“Hi, Chief. This is Chris Coleman with the lab. I have some preliminary info for you.”

“Anything on the blood in the car?”

“We’re still processing the car, but we do know the type is O positive. There was quite a bit, actually, so he may have sustained the gunshot wound right before being put into the trunk or maybe even while he was in the trunk. DNA is going to take a few days. Sorry for the delay, but things are stacked up here.”

“Prints?”

“All over the place. We were able to match Michaels’s. We should have the rest tomorrow sometime.”

“What about the tire marks?”

“We picked up a successful tread. I scanned them into the computer, and we were able to match it to Michaels’s Toyota.”

I’d been hoping the tread would implicate an as-of-yet unidentified vehicle, and I try not to be disappointed. “Did you guys look at the wooden doll yet?”

“We did. There’s not much there. No prints we could pick up. Blood is the same type as the victim’s.”

I think about that a moment. “Is there any way to tell if the doll is old or new?”

“I can have one of the other lab guys take a look at the paint. Might be able to give you a ballpark.”

“That’d be great.”

“Back to the car,” she says. “We found yellow nylon fibers on the rear bumper.”

“From the rope?”

“We’ve still got to do the matching, but I’m betting they’re one and the same.”

“Any idea how the fibers got there?” But my imagination is already running with possibilities, none of them good.

“We inspected the rope and found that it had some recent damage, as if it had been abraded. A few of the nylon strands were sort of scraped off; some were broken. Could have been from the bumper or even the wooden beam in the barn.”

Disturbing images flood my mind. “As if someone tied one end of the rope around the victim’s neck, looped it around the beam, and tied the other end to the bumper of the vehicle and strung him up.”

“I’d say that’s a possible scenario.” She pauses. “But get this: Remember the tear in the victim’s jacket?”

“I do.”

“We found fibers from that jacket on the trunk latch.”

“So maybe he caught his jacket on the latch?” I ask.

“Jacket is canvas, which is a pretty sturdy fabric,” she tells me. “I’d say the jacket caught on that latch while he was being forcefully pulled from the trunk.”

“You mean with his own vehicle?”

“I can’t say for certain, of course, but that’s a possibility.”

I think about that a moment and try not to shudder. “Anything else?”

“Saved the best for last, Chief. We found an iPhone registered to Michaels.”

My interest surges. Michaels’s daughter had told us her father owned a cell phone. Glock and I did a cursory search of the vehicle, but once we discovered the blood in the trunk, I decided it would be best not to risk contaminating possible evidence, so we stopped and turned everything over to BCI.