Page 37 of Criminology of a Character

She glanced up, realizing he was watching her on the live footage, and if the situation weren’t so serious, she would wave at the camera for him.

Eamon

Call me if you need me, Detective. Be safe.

“I thinkwe found an entrance to the property,” Bel said as she crouched before a mess of tire tracks. “There’s a hidden pull-off on Walker’s side of the road. It’s barely visible until you’re on top of it, so even if there were other drivers, our killer could vanish without being seen… but the surrounding foliage isn’t damaged.” Her eyes traced a tire track until it vanished into the grass. “It’s just the tire tracks here in the dirt.”

“A pull-off isn’t evidence of a crime, though,” Griffin said through their phone connection. After he’d outlined their plan of attack, the officers split up into teams to search Walker’s land, but after hours, this pull-off was the only thing of interest they’d discovered.

“Most roads have them,” he continued. “I don’t know, Emerson. Were we too hasty in our theory? Are we blowing a weird homicide way out of proportion?”

“It’s easy to ask that after the Darling case,” Bel said, pinching the phone between her ear and shoulder so she could search the grass for signs of recent travel. “I’ve asked it myself, but even if drugs or guns aren’t involved, there’s something wrong here.”

“I know,” Griffin conceded. “I feel it too.”

“We have a few hours before it gets dark. Let’s keep looking.”

“We’ll give it until sundown,” the sheriff said. “I don’t want—hold on, I’m getting another call.” He put her on hold, and Bel wandered through the surrounding underbrush, but if anyone had driven through here, the land didn’t remember.

“Emerson?” Griffin’s voice sounded so suddenly in her ear that she flinched.

“Still here,” she said.

“Gold’s team found a barn. I’ll share the location.”

“Thanks.” Bel hung up and waited for the location ping before she and her team loaded back into the squad cars. It took them twenty minutes to reach the barn, and Bel couldn’t help but notice that while it was far from the road, it was an easy drive. Other sections of the property were nearly untraversable, but this was a straight shot from the pull-off. Anyone who’d driven this stretch before could easily do so in the dark.

“Did you go inside?” Bel asked as she hopped out of the car and walked to where her partner and boss waited.

“Yes,” Olivia said. “It’s empty.”

Bel cursed. “I’d hoped this was what we were looking for.”

“It still might be,” Olivia said. “I don’t understand how it works, but a deputy knows a little about electricity. A family member is an electrician, and he says the barn is connected to the power lines. He thinks it’s wired to siphon from the town, and it looks like they knew what they were doing. It’s not a hack job that you’d associate with someone stealing power to avoid paying bills.”

Bel’s intuition pricked at her partner’s words, and by the weighted glance her boss threw her, the same thought was running through his brain.

“What’s that look?” Olivia’s gaze flicked between them.

“Cannabis farm,” Griffin answered.

“They require a lot of light to cultivate,” Bel added. “Most illegal cannabis farms steal electricity since the excessive usage usually tips off the authorities.” She squinted at the barn as if she might suddenly gain laser vision to see through its walls. “You think it’s underground, don’t you? That’s why the barn’s empty…it fits your drug theory, but if this was a farm lucrative enough to kill over, why is it sitting here unprotected?”

“We found the body yesterday morning, and it’s now late afternoon,” Griffin said. “The minute the electric company spotted Walker, the killer would’ve known our finding this place would be a matter of time. This location is burned, so I wonder if they packed up and fled.”

“There’s a chance they didn’t destroy everything, though.” Bel started for the barn. “We need to search for hidden entrances.”

“Do you really think this is a cannabis farm?” Olivia asked as she jogged to keep up.

“I honestly don’t know,” Bel said. “It could be anything. Like a climate-controlled room for stolen art or illegal apartments.”

“I would rather it be art than drugs,” Olivia said. “But there’s only one way to find out.”

The partners entered the barn as Griffin instructed the gathered officers to stay outside unless the detectives asked for help. If this was a crime scene, they’d already altered its integrity with their presence, and he wanted to minimize the disruptions until they confirmed that this was a wild goose chase.

“If there’s a farm, it’ll be below us,” Bel said as Griffin joined them.

“When we searched the barn, we found nothing that looked like a trapdoor,” Olivia said.

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