Noah Stilinski's day had barely started that he wished it was already over. A small mountain of forms and legal documents was piled on the corner of his desk, so close to the edge that all it would take to make it go away was a flick of his wrist. But he was a sensible man so he fought the urge to make the papers disappear and got back to work.
His back was sore and the uncomfortable chair he was sitting on wasn't making his day any easier. He had walked out of the hospital late the previous evening, refusing to spend the night there. His injuries were minor, just some soft tissue damage. The car that had hit him in the parking lot had done so at very low speed and except right after the impact, he had felt just fine. His son had insisted he went to the hospital anyway and he had obliged.
Noah rubbed his eyes and checked his emails again -- anything to distract him from the form he was struggling to fill out. He had received news from the Sacramento Office, the one he had reached out to in order to identify the wild animal responsible for the video store attack. He had recovered fresh blood from the video store and wanted it analyzed, to check whether it was animal or belonged to one of the witnesses. But now that the mountain lion was dead, those results were useless.
The Sheriff decided to reply anyway, at least to thank the Sacramento team for their help. He opened the email and froze in shock. Noah believed the blood belonged to the wild animal. He had been wrong.
"DNA: Human (male) - Partial match: Jamie Tate (50%)"
Noah read the words over and over, incapable of looking away. Only one person could possibly fit that description, and that was Jamie's father. Except that no one had reported seeing Henry Tate at the crime scene and when he had been called at Jamie's side right after the attack, the man had been at the grocery store with multiple witnesses. He couldn't have killed Leveque, the cashier, and he couldn't have attacked the teens. This had to be an error.
The Sheriff called the Sacramento Office to try and have the blood re-tested. The woman he had on the phone was positive the results were accurate, she had run them herself twice and there was no room for doubt.
Which meant the blood did belong to Jamie's father, but that was not Henry Tate.
When he hung up the phone, Noah was left with a dilemma. Once again, his job had led him to stumble upon yet another family secret he had no idea what to do about. Henry had never mentioned his son was adopted. Hell, Noah didn't even know if Jamie himself knew about it.
Noah took a notepad, a pen, and did what he always did when confronted with a difficult decision: he made a list of pros and cons. He certainly did not want to trigger yet another family crisis, especially with the Tates, but he couldn't ignore those test results. This blood hadn't just splattered itself in the video store, it could be a valuable clue. Maybe someone else was at the scene. Maybe there was more to these attacks than just a mountain lion.
The Sheriff had seen the security footage from the parking lot and the images had left him puzzled. He had tried going to Alan Deaton to get some insight but the man had been surprisingly closed off. Noah sighed, why did things refuse to make sense in Beacon Hills?
He had been confronted with so many strange cases, his tolerance for the bizarre had gone up over the years. That made him accept coincidences more readily than he would care to admit, so he didn't see why he should make an exception this time around. Also, what would he tell Jamie? He didn't know who his biological father was, plus there were chances the man was involved in the murders. Those were news he didn't wish to spring on the young man.
With a heavy heart, Noah made his decision. He crumpled his list of pros and cons, threw it in the garbage and reached for his phone. He knew exactly who to call.