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“It could just be someone at the Bureau who confiscated his phone. They do that, just in case anything crops up.”
“Is it weird?” Ella asked. “That one of your oldest friends has passed on?”
Ripley rarely gave much thought to the notion of death. Death was what happened, and in this job you saw a lot of it. Over time you became alarmingly comfortable with the fact that there was a slab somewhere out there with your name on it. But that weird contentment about the end alleviated a ton of life’s pressures – something the rookie was still yet to learn. It would come in time, Ripley told herself. Although Ripley had to admit, now that retirement was looming and her love life was beginning to take shape, she’d started putting a little more effort into prolonging her years. The booze and the cigs were a thing of the past, and morning yoga had become a staple of her routine.
“A little bit. Weirder is how Robert died. Apparently he just went to bed one night, and never woke up. Heart failure at fifty-five.”
Ella stopped in her tracks, glanced at the floor then shook her head. “Poor guy,” she said. “What a waste.”
They reached apartment forty-nine, one uniformed officer leaning against the wall in the hallway as though contemplating some deep question. He turned when he heard footsteps and made a beeline for the new arrivals.
“You must be the feds,” he said. The fellow was tall, wiry, with silver hair above chiseled features and the look of someone who’d been in law enforcement a few years too many. Ripley offered her hand.
“Correct. I’m Agent Ripley and this is Agent Dark. Thanks for meeting us.”
“Sergeant Grant,” the man said. “Or just Clive. I’m the unlucky guy in charge of this mess.”
“What’s the status of the scene?” Ripley asked.
“Swept from head to toe. Body’s in the morgue. The victim is Katherine Parkinson, forty-six, lives alone up here. We’ve marked out a few areas of investigation, but other than that it’s clean as a whistle.”
“Any idea how he got in?”
“No signs of forced entry on the front or the balcony doors. The perp either walked right in or the victim willingly opened up.
Ella asked, “Who called it in?”
“Woman named Margaret, lives downstairs. She’s the eyes and ears of this building.”
“Could we talk to her?”
Grant nodded. “Yeah. I’ve had a brief chat with her already but she wasn’t very responsive. Poor gal is in shock. Take a look around and I’ll fetch her.”
Ripley nodded her thanks then stepped into the apartment, the trail of dried blood immediately drawing the eye. Ella inspected the spot where the body had lay while Ripley ran through the scene through the killer’s eyes. Her first port of call was to determine exactly how this killer gained access to the apartment because invasion methods revealed a lot about the killer’s psychopathology. Cowards snuck inside and blitz-attacked; bolder perps took a more direct approach.
She recalled the crime scene photos, which had shown the body facing towards the door, as though she’d been heading towards it when her fatal blow was delivered. If the killer had entered through the front door, Katherine would have been facing the other way in an attempt to flee. There was a chance the killer could have simply walked in through an unlocked door, got involved in a scuffle, and rotated Katherine during their altercation, but the only evidence supported an alternate version of events.
“Thoughts, Dark?”
Ella rose to her feet, glancing between the front door and balcony area to the rear. It seems she’d read her partner’s mind.
“I don’t think our unsub came in through the front. If so, her body wouldn’t have been positioned like this.”
Ripley moved through the living room to the balcony, checked the sliding glass door. Unlocked. “What about here?”
The agents moved onto the balcony, the midday sun beating down like a relentless hammer. Ripley wiped the sweat off her brow then checked the area for any signs of intrusion. She found none, but the nearby fire escape consisted of a steel staircase that ran from the floor to the very top of the building. Ella spotted it too.
“Would be pretty easy for someone to make the jump.” The rookie was already over the railing, covering the three-foot gap above a sheer drop down to the concrete. She made it over to the fire escape and began inspecting the corners of the stairwell.
“Anything over there?”
“Dirt. Looks like a boot print.” Ella snapped a photo with her phone. “Might need forensics back here. Nothing else to note, but this fire escape connects to the ground. Our unsub could have gone round the back of the building and climbed up here without any problems.”
Ripley considered it, then said, “If that’s the case, that tells us a lot.”
Ella climbed back onto the balcony, then said, “It means he knew Katherine was the kind of person who kept her balcony door unlocked.”
”Yup. It’s possible he knew her schedule, knew her life. But…”
