He squared up in front of the door.He took a deep breath, lifting his right leg as he did so.As he exhaled, he kicked, snapping the door in half and sending the splinters flying inward.
Kate and the officers rushed inside, weapons sweeping right and left.The small one-bedroom was modestly furnished, an old white loveseat and easy chair set at right angles in front of a cheap coffee table on a white plastic rug.The rest of the furniture was equally cheap, clean but inexpensive and weathered from decades of continuous use.The smell matched, ammonia, Pine-Sol, and the dry must of accumulated age.
The walls contained no crosses, no images of Jesus or Mary, no Bibles, no religious iconography of any kind.The lone reading material was a six-month-old issue of GQ featuring an actor Kate recognized as very trendy but didn’t know by name since she hadn’t seen a movie since Mike took her to see the cheesy romcom of the year on one of the last dates he’d attempted before accepting that there was no chance for them.
“Bedroom’s clear,” Marcus’s voice called.
“Restroom clear,” one of the officers said.
“Kitchen clear,” another officer added, a little unnecessarily since Kate could see the kitchen from the living room.
And just as unnecessarily, Kate said, “Living room clear.”She dropped her handgun and added, “Damn it.”
“Search the apartment,” Marcus said.“I’m going to talk to the neighbors.Look for anything that might tell us where she’s going.”
Kate turned to the police sergeant, a serious-looking African American man with a bodybuilder’s muscles named Anthony, and said, “Put an APB out on her.And get roadblocks up around the city.She could be out there looking for another victim.”Or she’s already found one.
Anthony nodded once, then pulled his radio out and made the call.Kate and the other officers began to search the apartment, splitting up to take each room.Kate took the bedroom, believing that most intimate of places to be the most likely location of something incriminating.
Emily Warren’s bedroom was tidy but cluttered with the accumulated detritus of forty-three years of single life.The top of her dresser was populated with little knickknacks, ceramic, plastic, and earthenware figurines of people and animals with overly large eyes and smiles.
Kate inspected each one, looking for a hidden seam or hole where something could be stuffed.It would be nice to find out who her next target was, but Kate also hoped to find proof of her connection to these crimes, and possibly a connection to Cox.
It hit her that Emily’s descent into odd behavior began around the time Kate captured Cox the second time.Either her communication with her mentor had been cut off, or she had admired Cox from a distance and spiraled when some fantasy of getting together with him was derailed by Kate’s actions.Or she was hoping to get his attention by picking up where he left off.
She found nothing from the knickknacks and moved to the drawers.She raised an eyebrow when the underwear drawer revealed sensible underwear in nine orderly stacks with one row of decidedly insensible things made of lace and silk that appeared designed to highlight more than to cover.
Far be it from her to judge anyone’s sexual habits, but the fact that this expression was limited, apparently to the wearing of kinky underwear with no indication in her personal records or apartment that anyone else ever got to see it suggested a component of repression.Kate wondered if stabbing the victims was a substitute for the act of intercourse for Emily.
As the search continued and she found nothing to connect Emily either to the crimes or to Cox, she began to wonder if Emily was involved at all, or if her big breakthrough was going to turn out to be a red herring.Considering the area manager’s testimony, Kate really doubted that, but she’d been sure about Whitmore too, and his connection to Cox really did turn out to be tangential.
She left the bedroom to find Marcus talking with the police officers.No one was searching, which meant they had finished searching, which meant they had found nothing, which meant that either there was nothing to find or Miss Warren held dear the age-old proverb not to shit where she ate.
“Neighbors said she left about fifteen minutes before we got here,” Marcus said.“So, the dragnet should pick her up.”Kate nodded, and Marcus said, “Uh oh.I know that look.What’s wrong?”
“There’s nothing here,” Kate said.“Nothing that connects her to the case.”
Marcus lifted an eyebrow.“I mean, we’ve got her connected to the case.”
“Yeah, but we don’t have proof that she’s the killer.At the moment, the evidence against her is circumstantial as well.”
Marus frowned.The officers shared pensive looks.Clearly, they were thinking the same thing.
“It might not be here,” Marcus said.“Not all killers are going to be stupid enough to leave incriminating evidence in their own homes.Let’s wait for the dragnet to pick her up, then we can sweat her a bit.Maybe she’ll be willing to work with us in exchange for a plea deal.”
Kate shook her head.Something nagged at the back of her mind that made her doubt that.She started to pace the living room.“It has to be her, though.I know I said that about Whitmore, but she’s the last person left with a connection to all three victims.”
“Relax, Kate,” Marcus said.“We’ll figure this out.”
Kate chewed on her lip.Yeah, they’d figure it out, but would they figure it out in time to stop the next murder?That was the real issue at hand.
She paced in a lazy figure eight, never quite the same shape both times.Marcus watched her for a moment, then gave up trying to calm her down and instead called Anthony to ask how the roadblocks were coming.
Kate kept pacing, wracking her brain to think of where she’d gone wrong.What piece was still missing that kept her from finding the answer?
A floorboard creaked under her feet.She stopped, rocked backwards, then rocked forward.Each time, the board creaked again.Marcus looked over on the last creak, saw her expression and raised an eyebrow.“Found something?”
In answer, Kate dropped to her knees.She pulled her knife and wedged it into the crack between the creaky board and its fellows.The board held for a second, shifted, then finally lifted free.She set it to the side and looked into the small cubby revealed.
