Insidious

It was dated nearly a year ago. Cam leafed through the rest of the pile. More auditions, some won, some lost, all with notations of what had succeeded, what had gone wrong. Records of a life, too short a life.

The window was open, broken glass on the floor. She looked for footprints outside the window, but the Serial had been careful to walk on grass. He hadn’t used the back door. Had he changed the pattern, or as with Molly Harbinger, had there been someone too close, possibly watching, and so he’d chosen the window?

She traced his path to Deborah’s bedroom. Down the narrow hall, and into a lovely light-filled room. Two uniformed policemen were standing over a double bed, looking down at Deborah Connelly’s body, their faces set. It felt to Cam like the air itself was thick with anger. When they saw her, they looked at each other and stepped aside. Cam nodded to each of them and looked down at a young woman who’d been beautiful in life. But not now. Her face was gray and slack, her eyes closed. She was wearing a lime-green nightgown, a sheet pulled to her waist, both soaked with blood. There was blood spray on the wall beside the bed, on the ceiling. Her neck was cut so deeply her head hung to the side, her long black hair stiff with blood. So much blood. Her mouth was open, not in terror, but in surprise. She hadn’t had time to register what he was going to do before he’d slit her throat. That at least was a blessing.

Cam felt a noxious mix of anger, sadness, and regret, saw her hands were trembling. She forced herself to focus on what was in front of her. She said quietly, “He broke the window in the other room, her office, and climbed in. He was wearing soft-soled sneakers that made no noise, probably the same ones he’s worn five times before. He came into this bedroom, stood over the bed, looked down at her. What was the monster thinking? What was he feeling? Anticipation, elation? Did he know her?”

She felt the cops staring at her, but she kept her focus on Deborah Connelly’s face. She moved a few inches to her right, closer, and leaned down. “This was exactly where he stood.” She felt a punch of cold, then a light scent of jasmine. We would have liked each other, Deborah. Or were you Deb? I’m so sorry. I promise you, we’ll catch the monster who did this to you.

31

* * *

Cam looked up to see a young officer standing in the doorway. “Agent, ma’am? The boyfriend, Mark Richards, he’s waiting in the kitchen. Detective Loomis told me to get you.” She wondered what else Loomis had suggested the officer tell her. Whatever it was, he’d been smart enough to keep it to himself.

Cam walked back down the skinny hallway with its pale blue–painted walls to the kitchen, past techs moving purposefully through the house, skirting boxes. The medical examiner walked past her, toward the bedroom, all brisk and impatient, not even giving her a nod. He would add no dignity to her death, her body now a job to him, a mystery to solve. She paused outside the kitchen door, closed her eyes a moment, and said a prayer for Deborah Connelly. Again, she smelled jasmine. It calmed her, helped her focus. Daniel was probably interviewing Pepita Gonzalez. She hadn’t known he spoke Spanish. She hoped he’d got something useful from her.

She walked into a small ancient kitchen to see a man sitting alone, still as a stone at a small table, his face in his hands. Loomis had said he was hysterical, but he was utterly silent. No, not quite. He was whispering something over and over, “I’m going to find you, you son of a bitch,” the same words, nothing else, sounding singsong. She knew it was his way of keeping hold of himself, of keeping him from flying to pieces.

She lightly laid her hand on his shoulder. “Mr. Richards.”

He slowly raised his face and Cam saw he was a tanned and buffed man in his early thirties with long dishwater-blond hair to his shoulders whipped back in a braid, lovely thick hair. He was wearing a white T-shirt and cutoff jeans, sandals on his big tanned feet. She saw a small diamond stud winking in his left earlobe. He looked up at her out of dazed eyes. She saw a pair of glasses on the table near his hand. “Who are you?” His voice was hoarse, blurred with tears.

“I’m Agent Wittier, FBI. You’re Mark Richards?”

“Yes. People call me Doc.” He sounded exhausted.

He looked like a surfer dude to her. “Doc?”

“Yes, I’m a neurosurgery fellow at Children’s Hospital in Santa Monica, only a half mile away, as if that matters. That’s why I wasn’t here. It’s all my fault, I as good as killed her.”

“Why do you say that, Doc?”

He looked up at her with blind eyes. “She shouldn’t even have been here. Deb and I were moving in together. You saw all the boxes and crap in the hallway and living room? It was all her stuff. We were all set to move her into our new place yesterday, but—” He swallowed. “I was treating a four-year-old with an ependymoma—a kind of brain tumor—and his parents were a mess and he wasn’t doing well, so we moved up the surgery to yesterday.

“I let Deb down, I wasn’t here. If I hadn’t put off moving her out of here, she’d still be alive. The house would have been empty, I’d have been sleeping next to her in our new apartment across the street from the hospital. That bastard wouldn’t have found her here, alone.

“I know I shouldn’t have touched her, but I couldn’t help it. I closed her eyes. She had the prettiest blue eyes. She was staring up at me, but she wasn’t seeing me any longer. I wondered if she was thinking about me when she died, how I should have been here with her.” He hunched his shoulders, put his face in his hands again, and sobbed.

Cam wondered if that guilt would gnaw at him for as long as he lived. She laid her hand on his shoulder, lightly shook him. “Listen to me. You know as a doctor you can only do the best you can. This was not in your control. You are not responsible.” She said nothing more, to give him a moment to process what she’d said, to get himself together. Slowly, he quieted. Cam said, “Doc, tell me about Deborah.”

His eyes glazed and his mouth worked, but nothing came out. He shuddered. Cam pulled him against her and held him. She said against soft hair that smelled like lemons the same thing she’d promised Deborah. “I swear to you we’ll catch this monster. Do you understand? And you can help us, all right?” She paused a moment, listening to his breath stutter and catch. “How did the child’s surgery go? On the brain tumor?”