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"We have ID photographs of both of you."
"That was quick."
"As a fox," McPherson said.
"Have you turned up anything yet?"
"An interesting possibility, but no way to verify it. I hope you find something in that box that will help."
* * *
Chapter 19
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Columbus, Ohio
Hayes studied the setup of the apartment building. It was an older building, in a good neighborhood, only four stories, probably two to four apartments on each floor. It was the kind of building where the residents knew one another and kept track of what was going on. That wasn't good. On the other hand, there wasn't much in the way of security: lights on each corner, and the glass double doors to the small foyer were certainly locked at night, but if they were supposed to be locked during the day, then someone wasn't following the rules, because people came and went without hindrance. Not many people, true, but enough that he was cautious.
Her apartment was on the second floor, 2A. That should mean it was the closest to the stairs.
He paused before he entered the building, taking a casual look around to make certain no one was watching him. A car turned into the small parking lot, and Hayes calmly opened the door and went inside, for to stand outside the door watching the car would get him noticed.
A small elevator in the rear of the foyer servi
ced the upper floors; the mailboxes were on the right wall, the stairs on the left. Hayes took the stairs.
As he had surmised, apartment 2A was at the top of the stairs, the door just to the right of the steps. Yellow crime-scene tape was attached to the hand rail and stretched across the hall to the wall, creating a small alcove. Tape also had been placed across the door.
Looking down, he saw the large rusty stains in the beige carpet. The door had holes in it, jagged, messy holes. The smell of death, of blood and urine and feces, still lingered, and would until the carpet was cleaned.
Hayes took a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and pulled them on. Ducking under the crime-scene tape, he tried the door. As expected, it was locked. Otherwise, the scene would have been an irresistible lure to teenagers and the morbid; they might even have gotten up the nerve to ignore the warning on the tape and go inside. People were incredibly nosy.
The locked door was a minor barrier. He had it open within fifteen seconds. If anyone came out of the other apartments and saw him, they would think he was a police detective. After all, he wore a suit and latex gloves. The suit was a definite sacrifice in ninety-degree weather; obviously, no one would be wearing one unless his job required it. That made him official; he doubted he would even have to show a badge, though he had one with him just in case. It wasn't a bad fake, either, considering how fast he had gotten it.
The inside of the door was covered with the same rusty stain, streaks smeared across the white surface, on the door jamb, part of the wall. Other than that, the apartment was neat. Clancy always had been particular about how he did a job. He was neat. No one would ever know their place had been searched; everything was back in its previous location, nothing taken, nothing sliced up. Clancy had claimed he could tell if anything had been hidden inside a cushion without taking it apart, by carefully studying the seams.
Yeah, Clancy had been an artist. Hayes had watched him toss a room before. He had tapped walls, gotten down on his hands and knees and studied the floor, inspected books and lamps and bric-a-brac. Nothing in that room had escaped his notice. And he had found the file for which he had been searching, hidden in the bottom of an upholstered chair. The particle-board bottom had been unscrewed from the frame and the file placed inside, then the bottom screwed back on. Clancy had noticed the small scratch marks on the particle-board where the screws had been removed and then replaced.
Not many people had that kind of patience or eye for detail. Hayes would miss having his services.
Hayes closed the door behind him, then stood for a minute looking around, getting oriented. He didn't want to disturb anything unnecessarily, either, because the cops undoubtedly had photographs of the scene, and some sharp cookie might notice if anything was moved.
He was in the living room. There was a nice twenty-seven-inch television set in the entertainment center, and a small stereo system. Against the wall just as you came in the door was a small desk where an answering machine blinked and a cordless phone sat in its cradle. Hayes resisted the urge to listen to her messages, because if a detective was here later and noticed the messages had been played, he would wonder who had been in the apartment.
He opened the center drawer of the desk. There were pens in there, notepads, rubber bands, stubs of movie tickets, but no bank statements. A couple of magazines had been tossed onto the desk. He picked them up; there was nothing under them. Carefully, he put them down in the same location.
Okay, nothing there. Some people did all their paperwork at the kitchen table. Hayes walked in there, checked the drawers, but came up empty. Ditto the small closet on the right just before entering the kitchen.
Okay, that left the bedroom. Again, he was struck by how neat everything was. The bed was made, there hadn't been any dishes in the sink, no clothes lying tossed around. Hell, no wonder Clancy had thought no one was home.
There were three taped and sealed cardboard boxes stacked in the corner near the window. So she hadn't yet got everything unpacked after moving in; that made Hayes like her a little better, made her seem more human. It also gave him an excellent place to look, because if he were lucky, the book would be in one of those boxes, and he wouldn't have to dig around in a metal storage unit in this heat.
"Winter clothes" had been written on the sealing tape on the top box. Hayes took the box down and opened it. Sure enough, it was full of clothes. He took each item out, taking care not to disturb the folds, and felt to make certain nothing had been inserted between them. Nothing. Not a single stray item was in that box, nothing that wasn't an article of winter clothing.
The second box had "Insurance papers, books, photographs" written on the tape. That looked promising. The box had been carefully packed with the heaviest items, the books, on the bottom, then the photographs, then the insurance papers. The insurance papers were in a manila file folder, but when he flipped through them, he found nothing but… insurance papers. The photographs were framed and few. Hayes inspected the books. Fiction, nonfiction, medical books, books about nursing. Nothing was hidden inside any of them.
The tape on the third box said "Christmas decorations, wrapping paper, bows." Hayes groaned. Damn, he didn't want to look through a box of fucking Christmas decorations, but he didn't dare leave it unexplored just because the other boxes had contained exactly what the labeling said.
