It was like she had seen it on TV, though of course that wasn’t the case.
“This is where she was found,” Sheriff Lonsdale said, startling her as he appeared right behind her. “She was lying right there, beside the table. Looks like the phone was just long enough to reach.
Laura nodded, looking down at the cor
d. The handset was still lying on the floor where it had been extricated from the victim’s neck. There was no blood, not much sign of a struggle. The only free-standing furniture in the whole kitchen was the fridge and the table, and they didn’t appear to have been affected.
There was a microwaveable tray of congealed mac and cheese sitting on the table, a dirty fork lying beside it. Yes, Laura thought. The mac and cheese was familiar too.
“Do you have the pictures?” Laura asked. There hadn’t been any included with the briefing. She’d assumed that was because the local police photographer hadn’t been able to finish his images in time for the printout.
“Here.” The sheriff pulled out a folder from under his arm and extricated several printed shots, handing them to her. Laura held one of them, a full-body shot, up in the air until it aligned with the view in front of her.
“She was holding the phone,” Laura said, loud for Nate’s benefit. He had come back into the hall behind them, but there was nowhere near enough room for all three of them to look through the doorway.
“Yes, she actually managed to make a call to nine-one-one before she was killed,” the sheriff said. “Unfortunately, he strangled her with the phone cord while she was still on the line. We do have the recording. Would you like to hear that?”
Laura considered it. “Does he say anything? Make any identifiable noises?”
“No.”
“Anything relevant from her?”
“No, she barely makes a noise at all, apart from the choking. Just says that someone’s broken in, and that’s all we got.”
Laura shook her head. “Then I don’t want to hear it until I have to. We hit a dead end, then we’ll listen. But it doesn’t sound like it’s going to be much use, and this case is dark enough already without audio of the moment of her death.” She glanced back at Nate to check he was on board with it, but his expression was open and it didn’t change. Laura was no sadist, and no masochist either. She didn’t think it would be good for either of them, hearing that. Not until it was necessary.
She just hoped it wasn’t going to become necessary.
“All right, what else?” Nate asked. “She had the cord around her neck still?”
“Yes, it’s as though he just dropped her to the ground and left her there,” the sheriff said. He leaned over Laura’s shoulder to point at several areas on the image; she tried not to be too obvious as she flinched back away from his touch. She’d seen enough hovering death today. If she was going to be having visions, she needed them to be focused on the case—not on whether the sheriff was likely to stub his toe on his way to bed tonight. “We think he strangled her from behind, possibly as she was trying to get away from him. He would have used the cord to bring her up short, then used her own body weight and his to keep the cord tight. Medical examiner is telling us that he probably lifted her off her feet, into the air, judging by the impressions on her throat.”
“The act of killing is enough,” Laura mused. “He kills her, then drops her. She’s no longer any use to him.”
“So, we’re not looking at a sexually motived crime,” Nate said. “Anything taken?”
“Not a robbery either,” the sheriff confirmed. “Other than the smashed bedroom window, and this phone off the hook in here, it’s like no one ever came in. Come and look at this.”
They turned as a unit, Nate and Laura both following the sheriff into the bedroom. The space was no less cramped in here; there was only just enough room for one person to walk around all three sides of the bed, with the headboard close to the window. One wall of the room was packed with a dresser, a small table holding an alarm clock, and a makeshift wardrobe rack hanging free.
The sheriff pointed carefully at the alarm clock, making sure they were watching before he lifted it up. Around the clock, a ring of grime and discoloration made the cleaner patch underneath it stand out starkly.
“That’s how you know nothing else is missing,” Laura said, nodding. She glanced around the rest of the space. The gaping hole where the window had once been and the debris of the shards all over the bed seemed to tell the rest of the story eloquently enough. She leaned over, her eyes scanning the covers, the windowsill. There was no sign of any kind of shoe print.
“He got in over the fire escape?” Nate asked, nodding at the window.
“Oh, yes.” The sheriff nodded. He leaned toward the hole, pointing outward. “It’s fixed to the side of the building, just here. Not a direct route, but all he would need to do would be to swing out from the fire escape and smash through the glass feet first. Or using something to smash it—a stone or anything, really—and then swing himself through. We believe he left the same way, as the front door was still locked.”
“I suppose a witness statement is too much to hope for?” Nate said.
The sheriff grinned at that. “Unfortunately,” he said. “It was late in the evening, and the back of the property has no external lighting. Anyway, from what forensics are saying, it’s likely he wore a hat or a mask. So an eyewitness report wouldn’t necessarily do us much good at this stage.”
Laura nodded, glancing around one last time. She stepped back without saying anything, heading back to the kitchen. She need to get some idea of what had happened here. A vision, maybe. Something that would give her another piece of the puzzle. She couldn’t see the past, but she might be able to see a clue, something that they would otherwise miss. A new homeowner finding an ID card that had slipped underneath the carpet years later, during renovation. That kind of thing could happen.
She glanced behind to check that the sheriff and Nate were still occupied in looking over the bedroom, and quickly slipped her hand out of one of her gloves. She laid it on the wall by the doorframe, a spot that the killer was unlikely to have touched. Something that wouldn’t compromise future evidence. Then she tried to concentrate, to focus in. She smelled the tang of the mac and cheese, sitting and spoiling out on the counter. She heard the low murmur of Nate’s and the sheriff’s voices, but also the hum of the fridge, the rush of traffic on the street outside. She felt the smooth surface of the plastered wall, cool under her fingers.
The pulse of pressure between her eyes was light this time, not a full-blown headache. That was something of a bad sign; the harsher the pain, the more urgent the vision, Laura knew. This was sometime in the future. She felt it building up and willed it to come quicker, to pour over her like a wave—