“Where did you find it?” I ask.

“Trunk. Under the mat. Looks like while he was inside the trunk, he dropped it or was incapacitated and couldn’t get back to it.”

“Did you get any phone numbers off of it?” I ask.

Paper crackles on the other end. “I put all the names and numbers into a spreadsheet. You want me to e-mail it to you?”

“That’d be great.” I give her my e-mail address and disconnect. In the outer office, I hear Jodie talking to someone on the phone, laughing. She’s got her radio turned up too loud, but I don’t mind. My exhaustion from earlier is gone. I’m energized by the prospect of new information. I launch my e-mail software and a flurry of messages pours into my in-box, the last of which is from the BCI lab with a PDF attachment. I open the document. It’s a spreadsheet with names, phone numbers, dates, and a slew of unrelated numbers that are meaningful only to the technician who entered the data. I hit the Print key as I skim the document on my monitor.

There aren’t many calls, incoming or outgoing. Apparently, Dale Michaels wasn’t much of a talker. In the month leading up to his murder, he received thirty-two calls, most from his daughter, Belinda Harrington, and lasting a few minutes. I skim over several names and numbers I don’t recognize, then go to the second page. There are twenty-six outgoing calls, several to his daughter. Local businesses. A car dealership. The farm store. Some of the names I don’t recognize.

I go to the final calls Michaels made. One to Belinda Harrington on the morning of March 6. At 11 P.M. on March 7—which was probably the last day of his life—he made a call to The Raspberry Leaf, which is a local art gallery. A few minutes later, he made a call to Jerrold McCullough, whom I don’t know. Shortly thereafter, he made his final call to a name I do recognize. Artie “Blue” Branson is a well-known pastor of a local multidenominational church—and the last man in the county I’d have paired with Dale Michaels.

In his early fifties, Blue spends every Sunday preaching the gospel from his pulpit at the little frame church he built with his own hands. The rest of his time is dedicated to counseling troubled souls—drug addicts, prostitutes, and ex-cons—and providing for people who can’t provide for themselves. Known for his trademark black suits and sporting a goatee, Blue looks like a modern-day version of Johnny Cash, but he and his church have done more good for the impoverished than anyone else in the area.

I look at the list, but there’s only that one call to Blue. It lasted fourteen minutes. Did the two men know each other? Were they friends? Was Dale part of Blue’s congregation? There could be a dozen or more reasons for the call, but the timing of it bothers me, and I’m compelled to take a closer look.