What I've Done (Morgan Dane #4)(48)

“What about the background checks?” Morgan asked Lance.

“Haley and Noah are both clean, so is Piper. Mom didn’t find any dirt on Noah’s employer either,” Lance said. “She’s still working on Noah’s friends, and I just gave her Kieran Hart’s name last night.”

“We still have a big mess.” Morgan flattened a hand on her forehead.

“Sharp and I are trying to focus the case.” Lance pointed at the board with a dry-erase marker. “We have two main options. One: Haley killed Noah, in which case, she is either lying to us or suffering from a mental illness.”

“She meets with the psychiatrist tomorrow,” Morgan said.

Sharp carried a mug into the room and set it on Morgan’s desk. “But she has no history of mental illness.”

“Can we make a case for self-defense?” Morgan picked up the cup of green tea and tasted it. Sharp had added sugar. He really was babying her. Normally, he equated sugar with the devil.

“Not yet,” Lance said. “If she was defending herself, why wouldn’t she remember?”

“Trauma?” Morgan suggested. “Maybe she blocked it out.”

Lance turned to face her. “She had none of the typical defensive injuries I would expect to see. No torn fingernails, no skin under her nails, no bruises on her forearms, no signs of being restrained. The prosecutor is going to point to all the evidence that shows she went home with Noah and slept with him willingly. He even used a condom and tossed it in the trash. He didn’t try to hide their sexual activity.”

“Unless the psychiatrist works some serious magic, self-defense isn’t going to fly with any jury without physical evidence,” Morgan agreed.

“Option number two: Haley didn’t kill Noah,” Lance said, “which means someone else did. Ideally, we want to prove her innocence. But our backup plan is to provide additional suspects with means and motive and poke as many holes in the DA’s case as possible.”

“The physical evidence is strong,” Morgan said, worried. “If we can discredit any of it, we’ll be in a better position. We need to review the forensics and DNA reports line by line and look for a chain of evidence lapses. The sheriff expedited the DNA test of the blood on Haley. Let’s find out if the lab has made any mistakes in the past.”

“We haven’t ruled out the possibility that she was drugged.” Sharp paced in front of the board. “What if someone slipped something in her drink at Beats? She went home with Noah and had sex with him, which she doesn’t remember. While she was passed out, someone else killed Noah and framed Haley for the crime. We make the overwhelming amount of physical evidence work for us. Haley had no reason to kill Noah. But if she did, why would she not make any attempt to clean up or at least cover her own tracks?”

“Let’s look at the crime scene photos.” Morgan opened the laptop on her desk and pulled up the file. Sharp and Lance gathered around her.

The first set were of Noah’s body in the grass. He was on his side, his arms stretched out.

“He’s dressed but barefoot.” Morgan pulled out the preliminary autopsy report. “He wasn’t wearing underwear, as if he got out of bed for some reason and stepped into jeans and a T-shirt.”

Lance rubbed his chin. “He was killed in the kitchen.”

Morgan scrolled slowly through the pictures. The images followed a bloody trail through the front door and living room to the kitchen, where blood had puddled.

“That’s where he was stabbed,” Sharp said. “Not a lot of blood spatter, considering he had three wounds.”

Morgan scrolled slowly through more photos. “No. The ME says the first two wounds bled mostly internally. It was the third that nicked an artery and caused most of the external bleeding.”

“And this spray of blood over here.” Sharp indicated a red streak on the wall.

Lance said, “The size of the bloodstain on the floor tells me Noah lay there for a while, bleeding, before he tried to crawl away.”

Sharp tilted his head at the photo. “The blood on the floor is all smeared.”

“Noah did crawl through it.” Lance leaned closer to the screen. “But how did it get all over Haley? Did someone carry her unconscious body into the kitchen and slide her around in the blood?”

Morgan checked the crime scene fingerprint report. “The fingerprint tech says all the bloody toe and footprints they found belong to Haley or Noah.”

Like fingerprints, toe prints had unique ridges and whorls that could be used for identification.

“The only prints on the knife belonged to Haley. Noah had had a gaming party the night before with a dozen friends attending, including Isaac, Justin, and Chase, along with Noah’s brother, Adam. There were a number of unidentified prints on scene, which wasn’t unexpected.”

Sharp scratched his chin. “But any fingerprints not on the weapon or made in blood are basically useless unless we identify another suspect who has never been to Noah’s house for a legitimate reason.”

“Like Kieran Hart,” Lance suggested.

“Right,” Morgan agreed. “But unless he has a prior felony conviction, his prints won’t be on file anywhere. We can’t force him to submit his fingerprints without probable cause.”

Sharp leaned back. “We definitely need a blood spatter expert. That kitchen floor looks like Jack the Ripper channeled Jackson Pollock. I have the perfect guy. I’ll call him today.”