AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Rachel exited the room and started investigating the house. She started at the back door, which was actually located to the right side of the house, between the dining area off the kitchen and the mudroom. She looked the door over and, just like Sullivan had said, there were no signs of a break-in. She opened the door and looked outside; she saw no doorbell of any kind but also no signs of forced entry. She walked through the mudroom to where another door gave way to the garage. She stepped inside and found the space occupied by a single car and racks along the left wall holding black plastic bins.
She walked over to the garage door and looked it over for any sort of faults or recent damage but found nothing. She used the control panel along the wall to get the door to rise up and then performed a similar check outside. Again, she found nothing to indicate someone had broken in. And from what she could tell, the only way in was by punching in a code on a small, covered keypad installed into the right frame of the garage door. She assumed there would also be a control somewhere in the car parked in the garage.
She walked back into the garage, and as she lowered the door back down, she thought about the other murders. For Emma Willis, the killer had come right into her apartment. For Jane Adler, he'd come through the front doors of the building and there was supposedly security footage of it (that she'd not yet seen, so she made a mental note of this). And now there was Molly Stevens…and the bastard seemed to have somehow magically morphed through a door and into her house.
She turned to head back into the house, and as she stepped into the kitchen, Sullivan was already marching over to join her. He held a phone in his hand and wore a slight frown on his face.
“What is it?” Rachel asked.
“We got her phone unlocked. And she does have an app for the doorbell camera, but it shows absolutely nothing. No one came to that front door all night.”
“Which means they came in through that side door over there,” she said, nodding toward the door that led out to the small patio. “I don’t know how they would have come in through the garage unless they knew the code for the door. And if that was the case, that opens up a whole new level of craziness.”
“You want to have a look at this,” Sullivan asked, handing over Stevens’ phone with the app still pulled up.
She nodded and took it, though trusted Sullivan’s initial take. If he said there was nothing there, he meant it. Still, as a matter of due diligence, she had a look herself. The camera had only been triggered a single time since sundown and that was when a jogger had rushed by, a bit too close to the yard.
She handed the phone back, doing her best not to feel too defeated. She felt like she was in the middle of a locked room mystery…and slowly, she began to wonder if that might be the key to the entire thing. The killer had to easily be getting in somehow. Her first suspicion was that the killer knew the victims personally—that he’d simply been invited in. But if that was the case, he would have come right to the front door. What sort of bullshit excuse would he have given Molly Stevens about needing to come in through the side door or the garage?
"Hold on a second," she said, a thought suddenly occurring to her. She walked back through the kitchen and to the side door. She switched on the light to the small patio and stepped outside. The patio was ground level, consisting of a stone floor with a curved stone wall ten feet away. Some patio furniture and a grill occupied the space. There were also three plants of differing sizes. She started by looking at each plant…only, not specifically the plants, but the placement of their pots. She studied each one for a moment and then turned back to the door. A small mat sat in front of the door, just big enough to kick dirt off of one’s shoes.
The mat was slightly crooked. There was the slightest bit of discoloration along the edges, revealing the area where the mat usually sat…until very recently. On two of the plant pots, she saw similar discoloration on the stone floor.
Sullivan stepped out with her, tilting his head as she remained in her knees, looking at the mat. “Did you find something?”
“Maybe. Two of these planters and the mat have been moved recently…like someone was looking under them.”
“Looking for a key?”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Rachel said. “And if that’s the case, I think we can eliminate the idea that the killer knew these victims well enough to just be invited in.”
“But he’d know their homes well enough to know that Dr. Steven has a video doorbell. And he was either very lucky in Adler’s case, or he knew when she would kill those alarms.”
Rachel got back to her feet, looking around the patio. “I never saw the security footage from Adler’s lab come through. Did you?”
“Shit. Yes, I did. And I’d meant to forward it to you and never did.”
“Anything on there?” She found herself irritated but quickly placed herself in check. After all, she wasn’t Sullivan’s boss. Hell, she wasn’t even his partner.
"Nothing that would help us…not at first glance anyway." He was taking out his phone as she spoke, and as he navigated around the screen, she could tell that he was clearly very upset with himself. "I'm sending it now so you can see for yourself. I'm really sorry, Agent Gift.” With a nervous smirk, he added: “I guess I’m just not used to working with a partner.”
“It’s quite alright. Honestly, right now, I think I’m more interested in what else we might be able to get from that phone.”
Sullivan looked down to Dr. Stevens’ phone with a quick look of surprise, as if he’d forgotten he was even holding it. “Yeah, I figured next steps were taking a look at her calendar and the last few numbers she called.”
Huddled together on the patio, with the sun rising and shedding some light on the neighborhood, Sullivan went to Dr. Stevens’ recent calls. Right away, Rachel saw that there was a voicemail that had not yet been checked. And based on her call history, it seemed to have come in within half an hour or so of Dr. Stevens’ death.
“Bingo…” Sullivan said.
Without any discussion on the matter, he played the message and turned the volume up.
"Molly, it's me. Listen…I know you didn't want to hear this earlier, but you really do need to keep an eye out. I keep getting those messages, and now that there are two doctors who have been killed, it seems so much worse. Just…please be careful. And call me if you need to talk or suddenly decide to take this seriously. I’m only trying to look out for you.”
The message ended without the caller giving her name. Rachel also thought it was worth noting that Dr. Steven apparently didn’t know this person well enough to assign her a name-listing within her phone.
“I think we call the number back,” she suggested.
“Yeah, same here,” Sullivan said.
