Page 47 of One of Us Is Guilty

Bloch turned and approached the next picture she could find, this one above the TV. Another black-and-white Manhattanskyline. She ran her index finger along the top of the frame. It came back with dirt. She went back to the Monet print. This time, the other finger.

Clean.

Bloch looked at Lake, said, ‘Somebody cleaned this. The whole place has been wiped down.’

She gazed at the stain on the floor. Something terrible happened here. A life taken. A body mutilated. Whoever had taken this woman’s life had been careful to clean up after themself. This was a killing that had a cold edge. Something clinical and precise.

And planned.

In the car, on the way back to the office, she called Eddie.

‘We got a look at the crime scene,’ she said. ‘There’s a wide bloodstain from blood pooling on the carpet in the living area. Probably where the decapitation occurred. Everything else has been cleaned.’

‘Cleaned? By the NYPD? By the landlord?’

‘Not the landlord,’ said Lake. ‘First thing they would do is tear up the carpet. Bloch means the whole apartment has been cleaned. There’s not a single fingerprint in the place. And that’s not all. There are no photographs of Molly Green. No mail. No ID. No laptops, no phones, no iPad, not even a goddamn charger plugged into the socket. The tech is probably in the inventory of exhibits taken by police, but there’s more. There was no bedding. Just a bare mattress. There are no bath products, no toothbrush, no toothpaste, not even a towel. There is not a single trace of Molly Green in the whole apartment apart from her clothes and shoes.’

‘What does that mean?’ asked Eddie.

‘It means she’s been erased,’ said Bloch.

‘Why?’ asked Eddie.

Bloch said, ‘Don’t know yet, but if we find out why then we’ve found the killer.’

19

Eddie

‘I just want to go on the record,’ said Harry, ‘to say I think this is a bad idea.’

For a moment I said nothing, and dug my hands deeper into my overcoat. We stood together in silence gazing up at the brownstone home of Vanessa and Patrick Vanderpool. It was dark, but not late. And this wasn’t a social call. We hadn’t yet climbed the porch steps to knock on the door. No one had noticed our presence. It would be the easiest thing in the world to just walk away.

But I couldn’t. I had one of the richest and most powerful men in the world standing on my neck, and willing to put his boots on the throats of the people I loved if I didn’t do what he wanted.

There was no way out. Not yet.

I had questions.

Especially after Bloch and Lake’s investigations.

Why were Carey and Larkin on this case? Who had put them there? And who had cleaned the crime scene where a young woman had been murdered and her body mutilated? And what the hell did all of this have to do with Vanessa Vanderpool?

‘Knowledge is power,’ I said.

‘If you think you’re going to get the truth here, then we’ve come to the wrong place.’

‘I didn’t say I’d get the truth. Clients lie. Most of them. We just need to figure out why.’

I put one foot in front of the other until I was facing her front door and rang the bell.

An intercom and camera were fixed to the wall beside me.

‘Who is it?’ said a male voice.

‘Eddie Flynn and Harry Ford for Vanessa,’ I said.

Silence.