Laura got the feeling that she was about to hear the entire contents of the briefing document that they’d been given, slim as it was. “We know about the identity of the victims. Have there been any developments overnight?”
“I don’t know about that,” Frome said doubtfully. “We’re waiting on the coroner’s report. Should be coming in later. As far as I know, the captain was waiting for you guys to come in for the interviews, eh. Said it was better than doing them twice.”
Laura nodded, resisting the urge to sigh heavily. They had a lot of ground to cover, and she hoped that time hadn’t been unnecessarily lost. But in fairness, it had been nighttime. She supposed that was a good enough excuse not to have made a lot of progress on talking to potential suspects or family members.
She just kept hope that the lost time wouldn’t hinder the investigation—and that they could get in and out again as quickly as possible. Because the less time she could spend with Nate right now, and the more time prepping for her custody hearing or checking up on Amy, the better.
She needed to get home—and she needed to go as fast as possible.
CHAPTER TEN
Laura got out of the car and studied the building in front of them, squinting her eyes slightly against the brightening sky. It was an apartment block, without much to set it apart from any other in Milwaukee—except perhaps that it looked a little newer, a little cleaner, like there might have been a recent refurbishment.
Laura stretched out her back, placing both hands on the base of her spine and shooting her elbows backwards. She felt cramped, sore, from the plane flight and the lack of sleep. She didn’t have time to think about that, though. She followed Detective Frome inside, past the officer guarding the door to the complex, and into the eerily quiet halls of the complex.
There were a few residents on the first floor, standing hushed in the small area at the top of the stairs. One man had his arm around a woman, who was pressing a tissue to her face. They looked shell-shocked, all of them pale and wide-eyed. They moved aside to let the Frome, Laura, and then Nate through, going past in single file.
“Is there any word…?” the man with his arm around the woman asked, his tone hushed, like it would have disturbed the dead to speak louder.
“I’m afraid not,” Frome said, in an equally quiet tone. “We’re in the early stages of the investigation.”
The three residents seemed to collectively accept this response, none of them saying anything else as they passed by. They went up another flight of stairs and then walked a short way down the hall, to the obvious door: the one marked with a yellow cone outside and an officer next to it, protecting the integrity of the crime scene.
Frome nodded silently at the man on the door and led them through, the eerie hush that always seemed to settle on these places continuing to lay heavy on Laura’s shoulders. She could tell already, without going inside, that the body was gone. When the body was still present, there was a different feeling at these places. More urgency, more hustle and bustle of different personnel moving in and out. Detectives, crime scene photographers, forensics, doctors, everyone focused on the job of collecting evidence and checking the body.
When the body was gone, carted out in a black bag on a rolling gurney, the atmosphere changed. A quiet respect settled over those present, as if it would be wrong to speak loudly. Even those who weren’t law enforcement professionals felt it. This was a place where a Very Tragic Thing had happened, and that feeling would hang around like a bad smell for some time to come.
“You must be our FBI agents,” a female voice declared, a little louder than expected, as Laura and Nate followed Frome to stand in front of an open door inside the apartment. Within the room was a petite but wiry blonde woman, her eyes creased with age, her hair pinned up just so above a crisp captain’s uniform. “Captain Renee Gausse.”
“Agent Laura Frost.” Laura nodded, hearing Nate repeat his own name immediately afterwards.
The introductions done, Gausse apparently saw no further reason to stand on formality. “The b
ody has been taken to the coroner’s office,” she said. “I have the crime scene photographs here for you to take a look at, hot off the press.”
“Thank you,” Laura said, stretching out her hand for them. It wasn’t quite as good as looking at and touching the body, but you never knew. Maybe she’d get something out of touching the images that would be used in an eventual trial. A flash of the culprit sitting in the dock, even.
To her disappointment, no headache burned to signal the arrival of the vision. All she had in her hands was a series of images of one of the twins she’d seen in their case notes. Instead of full of life, as she had been in a shot pulled from her social media account for the briefing, here she was lifeless. Wide eyes stared white-frosted into nowhere above a bloody mess of a body, the stab wounds visible through tears in her clothing.
The cause of death was unmistakable. So, too, was the fury with which the murder had been committed.
“This looks personal,” she said right away, handing them to Nate with deliberate care that their hands wouldn’t touch. “There’s anger here. So many wounds—and inflicted across a short space of time, I would guess. A frenzy.”
Nate nodded in agreement as Gausse replied, “The initial count from the coroner is fifteen stab wounds, though we’ll need to verify that after the full examination has been carried out.”
“Any idea on if he broke in, or was let in?” Nate asked.
“There’s no sign of anything broken,” Gausse said. “The door doesn’t appear to have been forced. No damage to the windows, and with the weather turning cooler, they were all closed. As far as we’ve been able to piece together from the timeline, this happened not long after Ruby Patrickson returned home from work in the evening.”
“So, maybe we can assume that she let the killer inside,” Laura said. “But the attack happened suddenly. I’m not seeing defensive wounds.”
“If she was caught off-guard, I’d imagine she wouldn’t have time to react,” Gausse said. She took the pictures back from Nate and gestured at a few of them. “The wounds are clustered closely together and there would have been an immediate amount of heavy blood loss. From my experience, I’d suggest she fell back after the first wound. He knelt over her and continued to stab her as she lay on the floor.”
“He?” Nate said. It was an assumption. Their job as investigators was to challenge assumptions, especially any that might cloud their view of the evidence.
Gausse shrugged. “I don’t know many women would have the fury and the strength to plunge a blade deep like that so many times. But it’s possible. For now, I’m calling the suspect he until we prove otherwise.”
Laura looked down at their feet, at the blood soaked into the carpet. A grisly spill that almost could have been wine, if it wasn’t for the sickly-sweet smell that hung in the air and gave the game away. It covered a wide area, soaked into the fibers, with no gap or outline where the body might have lain. A long knife, then. Deep enough to stab right through. Enough blood to soak everything and spread, far more than a human could stand to lose and survive.