Chapter 8 #2
‘The killer knocked on the door. Said something. It wasn’t a come-on, or she wouldn’t have taken the chain off.
Whatever it was, it disarmed her. She dropped the chain and opened the door fully.
As soon as she did, he shoved her into the wall, stabbed her in the diaphragm two or three times so she couldn’t scream. ’
I nodded.
‘There was no interest in rape,’ Russell continued. ‘He didn’t put her on the bed. Didn’t fight with her on the floor. Once she was incapacitated, he forgot all about her. She tried to drag herself to the window, unimpeded, while he went on with his business.’
‘What business?’
‘She’s been robbed,’ Russell said. He pointed. ‘Two chargers, still plugged in. Both on this side of the bed. One for a phone, one for something bigger. A laptop or an iPad.’
‘Spur of the moment thing.’ I shrugged, feeling stupid even as I said it but having no choice but to plough on. ‘Must have been. He’s come up here to confront her about … about something. He’s lost it. Stabbed her. Panicked at the sight of what he’s done. Grabbed the electronics on his way out.’
‘Wrong again.’ Russell sniffed. ‘He wasn’t panicked at all. This was completely organised.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘He searched. He didn’t just grab the valuables that were on display. He went looking in the bags. The make-up bag, here, in the bathroom. It’s been emptied into the sink.’
Russell went into the bathroom. I listened to him rattling around in there.
‘He’s walked around the far side of the bed.’ Russell came out, pointing. ‘You can tell that by the footprint in the blood.’
‘What footprint?’
‘Partial heel print. Open your eyes, you idiot. Look down. You might learn something.’ I looked as he continued. ‘It’s at the edge of the last stain there. Shaped like a crescent moon.’
I saw it, felt stupider still, cursing myself.
‘How do you know that’s not the paramedic’s footprint? Or whoever found her?’
‘Because there’s only one.’ Russell eased out an exhausted breath. ‘If the blood was still wet when the finder and the medics got here, there’d be shoeprints all over the damn floor.’
‘Right.’
‘The fact that you didn’t see that footprint or recognise its significance makes me want to jump out that window there, Evan,’ Russell said. ‘That footprint is the key piece of evidence in this whole room.’
‘Oh, just ease up, would you?’ I snapped.
‘It’s critical.’ Russell ignored the warning.
‘That changes the whole scene. Why go around that side of the bed at all? She had both her major valuables sitting on this side of the bed. The phone and the laptop right there, on display. And yet he searched further. Much further. Around the other side of the bed further.’
‘Unless she had something on that side on display and it’s gone now. A nice piece of jewellery? Maybe we’re looking for the local junkie.’
‘Look at the clothes. They’re cheap,’ Russell said.
‘Anko. That’s Kmart. She’s not wearing a diamond tennis bracelet and Kmart jeans.
He wasn’t just looking for valuables. He was calmly searching for something specific.
He came in calm and he left calm. He even flicked the lights off on the way out.
You notice that? Notice the lights are off? ’
‘I did, actually.’
‘She’d have turned them on to see who was at the door. He’d have needed them on while he searched the room. He flicked them off on his way out. Speaks to his presence of mind.’
‘Why did he turn them off?’
‘Probably so her light wouldn’t stay on all night, so nobody would get curious about why she wasn’t going to sleep. The publican. Another guest. He wanted to make sure she wasn’t found until morning.’
‘It might have been shame,’ I ventured. ‘Couldn’t it have been that? Shame at what he’d done?’
‘No,’ Russell said.
‘So what was he looking for, then?’
‘A notebook,’ Russell said.
‘What?’
‘There’s a pen on the bedside table. A good pen. No notebook. You don’t remember to bring your fancy pen and forget to bring anything to use it on.’
I noticed the pen sitting there by the lamp for the first time. It was gold. Embossed. How the hell hadn’t I seen it? Russell walked to the bed, lifted each pillow carefully, looked beneath it, let the pillows fall back where they’d been. He lifted the coverlet and peered into the bed.
‘Check down the back of the headboard, will you?’
I did. Nothing.
‘Is there a handbag?’ Russell asked.
I glanced around. ‘I’m not seeing one.’
‘I’m not blind, Evan. I can look around this bloody room as well as you can. I mean, is there a handbag with the body? Did you ask Dodge?’
‘Why would there be a handbag with the body?’
I couldn’t believe I said that. The number of times I’d worked an active crime scene and watched a paramedic toss a wallet or handbag onto the victim’s lap as they wheeled them out the door on a stretcher.
There was nothing more frustrating for an emergency room doctor or nurse than having no idea who the person they were working on was.
Russell was looking at me now like I might be having a brain aneurysm, wondering if he was going to have to call a second set of paramedics for me.
‘The paramedics who took her out,’ he said slowly. ‘They’d have—’
‘Grabbed it while they were wheeling her away.’ I put a hand up. ‘I know.’
‘I’d bet my bottom dollar there was a handbag,’ Russell said. ‘If the killer doesn’t have it, it’ll be with the body. If we’re lucky enough, it’ll have the notebook in it.’
‘Right,’ I said, cringing at how impressed I sounded.
‘So what’s with the laptop and notebook, then? What is she?’ Russell asked, staring at me. ‘A writer? A journalist? A researcher?’
‘How would I know?’
‘You were here before me, Evan.’
‘I was here thirty seconds before you, Russell.’
‘How long did you want, exactly?’ my brother asked.
‘How long would it have taken for you to look at this situation and figure out that whoever this girl is, she’s been carefully and deliberately targeted for her electronics and her notebook?
How long would it have taken for that hard-won epiphany to percolate in your thick skull, gradually brewing into the miraculous realisation that your very next move should be to google who the hell the victim actually is and what she does for a living? ’
‘More than thirty seconds.’ I pinched the bridge of my nose. He was so much like Dad it was shocking. The way he spoke. The facial expressions. I wanted to say it, knowing how angry it would make him. ‘I’ll google her now.’
‘Forget it. I’ll do it. I wouldn’t want you to sprain a neuron. Try to pass this intelligence test instead: where’s the nearest coffee?’
‘Ah, I reckon Dodge and his team would be using the cafe on the corner there,’ I said miserably. ‘Aside from the pub, that’s the only option in town.’
‘Go get them to set up an urn and put it in the beer garden. We’ll create a base of operations out there, where everyone in town can see us working.’ Russell went back into the room’s small bathroom.
‘You’re not honestly putting me on coffee duties?’ I asked the empty room. ‘I’m the second in charge by rank.’
‘Are you still here?’ Russell barked.