Page 57 of Crossing Lines

“Maybe not, but I have an idea of something that might keep him in longer, and we can thank Kevin for that,” Sam said.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Sam picked Lucy up first thing the next morning. She appeared mostly unaffected by her injury. She had a cast on her front leg and a prescription for pain medicine but was bright eyed and energetic.

She barely limped on the way to the Tahoe.

“It’s good to have you back.” Sam ruffled the fur on her head.

Lucy whined and put her chin on his arm, looking up with loyal whiskey-colored eyes.

“You feel up for a little adventure?” Sam asked.

Lucy raised her head and wagged her tail, which Sam took as an affirmative.

Sam knew exactly where to go. Kevin’s mention of “corner” associated with Thorne, combined with the fact that Lucy had shown unusual interest in a corner at the Thorne hotel construction site, had intrigued him. Even though Kevin didn’t seem to remember what it meant, Sam wanted to follow the lead.

It was a long shot, but he had nothing to lose and everything to gain if that lead turned into something they could use against Thorne.

Lucy sat in the passenger seat, head out the window, inhaling the fresh air as he drove. Sam imagined she was trying to cleanse her airways after breathing in the stale air at the vet overnight. When they pulled into the construction site, she seemed excited.

Sam worried about Lucy jumping out of the Tahoe with her broken leg. Maybe he’d look into getting a ramp so she could walk down from the tailgate. But she was careful and managed to jump out onto her good leg with barely a wince of pain.

The site was in full swing. Loud construction noises, workers shouting, dust and dirt in the air. The work was happening at the far end of the building, away from the corner that seemed to interest Lucy, so no one paid any attention to them.

Lucy trotted over to the side of the building, but this time Sam joined her instead of calling her back.

“So you think there’s something here?” Sam asked Lucy.

The dog glanced up at him as if trying to gauge if he would make her stop digging like he had the other times.

“Okay, I guess we’ve got nothing to lose.”

Lucy pawed at the dirt, but Sam imagined her leg must be sore, and he didn’t want her to injure it further.

“Hold on, I’ll do that.” He gently pushed her aside and started digging with his hands. “It would help if I knew what I was looking for. I guess anything that isn’t dirt is fair game.”

Sam was wondering if he should go back and get a shovel when his fingers brushed against something foreign about four inches down. It was some kind of fabric, and he hoped it wasn’t the site of another shallow grave. But this didn’t seem to be attached to a body, thankfully. He pulled it out and held it up.

A man’s glove.

Memories of Mayor Harley Dupont’s murder investigation bubbled up. The killer had fled through a wooded area, leaving partial fingerprints in blood on some of the leaves. But there were also smudges on the leaves. Someone had been wearing gloves. Those gloves had never been found. And this one had dark-brown stains… could that be blood?

Sam pulled an evidence bag out of his back pocket and placed the glove inside. He dug around the hole but found nothing else.

“Is this it?” Sam held the bag up in front of Lucy, who sniffed it then lay down. She didn’t appear interested in the corner anymore, so apparently that was what she’d been after.

Sam pushed the dirt back and scanned the area. This section of the construction site hadn’t been disturbed since before the mayor’s murder. The glove could have been there since then, but why would Thorne bury a bloody glove on his own construction site? Maybe this section was going to have more concrete poured, and he thought that would ensure the glove was never found. But how did Kevin know about it? If that brown stain was blood, whose blood was it?

There was only one way to find out. Sam would submit the glove to the lab right away. In the meantime, he wanted some answers from Beryl Thorne, and since her car was parked over at the construction trailer, there was no time like the present to get them.

* * *

Beryl appeared surprised to see Sam when she answered the knock on the trailer door. “Sam … I …” Her gaze fell on Lucy, and her expression turned concerned. “Oh no, what happened?”

“She got hurt when we captured your uncle. She’ll be okay.”

“Oh, it’s terrible. I never imagined that Uncle Charlie was the… the…” She appeared flustered, shaking her head. She was acting appropriately upset, but Sam got the impression that she was hiding her true feelings. Maybe some of Jo’s skill in reading suspects was rubbing off. He wished Jo were there, but her presence would make Beryl act differently.

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