‘Yeah. It’s a needle in a haystack, but it’s worth a look, just in case Janine is telling the truth and this was a home invasion robbery. I asked our buddy Lynn Ristau on the Wisconsin side of the bridge to cross-reference white Rav owners with criminal records. She didn’t sound too happy about it. You’re going to owe her a burger at the Anchor Bar when we get the results.’

Stride smiled. ‘Well, I already owe her. She was a big help with the bridge closure on Friday.’

He and Maggie both turned toward the conference room door when they heard the bell of the elevator arriving in the basement. The doors slid open, and Sergeant Max Guppo waddled toward them with a laptop computer in his arms and a monster bag of Fritos tightly clamped between his teeth.

‘Yoogzgonnwnsds,’ he said as he shouldered into the office.

Stride grinned at him. ‘Excuse me?’

Guppo opened his mouth, and the Fritos dropped onto the conference table. He plugged in the laptop.

‘You guys are going to want to see this,’ he told them.

Guppo was only about as tall as Maggie and shaped like a snowman. His perfectly round head had a black comb-over that routinely flew like a pirate flag at the slightest breeze. He sported a pencil mustache underneath a nose that was mashed flat against his face. He’d been a Duluth police officer even longer than Stride, and despite his girth, Guppo was one of the most versatile investigators on the team.

‘We found a bunch of SD photo cards in Jay’s desk at the News-Tribune,’ Guppo told them. ‘I’ve been going through the pictures he took with his camera.’

Breathing hard, Guppo sat down, squeezing himself into one of the wheely chairs. He turned the monitor so that Stride and Maggie could see it, and then he grabbed a handful of corn chips and pushed them into his mouth until his cheeks swelled like a squirrel’s. He crunched loudly.

Stride watched as Guppo’s thick finger scrolled through a series of photos that had been taken in parkland during the Minnesota fall, when the colors of the trees were at their peak. He recognized the wilderness not far from the ski slopes of Spirit Mountain. Leaning forward, Stride saw a man in the photographs, but the man was too distant to identify. Whoever it was wore camouflage pants and a black T-shirt. As the pictures scrolled, Stride saw that Jay had crept closer to the man in camouflage. The man looked young – probably in his twenties – and in the best of the pictures, Stride picked out details in the man’s profile. He had a shaved head, a trimmed beard, and a mass of tattoos on his neck and his bare forearms. It was difficult to estimate his height, but he looked bony and underfed. A small man.

He also held an assault rifle in his arms.