Wearing gloves to avoid leaving prints, I tapped the garage door opener. Since both the click of the handcuffs and the splash of the chair into the pool were audible on Jon’s video, I anticipated that we would be able to hear the sound of the garage door as well—if it was used while the young man’s camera was filming.

When I checked, however, the rattle of it opening was clearly audible on my phone. The video Jon had recorded contained no sound of the door.

The garage’s side door was wired to the alarm, so, for now, I went with the most likely scenario of the observer using the window to exit the premises and perhaps enter it as well.

The storms earlier this week would have left the soil outside the window damp, and I believed it was possible that we would find sole impressions.

Further scrutiny revealed a couple of partials near the flower bed. The lab could run them against our database and see if anything came up. I photographed them and sent the pictures to the online case file I’d started earlier today when I first identified the image of the person in the house.

Often in an investigation, you end up engaged in triaging evidence. You don’t know what a clue is until you see that it’s tied to the rest of the case. And sometimes what you think is a clue ends up being only a distraction.

The solution?

You keep your eyes and your options open as you move forward.

I made sure that the same combination of lights was on in the pool area, then stood where the chair had been when Jon tipped it backward into the water.

Based on the perspective, the person behind the sliding glass doors that led to the pool area would’ve been easily visible to Jon Murray while he sat there in front of the camera. Maybe that’s what he was looking at right before he killed himself.

I faced the pool and stared at it. I wanted answers even though they touched on motives: What would drive a person to such an extreme act? Why was someone watching? Who was the “you” Jon had referred to when he said his final words?

Maybe he was speaking to the observer when he said, “This is for you.”

And maybe not.

It’s natural, I suppose, this curiosity regarding the why, but that’s not what I was here for. I was here to figure out the truth, not guess what someone else may or may not have been thinking.

Who would know the precise placement of those three cameras? All three were positioned unobtrusively so if you weren’t aware of their location, you wouldn’t likely be able to find them—and you almost certainly wouldn’t know with such accuracy exactly where they were aimed.