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“Thank you,” she said. “Could you tell us about Vanessa? Her life, work, friends? Anything that might suggest why someone might want to hurt her?”
Tina looked offended at the question. “Vanessa was sweet as sugar, kindest woman on the street. We used to call her the mother around here, even though she was younger than all of us. She’d bake, organize parties, take my grandkids to the park every Sunday. God-fearing woman. Never made a nuisance. The kind of woman who fit in. You could set your watch to Vanessa.”
Ella compared and contrasted the two victims in her mind. Vanessa, a mid-thirties traditionalist who apparently never made a peep. Katherine, a forty-something feminist who was happy to voice her opinions to the world. Polar opposites.
Ripley asked, “Vanessa’s job?”
“Worked at the Tea Emporium in town. A café.”
Ella glanced at the house, a timeworn picture of suburban America. The kind of place where sitcoms about dysfunctional families were filmed. The kind of place where nothing interesting ever happened.
“Sorry for the difficult question, but did Vanessa have any enemies? Other than her ex-husband?”
“None that I know of,” Tina said firmly. “No one would have any reason to hate her.”
Ella said, “Your help is appreciated, Tina. Please call us if you think of anything that might be relevant.” Ella went over to the waiting officer, asked him to accompany Tina back to her home and make sure she was okay. The officer and the neighbor disappeared as the agents stepped through the front door into Vanessa’s hallway.
“Well,” Ripley said, “we’ve got a vocal feminist and a nineteen-fifties housewife for victims, apparently. Talk about variation.”
“Yeah. The only connection that I can see is that the killer exited through the back door.” Ella made her way to the living room, found the sliding door that opened into an immaculate garden. Tina was right, it creaked like hell.
“Pretty standard for any killer with a brain. Don’t put too much stock in it,” Ripley said.
“Easy exit out the back too. No doorbell cams. No prying eyes. Seems like a planned attack, but doesn’t tell us whether or not our killer knew Vanessa personally.”
Ella put herself in the killer’s head and went through the scene step by step. “Fresh scuff marks to the lock on this back door, so we can assume our killer got in through here.” She followed the trail, scouting for any dirt, boot prints, something that suggested his route. She found nothing.
“Then straight upstairs to the bedroom, no hesitation,” Ripley said.
Ella looked around the living room. “No signs of theft. Nothing has been moved. He didn’t go looking around the house.”
“Yup. He was on a mission.”
Ella and Ripley followed the trail up the gray-carpeted staircase, inspecting each upstairs room one by one. A spare room full of boxes, a pristine bathroom, a bedroom that could have been a showroom if not for the crumpled bed sheets. This was the place where Vanessa May died, but the scene was so ordinary, so nondescript that it amplified the tragedy. You expected to find horrors in dark alleyways and abandoned sanitariums, not among the trappings of humdrum suburban homesteads.
“Then he attacks her here with his bare hands, strangles her to death, leaves her in bed,” Ella finished.
Ripley asked, “Something seem off to you, Dark?”
Ella put her hands on her hips, tried to imagine what she’d do if she were this unsub. “Yeah. Murderers usually take liberties when they kill in a private space. This killer was mechanical in his approach. Tina said she heard the back door open minutes after Vanessa screamed. That means he was in and out in record time. Arrive, kill, leave. No savoring.”
“Vanessa’s screams might have scared him off,” Ripley said.
“True. But he must have left within seconds of her passing out. It would have taken him two to three minutes of strangulation at least.”
“Same as our second unsub,” Ripley confirmed.
Ella’s thoughts scattered like leaves in the wind. An hour ago, she’d been confident that they were dealing with two separate unsubs, but there were just enough minor connections to make her doubt her conclusion. Both killers arrived and left hastily, both killed women, both used up-and-close killing methods.
Ripley lost herself in her phone, tapping away at the screen. “Just giving the chief a heads up on Vanessa’s ex-husband, asking him to get a location.”
“Good call. Ask him to see what he can find on the owner of Blue Ridge Nursing Home too.”
“Tried,” Ripley said. “The owner’s name’s been kept anonymous, so we need to do a little digging.”
Ella’s phone began to vibrate in her pocket. Out of some unnamed instinct, she knew exactly whose name was going to be on the screen. She slowly pulled it out, shielding it from Ripley.
Robert Reed. The dead agent. His name was like a lightning bolt that illuminated her phone screen.
