BY FRIDAY, Woody’s shooting had been officially cleared as self-defense. That part was a no-brainer. Ruiz had a gun, and he’d fired at Luke and Woody before Woody dropped him. There was still a lot of investigation into why Alonzo Ruiz had broken into Luke’s office, and there was no reason to believe answers would be coming anytime soon. Luke and Woody sat down with Lieutenant Jacoby Friday morning.

“Of all the people to be involved in a shooting, Woody, you surprised me.” Jacoby looked from Luke to Woody and shook his head.

“You’re not the only one. After all the years of range work and nothing else, I’m glad to say that my training kicked in.”

“Me too,” Luke said. “That guy had me cold.”

Happy the department had cleared Woody quickly, Luke was able to hash everything out with his mother in terms of the shooting. He could understand her gut level fear for him. He felt the same way about Maddie. That his home had been violated struck him at a visceral, personal level.

The shock of seeing that Ruiz was the man following him was almost as great as the shock of the shooting itself. The Triple Seven was front and center again. The incident was a powerful impetus for Luke to expedite his attempt to locate Lucy Harper, shake her, and uncover why Asa had her in his notes as a possible smoking gun. But he couldn’t go off half-cocked. Even with Woody being cleared, the shooting and subsequent investigation had delayed their work on both the Cavanaugh case and his search for Lucy Harper.

Luke was glad that since the dead man was suspected for another crime, Jack O’Reilly and Ben Carney, the LBPD detectives who responded to the shooting scene, were sharing the investigation with Orange County Detective Fred Wright. He’d investigated the incident on the flood control path several months ago, when Ruiz and the other man had confronted Luke.

Wright was trying to determine where Ruiz had been staying and who he was working for, while O’Reilly and Carney investigated the shooting and completed an inventory on a bunch of high-tech surveillance equipment located in the trunk of his car. There were cameras, listening devices, and tracking devices neatly organized in the trunk. It was likely they could find the vendors and maybe in a backdoor way discover who, if anyone, Ruiz was working with. There was no evidence that he’d used the equipment in any kind of surveillance of Abby or Luke, but it was problematic that he had it at all. Luke thought it creepy that Ruiz could possibly have been listening in on conversations, recording his movements. Another carrot dangling in front of him, urging him to get to the bottom of things.