“I’m glad you folks are here,” he said, walking them toward the exit after the necessary introductions. He swept his formal uniform cap off his head to reveal a bushy crop of gray hair. He’d called himself Sheriff Lonsdale—no first name. Of course, he’d already known both of theirs. “We’re a little on edge, as you might imagine. Seems a high possibility that we’ll see another one tonight. We’re much in need of the help.”
“We’ll do whatever we can,” Nate assured him, keeping up easily with his long strides as the sheriff rushed them out to the parking lot. Still feeling a little dazed and distracted, Laura forced herself to walk faster to catch up with them.
“You’ve had two bodies in two nights, is that right?” Laura asked. It was always good to check the information provided in the briefing. Everything could have already changed while they were in the air.
“That’s right.” The sheriff gestured to a parking space not far away, where a black vehicle marked with a gold flash and the word “SHERIFF” across the side waited.
“Then let’s try and prevent another from happening,” Laura said grimly. “I don’t think we should waste any time, given that it’s getting to be late in the afternoon already. Can we head straight to the latest crime scene?”
“Absolutely,” the sheriff said, unlocking the car and opening the trunk. “We can put your bags in here; I’ll have someone come and take them to a motel for you.”
Laura climbed into the back while Nate joined the sheriff in the front. It was less a comment on who was superior to who, and more about space; Nate being a good seven inches taller than her meant he needed the leg room. She didn’t begrudge him it, either. It was better to stay back and avoid the worst of the small talk.
“Have there been any developments in the last couple of hours?” Nate asked, as the sheriff put the car into gear and backed out of the lot.
“Nothing special,” the sheriff said, sighing. “We’ve been doing our best. Still waiting on forensics reports for the second victim, but the first one came back. Preliminary, at least.”
“Any evidence we can work with?”
“Not yet.” From her position in the backseat, Laura could see the sheriff’s mouth reflected in the rearview mirror; when he wasn’t speaking, it settled into a thin, hard line. “They’ll run further tests, but we’re not seeing anything usable. No fingerprints other than the victim’s and her roommate’s. No unidentified hair follicles or bits of fabric or skin under the fingernails—nothing we’d want to see in a case like this.”
“Like this?” Laura asked, her ears perking up. Understanding how the police on the ground were seeing the case was essential. Not only would it possibly help inform their own impression of it, but there was also the factor of internal bias. If they’d decided already the case was going one way, Laura and Nate needed to make sure that it was the right decision. Otherwise, they could all end up blind to other facts that didn’t support their working theory.
“Strangers,” the sheriff said, glancing at her in the mirror. Laura caught a glimpse of his eyes as he moved his head. They were flintlike, gray, just like the straggling remains of hair on his head. “As far as we can see, there’s no link between the two women. So our working theory is this was done by strangers.”
Laura made a mental note of that, but said nothing. It had been the same conclusion they’d drawn on the plane, but that didn’t mean it was true. After all, there were countless ways that people could interact—particularly in this internet age. The two women might have commented on the same thread on a forum and the killer was in there too. It could be as tenuous as that. Really, properly checking for connections wasn’t a simple job that could be completed in less than twenty-four hours.
Right now, it was looking likely that the murders were committed by a stranger. That didn’t make it definite.
The cruiser wound down wide streets that looked as though they could have been almost anywhere in the US. Standard block formations, trees at intersections, Starbucks and McDonald’s and mom-and-pop stores that were few and far between. The buildings were tall and stately, solid rectangles that had been around for long enough to witness boom and bust over and over. City life was going on all around them as they drove. People walking to and from work, kids coming home from school, moms with strollers running errands.
It always struck Laura how removed they were from normal life. How odd it was that normal life was bustling around these crime scenes, which always had a kind of pallor over them. Like there was one tiny point in the world where time had stopped, and everything was slow and somber, but the rest was unaffected.
When you spent years interacting with others only at these places, these other worlds, you started to forget what it was like to go back to reality. Adding in her visions, Laura hadn’t felt like she was anywhere close to touching normal for a long time. The drink had been the only thing that helped with that.
Until it had robbed her of everything else she’d still had, and left her only with that isolated feeling, that morbid existence of lurching from murder scene to murder scene.
“This is it,” Sheriff Lonsdale said, snapping Laura’s attention to the windows on the other side of the car. They were coming up on a small apartment block, a converted home with three stories and a small porch. It looked boxed in, next to two much larger blocks that dwarfed it, leaving it constantly in the shade.
There was a section of police tape across the entrance, and a deputy standing guard to the side of the building to ensure no one could creep around the back. Laura was already taking off her seatbelt as the car pulled up to the curb, ready to jump out and hit the ground running on the investigation.
Two hours in a plane and then the car journey meant that standing up and breathing fresh air felt good. Well, as fresh as you could get in a city. Laura stretched her arms above her head on the sidewalk, shaking out the kinks.
“The body’s been taken to the morgue, I presume?” Nate said, sliding on a pair of sunglasses against the bright sun. Laura had been wearing hers since they got off the plane. It was a habit of hers, so that when she needed to wear them because of her headaches it wasn’t so obvious.
“It has,” the sheriff confirmed. “But we’ve preserved the rest of the scene for you to examine.”
As they followed him up the short steps onto the porch, Laura felt a prickling feeling on the back of her neck. It only seemed to intensify as they walked inside the building and to another interior door, presumably leading to the first-floor apartment.
What was that?
It dawned on her as the sheriff led them upstairs and through a second-floor door into the victim’s home. It was déjà vu. She felt as though she’d been here before.
She felt that way, but she couldn’t have been. She’d never even been to Albany until now. How could she know this place? How could she have known to look for the peeled-back edge of the wallpaper by the kitchen door if she hadn’t already known it was there?
Laura was silent as she stepped through the apartment, slipping on a pair of gloves so she would be free to touch anything she saw. The kitchen was ahead, she knew that. There was a fridge just a little too close to the cupboards. She stepped through and there it was: just how she had expected.
How was it that she knew all of this?