Page 11 of Not a Word

“Well, it’s a good thing you two aren’t prison guards.”

Janice McCabe had summoned the cop who’d been watching the door to the house and the officer who’d moved his cruiser so Reece Chartwell could leave the scene in his BMW.

“Like, if a prisoner told you, hey, the warden said I could leave, you two would say, oh, okay, that’s cool, can I help you pack? Can I get you an Uber?”

Williams, the one who’d been on the door, said, “He was just sitting out there. It wasn’t like he was in handcuffs or anything. You didn’t tell me to keep him—”

“It didn’t occur to you to check?” McCabe asked. “Our only witness, so far, to what happened here?”

Williams said nothing. McCabe turned on the other uniformed officer. “What’s your excuse?”

He tipped his head toward Williams. “When he didn’t stop him, I figured it was already sorted out.”

Williams gave his colleague a sharp look.

“It’s like having twin Inspector Clouseaus,” McCabe said. “What was he doing before he left?”

“He was talking to somebody on his phone,” Williams said.

“You hear any of the conversation?”

Williams shook his head.

McCabe turned on the other officer. “What do you think would be a good thing to do now?”

He blinked a couple of times, then said, “Find him?”

McCabe nodded. “And to think I was worried you weren’t on the ball.”

As she turned to go back into the house, she could hear the cop mutter “bitch” under his breath. She stopped, spun around, and said, “I’m sorry, did I hear you say you’ve got an itch? Mosquito bite, maybe?”

The cop, his face flushed, turned and said, “It was nothing.”

McCabe returned to the upstairs bedroom. Earlier, she’d spotted a purse hanging off a chair by its strap and assumed it had belonged to Catherine Chartwell. Maybe it did, but recent developments had led her to think otherwise.

She opened the purse, looked inside for a wallet or something smaller that would hold a Social Security card, driver’s license, or credit cards. She found a pale blue wallet, opened it, and extracted a Visa card in the name of Leah Kennard. Next, a driver’s license. Leah was born on April 15, 1972. McCabe did a quick calculation in her head. The deceased was fifty-four years old. The photo on the license matched, more or less, the woman in the bed. The license showed that Ms. Kennard lived at 231 Galen St. McCabe knew the street and believed that address was part of a stretch of semidetached houses. Before making detective, she’d patrolled all corners of Yorkton Hill in a cruiser, knowing the town as well as her own house with the lights off.

McCabe pocketed the driver’s license and continued searching the purse. A lipstick tube, other makeup items, a plastic pill container that held what looked like a mix of Tylenols and Advils, tissues, a pair of reading glasses in a slipcase, a pen. Loose change in the bottom.

A ring with several keys attached, including one with a Toyota fob. She recalled seeing a Corolla on the street. McCabe pocketed the keys.

There was an iPhone in a cream-colored plastic case adorned with pale pink roses. McCabe pressed the home button, and up came the security screen, asking for a six-digit passcode or touch ID. She decided to give the woman’s birth date a try, using the year and month. 197204. No luck. 041972. Again, no luck. Tried the day and the year: 151972. McCabe decided to try one more combination before the phone locked her out: 197215.

Bingo.

McCabe let out a breath of satisfaction as the screen filled with apps. If that last code hadn’t worked she’d have tried putting the dead woman’s thumb on the home button and was glad that hadn’t been necessary. And now that she had the passcode, she could get back into the phone whenever she wanted.

She tapped the texting app first. Leah’d had a lot of different conversations underway. Someone named Jerry had asked if she was enjoying her day off, and could she stay late on Monday? Leah had replied with a thumbs-up emoji. There were exchanges with someone named Billy—McCabe wasn’t sure, scrolling through the most recent messages, but she believed Billy was a woman—who was sending Leah photos and short video clips of a toddler, probably no more than two years old. Leah’s replies ranged from He’s so cute to Awww! to Love him so much!

There was a long thread between Leah and someone identified only by a phone number that went back several months. It struck McCabe as odd that a person she texted with that often wouldn’t have been assigned a name.

She read a sampling of exchanges, with the unidentified party going first:

I can’t see you this weekend.

Y not?

Not a good time. Next week better. R u ok? Do you need anything?