Detective Jarrod Harmon hung up the phone, knowing without looking at his partner that he was sporting a dumbass grin a mile wide. Carrie Hastings had taken his breath away the first time he saw her. He still loved it when she called in the middle of the day to see how his day was going. It was no wonder she owned his heart.
His partner, Cal Rylan, seemed about ready to open his mouth to comment when Jarrod’s phone rang again. He gave Cal a look designed to tell him to shut up and drive, then smiled wider and answered. They were headed to have a chat with Warrick Staunton’s mother and see if she had any information about William Tyvek’s whereabouts.
“Detective Harmon.” He listened for a few minutes, asked a few questions, then hung up. After months of searching, this was the first lead they’d had on Tyvek, but as leads went, it was shit.
“The lab?” Cal asked, likely having guessed from the questions Jarrod had asked.
“Yeah. Get this. There was a break-in reported the day William Tyvek slipped out of that fire.” He didn’t need to specify that it was the fire Tyvek had set and left Carrie in to make it look like Warrick Staunton had killed her. Cal had been there. He knew Tyvek was insane. Knew he’d slipped into the ether somehow after almost taking Carrie from Jarrod.
If that had happened, Jarrod didn’t know how he would have survived it. Before he’d met Carrie, he knew he was missing something in his life. He’d even had a vague idea that finding the right woman might be the answer to that missing piece. He’d never in a million years guessed how much of a difference finding the woman you were meant to spend a lifetime with would make. She was…well, she was simply everything to him. There was no other way to put it.
“Yeah? What the hell does a break-in have to do with Tyvek? They find a link?”
Jarrod nodded. “Not much was missing from the house. Clothing and food. It looked like the perp had broken in primarily to bandage wounds from some kind of injury. The CSI guys collected blood samples from the scene and lifted a few prints, but the samples have been sitting on the shelf while higher priority stuff was processed. No one really thought the case would go anyplace. Even the homeowners didn’t press the issue. They had wanted the report on file in case they discovered something else missing or the person came back.”
“Tyvek?” Cal asked, his face telling Jarrod he was just as surprised as he’d been. It was a random lead, and not one he thought would have been found.
“Uh huh. Prints match. They only lifted prints from the box the bandages were held in. They figured it wasn’t worth dusting the whole place. In fact, the only reason they collected anything at all was because they had a rookie on scene that day and wanted him to practice. We don’t have a DNA sample from Tyvek to compare the blood, but it’s reasonable to think Tyvek was there alone and injured.”
Cal squinted his eyes in thought. “Can they tell us anything about the injury? Was he burned in the fire or maybe injured getting away?”
Jarrod shook his head. “She said she can’t tell. She did say she might theorize if there was a burn wound, there might be more dead skin on the bandages. They only found blood. But she said that was just theory and she really had no way of knowing.”
“Doesn’t give us much,” Cal said, giving voice to Jarrod’s thoughts, “but at least we have another stop on his trail.”
Jarrod lifted his phone. “I’ll call tech and see if they can check traffic cameras in the area for him. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find another piece to the puzzle.”
Cal nodded. “We can canvas the area, see if anyone remembers seeing him. Check for reports of stolen vehicles in that area. How far was it from the fire?”
“Not far at all. Less than a mile.”
Jarrod stopped relaying the report to Cal long enough to tell the tech team what he needed, then hung up. “They’re going to check for other break-ins during that time frame, too.”
“I’ve always assumed he used his money and influence to leave the country, or at least the area. He’s the last person I would have guessed would be breaking into houses to patch himself up.”
Jarrod rubbed the back of his neck. At least they had something to go on now. It was thin as hell and didn’t give them much, but it was the first credible lead they’d had in weeks.