Page 27 of Shadow of Fear
7
At Kinsley’s studio apartment in an historical section of Portland, Dev shoved the front door wide open and took in the troubling scene inside. “Whoa!”
Colin pushed past him into the main living area. “What in the world do we have here?”
Dev remained rooted in place. Shocked. Surprised. He’d expected to find Kinsley’s tiny place neat. She’d always been orderly. Came from her mother’s demands, the one thing she hadn’t even considered rebelling against back in the day. But this was more than messy. Her place had been trashed.
Colin turned to Dev, a grim look in his eyes. “What do you think happened here?”
Dev ran a hand over his face, hoping when he removed it the chaos in front of him would have disappeared. No such luck. “Someone trashed the place looking for something.”
Someone had jerked out the drawers of Kinsley’s desk in the corner and dumped the contents on the floor. Oddly, the laptop remained in place on the desktop. The matching bookshelf had been emptied, leaving three-ring binders and reference books lying on the wood floor.
The intruder had slit open her daybed’s mattress covering and upended the mattress, leaving its pale gray comforter in a crumpled heap next to a nightstand holding cosmetics in a tray. The items in the nightstand’s three drawers were discarded on the floor, too, and a small coffee table devoid of any decoration sat in front of it undisturbed.
Colin gripped the back of his neck with both hands. “How did they get in here?”
Dev looked at the deadbolt and the frame. “This is intact.” He took a closer look at the lock. “Scratches on the deadbolt. Lock could’ve been picked.”
Colin met his gaze. “If so, we could be looking at an experienced criminal. Not only a shooter, but someone who has the means to gain entry to places they shouldn’t go.”
Dev’s mouth went dry, and he swallowed the cottony feeling away. “Makes him more dangerous than we thought.”
Colin turned his attention to the apartment. “Not many things to look through here. Really just the desk and bookshelf in the corner.”
“Agreed,” Dev said, taking in the last of the studio apartment.
A simple kitchen with just the basics a single person would need to get by filled the back wall. All the cabinet doors had been flung open and the contents spilled on the floor. A door led off to the left. A quick glance inside confirmed it was the bathroom, and the small vanity’s contents lay scattered over the black and white vintage tile floor.
Dev turned. “I have gloves in my SUV. Can you grab them?”
“Be right back.” Colin took off out the door, and Dev stared across the room. They needed to look at items from the bookshelf. The desk too. They could be the reason for the break-in.
Colin returned and handed Dev a pair of disposable gloves on his way into the room.
Dev slipped on the gloves and joined Colin in the corner but didn’t know which item to start with. “Kinsley didn’t make this mess. That’s for sure.”
Colin put on his gloves. “I always liked that she was neat and once hoped, since you spent so much time with her, you would pick up on it. Sharing a room with you was a challenge.”
Dev couldn’t argue. He could be a real slob if he wasn’t careful, where Colin liked things neater. “You’re not the only one who had a challenge. The line of masking tape you rolled out along the middle of the floor was a real pain.
“But you still didn’t keep your things on the other side of the line.”
He held his brother’s gaze. “This is more than someone letting their stuff fall over a ridiculous tape line.”
Colin gave a disgusted snort. “The tape was necessary for my sanity.”
“Hey, man. I tried and failed. What more can I say?” He couldn’t stand around wasting time any longer. He had to accept that Kinsley’s place had been defiled by someone and commit to a course of action to find that someone.
He picked up the closest three-inch binder. A large typed label stating the year was affixed to the front. Inside, labeled divider tabs held names of what he assumed were investigations.
“Kinsley said all of the investigative information is on her computer. If all of these binders contain investigation details we shouldn’t need them.” Dev moved to the next book, then the next, and the next, each one labeled with the year and holding investigation materials neatly ordered.
The plethora of photos on the pages were more interesting than he expected. She’d included not only pictures for construction sites or of the products, but of people involved in the investigation as well as their background information printed from the internet.
He looked at his brother. “If this break-in is related to the investigations Kinsley was involved in, and the intruder wanted the info, you’d think some of these files would be missing.”
“Makes sense.” Colin sorted through a fistful of materials from the floor. “We should bring the binders back to the cabin. We can cross-reference them to the computer files in case one or more of them are missing.”
