“Are you sure?” the sheriff asked, hesitating. “It’s a hard listen.”
“Exactly.” Laura took a breath. “I need to be sure I didn’t miss anything. It will be easier the second time.”
That was barely true. Sometimes repeat listens could make it worse, because you knew what was coming. But she had to keep listening. Maybe if she heard him enough times, if she learned to distinguish the sounds that he made from the other noises on the call, if she could get down deep enough to know him a little more…
Maybe a vision would come.
“Well, I’ll leave you with the computer, if you don’t mind,” the sheriff said. He cleared his throat gruffly again. Laura did a quick calculation in her head. If he had children, she realized, they would probably be about the same age as Caroline. “I don’t need to hea
r that again.”
Laura nodded, waiting until he had moved out of the room and stopped making noise before pressing play. Her thoughts strayed to Lacey in the interim. One day, Lacey was going to grow up to be a young woman too. She’d be just as at risk as anyone. But Laura couldn’t think about that right now. It wasn’t exactly easier for her to listen to a woman dying, but she had to do this. She had to—so that it didn’t happen again.
And there it all was again. Caroline’s frantic plea for help. The 911 dispatcher trying to talk to her, to ask questions, to find a way to help. The sound of the cord being pulled tight around her neck, an intake of breath, a—
Laura’s mind raced back. Wait—that intake of breath. It couldn’t have been Caroline. Not if she was already choking. Laura marked the point in her head, trying to listen hard to the rest of the tape. To Caroline gagging and trying desperately to get free. It must have been hard to hold her while she fought. He must have been breathing hard. There would be more sounds, more traces of him. Laura was sure of it.
“All right, I don’t think we’re going to get anything out of this,” Nate said, as the tinkling glass signaled the killer’s exit again. “Let’s move on. What’s next?”
“No,” Laura said, turning and looking at him. He met her eyes with a raised brow. “I’m not done yet. I need to listen to it again.”
“Again?” Nate frowned, then shook his head. “Laura, it’s horrible. Don’t force yourself to keep listening. We’re not going to find out anything from it, not on our own anyway. If you want it analyzed, let’s send it to the tech geeks and have them try to isolate anything they can, turn up the volume. We’re better used elsewhere.”
“I nearly have it,” Laura snapped, turning back to the screen. “I heard something. Just let me do this.”
She instantly regretted snapping at him. Nate was only ever trusting and patient with her, whether she deserved it or not. He didn’t deserve to be snapped at. More than that, he was the one who let her get away with all of her quirks, never asking why she did things the way she did. If she annoyed him enough to start throwing his own weight around, that could quickly change—and it would be her own fault, too.
Maybe she wouldn’t need to snap if she could get her hands on a drink. Something to relieve the tension, make everything easier. But she knew she couldn’t do that.
“Fine,” Nate said, his voice sharp enough that she knew he wanted her to hear he was put out. “If it’s that important to you, keep listening. I’ll work on my notes.”
Laura’s hand hovered over the mouse, ready to press play, but she hesitated. “Thank you,” she said first, hoping her tone conveyed that she was contrite.
She shuffled her chair closer to the speakers as she pressed play. She considered even putting her ear flat against them, but that probably wouldn’t help. Laura concentrated hard, waiting for the spot where she knew she had heard it.
There! An intake of breath, unmistakable.
She had him, now. His signature. The sound of breathing wasn’t exactly like a voice. It wasn’t completely unique. It wasn’t even identifiable in a lot of cases. But if you had a recording of two people breathing, especially if they were straining, often you could tell them apart. That was something Laura had picked up over years of surveillance jobs, listening to bugs, waiting to burst in as part of a raid.
In this case, it was easy to tell them apart. Caroline was choking. That left only two people breathing on the line: the dispatcher, whose microphone was much closer to her mouth, and who besides kept muting the call while she spoke with the first responders. And there was him. The killer. Distant from the handset, overpowered often by Caroline’s choking or the dispatcher’s voice. But he was there.
At the end of the call he wasn’t breathing too heavily. Not panting for breath like he might have been. He wasn’t panicked or rushing to get away. He let Caroline drop and then walked calmly back the way he came in. Laura would have given anything for a microphone close by the window—to hear if he made a grunt of effort as he swung back to the fire escape, to listen to him moving further away. The weight of his footsteps on the metal. But this was all they had.
“All right, satisfied now?” Nate asked. He was leaning back in his chair, looking at his notes with exasperation. He thought she was being foolish. Laura could take that. She needed to know.
“Not yet,” Laura said. “I’ve almost got something.”
“What are you hearing that I’m not?” Nate asked, dropping his pen back on his notebook and looking at her with frustration. Even so, there was softness behind his gaze. He wanted to take care of her, she realized. Wanted to protect her from listening to this nightmare. But he didn’t know why she had to.
“I can hear him breathing,” Laura said, opting to at least go with the truth. Even if it wasn’t the whole truth. “Just let me go again. I’m figuring something out. You… you can leave the room, if you have to.”
“Okay,” Nate sighed, shaking his head. “But I’m not going anywhere. We’re partners. If you’re listening to this, I’ll stay as well. I’ll just… distract myself.” He looked down at his phone and started tapping the screen. Laura couldn’t tell if he was reading messages, researching something, or just playing a mobile game, but it didn’t matter. So long as he was quiet, Laura could work with that.
She played the recording again. She could feel Nate looking at her every time she reset it to the beginning and pressed play again, but she ignored him. She closed her eyes, trying to block out everything else. Rather than focusing on where she was—on going through her senses one by one—she lost herself in the recording. She blocked out everything else. Now that she was used to the sounds that Caroline made, to the voice of the dispatcher, she could ignore them. She focused hard, trying to drown herself in the sound of his breathing.
Laura pressed play for the eighth time and closed her eyes again. Slowly and carefully, hoping that Nate’s view would be blocked by her body, she reached out and pressed her fingers to the speaker on one side of the computer monitor.
A stabbing pain shot through her forehead, and Laura tried to breathe through it. She kept still, listening hard—there it was, that one loud intake of breath she’d first heard—