“—Gonzo, I want you and Jeannie to find Shane Ramsey and bring him in. Captain Malone, I need you to go directly to a judge with what we have to get a warrant for his DNA. He threatened her, and she turned up dead a short time after. That should be enough to get a warrant, but I don’t want any nosy courthouse people or the sheriff’s deputies that work there talking about this before we have it locked and loaded.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Malone said. “Find him somewhere other than the house where he lives with his parents and make sure he has no time to notify anyone he’s being brought in. Let’s keep this quiet until we know for sure if he’s involved.”

Sam gave Gonzo and Jeannie the address of the auto repair shop where he worked as well as the name of the bar where he was known to hang out.

“We’re on it,” Gonzo said.

After he and Jeannie left, O’Brien went back to the pit, leaving Sam and Freddie alone with the captain and chief.

“Check to see if he has any kind of record,” Malone said to Freddie.

He got up to use the computer in the conference room. “Sealed juvie.”

Farnsworth blew out a deep breath. “If he’s our guy, this is gonna get complicated.”

“You know how we have to have our DNA on file so we can avoid crime scene confusion?” Sam said.

“What about it?” Malone asked.

“We’ve already requested FDS on the local database,” Sam said. “That’d include everyone associated with the department, so if there’s a hit, we’ll know it soon enough.”

“That’s true. I’m not sure whether to hope for or against a hit that ties him to Ramsey,” Malone said as the others grimaced.

Patience had never been Sam’s strong suit, but she feared she’d lose it entirely waiting for the DNA searches to yield results. Why did everything have to take so long when there was someone out there raping and murdering innocent women?

“It goes without saying that even talking to Ramsey’s son will make this thermonuclear,” Farnsworth said. “Let’s proceed with utmost caution.”

“Understood.” Sam’s heart gave a lurch at the thought of Ramsey’s reaction to his son being brought in for questioning in one of her cases. Thermonuclear probably wasn’t a big enough word to describe this situation.

To Freddie, she said, “Get on the computer. I want everything you can find about this guy. I want to know where he went to high school and when, his social media stuff, everything you can find, and make it fast.”

“On it.”