Frome looked to the side, then back at her, almost helplessly. Like he didn’t know the answer. “It was very quick, eh. Didn’t get a chance to look at him or anything. He was gone through the bathroom window before I came in.”
“What did you hear through the door?” Laura pressed. Maybe Frome was too young, too inexperienced to be taking point on something like this. She should have seen that, assigned someone else to the duty. She’d just gone for him because she knew his name.
She should have handled it herself, like she did everything else. Sent Nate to one apartment and tackled the other herself. He was the only one she could trust, at least when it came to following procedure. She knew Nate would never have allowed this to happen.
And even before that, she could have acted sooner. Could have swallowed her pride and spoken up and not cared whether Nate was off with her or not. Could have rushed off herself without waiting for Frome to offer the opportunity to suggest new targets.
This was on her.
“Not much,” Frome admitted. “There was a kind of thud, I suppose—I called out to ask if Kenneth was all right, and the guys suggested he probably dropped something in his hurry to get ready. It was when he didn’t answer and didn’t come out that I started to get suspicious.”
“You didn’t hear anything else?” Laura asked, trying to confirm. She tried to push the lingering guilt to the back of her mind. Not to forget it. To allow it to fuel her. To make her push harder, try more. To not make the same mistakes again.
Frome thought back, his eyes going up to the ceiling. “I don’t think so.”
Laura nodded. She moved to the crime scene, slipping on a pair of gloves. The photographer was just moving out of the way, leaving them alone with the body. She edged tentatively around the pool of blood, trying to neither step in it nor lean above it. The last thing they needed was to have the evidence contaminated right now, but she needed to test a theory.
She reached for the bathroom window, the one the killer had evidently left through. It was the sliding type, the kind that you needed to lift up or push down to open and close. She pulled it down halfway—not all the way, so she wouldn’t disturb the blood evidence on the sill—and then pushed it up. It made a squeaking, groaning sound, like most windows of this type tended to when they’d been around a while.
The apartment building was clearly a little older. There was thick paint on the frame, which probably contributed to the noise—years of being repainted rather than replaced would do that. Laura tried it a few more times at different speeds, but always producing the same loud result.
“You didn’t hear anything like that?” she asked Frome.
He shook his head no. “I think we would have heard it, even from outside.”
Laura nodded. “I suspect the same. Which means the killer must have come inside before you were even here, if the entry method and the exit method were the same.”
She peered down out of the window, checking the route down there. It wasn’t an easy one. There was a short drop to the window of the apartment below, but then a straight drop to the ground. She could see a few more bloody prints from here on the sill down below. Evidently, the killer had let himself down first by dropping to the second sill, then to the ground. Getting up, though…
It wouldn’t have been easy here. But one row of windows across was a row of railings. These windows were taller, leading into a living area in each apartment, so the railing was no doubt installed to make sure they were safe to be opened. Unlike this row of windows, with its drop to the ground, those railings went down to the ground floor.
It would have been a physical feat, but possible. To start with that ground floor railing, pull yourself up to balance just on top of it, then grab the railing above and climb the brick wall, digging your toes into the mortar. Rinse and repeat, then simply reach out and step across—albeit a wide gap, and one high above the ground—to the bathroom window.
It was doable.
“There wasn’t any other sign of forced entry,” Frome said, reinforcing her idea even further.
Laura nodded. “Then he’s extremely brazen, we can say that. He came inside and waited, risking being caught climbing up the wall or falling down in the process. When he heard the knock at the door, he must have realized that this was his only shot to get at Kenneth before he was taken into protective custody. He did… this,” she paused, gesturing at the body below her. The formerly handsome Wurz twin was now staring vacant-eyed at the ceiling, strangely deflated with his throat a gaping wound and his torso riddled with stab wounds. “He didn’t just stab him once and get out—he made absolutely sure the job was done, like with the other two. And then he walked out, again taking his life into his own hands by jumping, without being seen by anyone.”
“This rules out any possibility of it being a crime of opportunity,” Nate said. “We already suspected it, but this makes it pretty clear. He would need to stake out the place, figure out how to get in. Maybe even try it a few times to make sure the way was clear. He also knew when Kenneth would be home from work, which implies he would have been stalking him in the days, or maybe weeks, prior to now.”
Laura nodded grimly. It all backed up what she already knew from her visions, which was a good workaround for having to explain them.
“Unfortunately, it also means one more thing,” she said, glancing at Nate and Frome. When neither of them responded, she completed her thought. “We’re dealing with a man who wants to target twins specifically, and who has already struck three times in two nights. And the only way we can stop him from adding to his victim pool now is to catch him—because I would bet my badge that he’s not going to stop.”
***
Laura slumped down on the stiff, uncomfortable bed in her motel room, unwilling to settle. She hadn’t wanted to come back here at all. Nate was the one who insisted they both get some sleep, after how bad yesterday had been.
They’d taken down Governor Fallow, then she’d gone to the bar, then late in the night they’d got on the plane and come straight here. And when they landed in the morning they’d jumped straight into investigating. Nate was probably right. She did need some sleep.
She just couldn’t.
Laura was exhausted, if she dared to admit it to herself. But she was also still wired from yesterday, from everything that had happened since. She couldn’t switch off the worry for Amy inside her head.
And even if she did, right on its heels was the fact that Lacey’s custody hearing was still looming, and she hadn’t had time to prepare.
That sent a sickening jolt down into her stomach, made her open up her browser on her cell phone and start searching for tips. What was she going to say? Do? How should she dress?