases and cold cases are pretty neat, but I swear the ones intended to draw in an audience, where they solve it by finding a reflection five miles away—those are just nuts.”
“I figured as much,” I snickered, running my nails down the palm of his hand as best I could with a cast on. “But with the technology available, how hard is it to solve crimes nowadays?”
“It’s definitely easier than it was before—and don’t even ask me how they did it without what we’ve got available to help us—but it’s not exactly easy. There are so many variables, so many unknowns, and you have to check and double-check everything while you work with different departments and detectives.
“What we did today would have probably taken us months to do in real life. It takes much longer than twenty minutes to analyze DNA, but it’s a start to get your brain moving in the direction it needs to for real cases, and it makes you think outside of the box.”
“Well, congratulations on finding what you needed to for the arrests.”
Jackson blushed as he watched my nails moving along his palm. “It helps having you to come back to and to talk it out.”
He said it so quietly that I almost didn’t hear him, and then it felt like a swarm of butterflies were let loose inside me.