The hard glare of the afternoon sun acquiesces to the cool hush of the night layer by layer. Darkness will not arrive peacefully tonight. Sitting at my computer in my cramped office at the station, I watch a bank of storm clouds to the west steal the final snatches of light from the horizon. Lightning flickers, outlining the silhouettes of massive thunder-heads. I feel a storm of a different nature roiling inside me. The Plank family has been dead for about eighteen hours. I should be relieved Mary Plank’s autopsy uncovered evidence that could conceivably solve the case. Once DNA is extracted and CODIS comes back, we could have a name. I can’t quiet the nagging voice in my head telling me it’s not going to be that easy. In order for CODIS to spit out a name, the perpetrator must already be in the system. He must have been arrested at some point in his lifetime. And the data must have been entered into the database, which doesn’t always happen.
