With no local politics to distract him, Hedges arrives on scene for a briefing. I lead him down the driveway to the back fence for a look at the scene, then around to the red door in front for a walk through the apartment.
“The lack of blood around the hot tub suggests she wasn’t killed there,” I say.
The floorboards creak under our weight. We pause at the threshold of Oliszewski’s bedroom just as the lights are being switched off. A technician with a black light moves carefully around the bed, revealing a freshly glowing cast-off pattern with every wave of the hand.
“He butchered her,” Hedges says under his breath.
“When we checked in here, the mattress had bloodstains on it, but the sheets had been stripped off and he washed down the walls. I think he used the sheets to carry her body out back, dumped her in the hot tub, then pulled them out.”
“Have you found them?”
I shake my head. “He cleaned up after himself at the Walker scene, too.”
“Any signs of forced entry?”
“He used her key. When she arrived home, she pulled her scooter through the gate but never got a chance to put the tarp over it. I think he approached her then. There are marks on her neck that look like some kind of cord or wire. If he came up behind her and choked her out, he could’ve dragged to the door and let himself inside.”
“Did anyone see anything?”
“I canvassed the block myself, and Aguilar went a block over to check the residents with backyards fronting the property. Nobody saw the attack, but one of the neighbors across the street remembers her leaving the house around noon yesterday. We don’t know when she came back, so that’s a window of about twenty-nine hours from the last sighting to the time we discovered her. She was in the water for at least twelve hours, probably longer-though I can’t get anyone to confirm that at this point-so my guess is, he attacked her early yesterday evening and was out of here by midnight.”
“Midnight,” he repeats.
“He broke into my place at four thirty in the morning, and I doubt he took that chance without scouting around first.”
“Here’s what I don’t understand,” he says, leading me back down the hall into Oliszewski’s tastefully decorated living room. “This should have satisfied him, right? He gets his thrill from murdering the girl. So when he’s finished, why go to your place at all? What would prompt him to do something like that? Did something go wrong here to set him off?”
“That’s a good question,” I say. “I don’t know.”
“See if you can find out.” He pats me on the shoulder. “I take it Charlotte’s doing all right? I feel bad keeping you on this when you should be with your wife.”
“She might feel safer if I catch the guy.”
“Sure,” he says, heading for the exit.
For a moment there, the captain seemed like himself again. At the door, though, he pauses to straighten his tie, and I can see the lights of news cameras out on the street. Hedges makes a beeline for them.
Still, he raised a valid point. Why wasn’t killing one woman enough? What drove him to kick down my door just a few hours later?
Bascombe comes through the entrance, glancing over his shoulder in the captain’s direction. He frowns at the furniture, symmetrically arranged around the perimeter of an ivory rug, then draws close to me with a conspiratorial nod.
“He’s really pushing for that promotion,” I say.
“Seems like. Are we close on this thing or what?”
I bring him up to speed as quickly as possible, showing him the bedroom just as the lights are flipped back on. We walk as far as the back door, where Bascombe watches the coroner’s people withdrawing the nude body from the now-tranquil water, then return to where we started. In one corner of the living room, a headless dress form stands, half draped in fabric. There are more swatches on the worktable, next to a white sewing machine. From the looks of it, Oliszewski wasn’t just working in the dress shop for kicks. She had ambitions in that direction, ambitions that now will never be realized.
“The captain’s right,” Bascombe says. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense him leaving here and heading to your place.”
“He did, though. The blood on the knife recovered in my bedroom is what led us here in the first place.”
“The question is, why?”
Eric Castro enters from the bedroom, though I hadn’t noticed him there before. He holds an evidence envelope in one hand.
“Take a look at this,” he says.
Bascombe intercepts the bag, inspecting the contents, then hands it to me.
“Maybe that’s what provoked him.”
Inside the bag, one of my business cards rests, a slight crease running down the center. A splash of dried blood hides part of my name. I flip it over and see my mobile number written in ballpoint ink.
“Where did you find this?” I ask Castro.
“It was on her nightstand. Tucked under the base of the lamp.”
“When did you give it to her?” Bascombe asks.
“I didn’t.”
I look at the card again.
“But I think I might know who did.”
PART 3
We may bust you. But we won’t judge you.
CHAPTER 21
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 15 — 8:30 A.M.
Early morning briefing. On side-by-side whiteboards, a projection screen, and a jumble of printed and handwritten pages, everything we know about Agnieszka Oliszewski spreads before me. All the detectives present at last night’s scene sit bleary-eyed around the table, joined by a couple of CSU supervisors and Quincy Hanford, who summarizes in far too much detail the contents of Oliszewski’s hard drive. Since the computer was a heavy desktop model, our killer decided to leave it-either that, or the discovery of my business card interrupted his flow.
“Let’s move on,” Bascombe says, presiding from the front of the room. “Unless you have anything tangible?”
Hanford starts distributing some stapled sheets. “I output the contacts on her computer so we’d have a starting point for the interviews.”
“Excellent.” He turns to me. “Now, what about the timeline?”
“We’ve painstakingly reconstructed her movements over the past forty-eight hours. She clocked out of the Times Boulevard boutique where she works at about six on Saturday, went for drinks with co-workers, went home. She left the next day around noon-a neighbor witnessed this-and a couple of hours later visited Dr. Joy Hill.”
“Really?” Bascombe says.
I nod. “Dr. Hill is coming in to give a statement.”
“Okay. Can you get Bridger on the line for a preliminary report?”
I punch some buttons on the speakerphone. Bridger must have been expecting us. When he picks up, he’s ready to go.
“Just as in Simone Walker’s case,” he says, “the fatal blow came first-a single stab wound to the heart-followed by the six-puncture semicircular mutilations that cover her torso. The knife recovered at Detective March’s house appears to be the murder weapon. That’s no surprise, considering her blood and prints were on it.”
Bascombe leans over the speakerphone, resting one big hand on either side. “Her prints on the handle. . what do you make of that?”
“Maybe she got the knife away from him at some point.”
I shake my head. I’ve been thinking about the question for hours, and there’s only one thing that makes sense to me.
“At the Walker scene, he came up behind her, held his hand over her mouth, and brought the knife down. With Oliszewski he choked her out first. So he could have reenacted the same process, only this time he puts the knife in her hand and guides it in. So she’s the one stabbing herself and not him.”