Page 8 of If She Sensed

"We're not able to share those details yet," Sloane said."But anything you can tell us about last night would be very helpful."

"Last night?"Ruthanne straightened slightly, visibly pulling herself toward usefulness."I went to bed at 9:00.I do every night, it's just my habit now.I didn't hear a thing."She paused and seemed to find that answer insufficient."I'm a sound sleeper.Always have been.My husband says a brass band could march through the bedroom and I wouldn't stir."

“And where is your husband?”

"At work.I know… It's a damn shame he has to work at seventy years of age, but that's the state of things.He's an instructor at the community college—British Lit."

“And was he here last night?”Sloane asked.

"He was.He was reading right beside me when I went to sleep.Then he woke me up for a moment when he turned his lamp off a while later.

"Before you went to bed," Kate said, "did you notice anything outside?A car you didn't recognize, anyone on foot?Anything at that seemed off?"

Ruthanne thought about it carefully."Nothing that stands out, no."She pressed her lips together."I'm sorry.I wish I could tell you something useful."

“Were you aware that Carol left her backdoor unlocked for one of her friends?”Kate asked.

“Yes, that would be Deb.They were thick as thieves.”

"How well did you know Carol?"Sloane asked.

"Since she and her ex-husband moved in.So… what… eleven or twelve years, I suppose.We weren't close the way she and Deb were, but we'd wave in the mornings and chat over the fence in the summer.She was a good neighbor.Quiet, kept her yard nice."She looked toward the window and frowned."She'd been through a difficult time with the divorce and I always thought she handled it with a lot of grace."

"Did she have many visitors?"Sloane asked.

"Not many.Her daughter came around every now and then.And Deb, of course.Deb was in and out all the time."Ruthanne folded her hands in her lap and looked to them; it almost seemed like she was hoping to generate helpful information from thin air."I saw a car I didn't recognize in her driveway once or twice over the past few months.Nothing that struck me as unusual."

"Did you notice anything at all last night?A car parked on the street, anyone on foot, any lights?"

Ruthanne thought about it with genuine effort, pressing her lips together and looking toward the window."Nothing," she said finally."I'm sorry.I really do wish I could be more helpful."

They thanked her for her time and were back on the sidewalk three minutes later.They worked the rest of the block through the morning and into early afternoon, knocking on doors, and introducing themselves.They asked the same questions in slightly different configurations and continued to disappoint by explaining that they could not share any information.

A man named Gerald Spence, who lived directly across the street and two houses down, had been up late the previous night watching a baseball game and had sat near his front window for most of it.He claimed to have seen Carol's porch light on and what he thought might have been her car in the driveway, but he could not confirm the time and had noticed nothing else.He said he’d seen no unfamiliar vehicles, no foot traffic, nobody moving through the yards.He was retired, and he delivered all of this with a manner of excitement that suggested not much interested or excited him much more these days.Kate believed him completely, which made the absence of useful information that much more frustrating.

Two doors further down on the opposite side of the street, a young woman named Tara Gillis answered in workout clothes with a toddler on her hip.She had been home all evening but had not looked out at the street after dark.Her husband had been traveling since Thursday.She hadn’t heard anything—which she said was typical because this really was a very boring street.She looked genuinely distressed by the news about Carol and asked twice whether she should be concerned about her own safety.Kate told her honestly that they had no reason to believe there was a broader threat to the neighborhood, which was true, and Tara accepted it with the careful relief of someone who needed the answer to be true and was willing to let it be.

By two in the afternoon, they had covered the immediate block and a portion of the adjacent street.All they had learned was that Carol Paige had been well-liked and that nobody had seen or heard anything out of the ordinary last night.

They were sitting in the bureau sedan outside the last house they'd visited, discussing their next steps, when Sloane's phone rang.She looked at the screen, answered it, and said very little for the next ninety seconds.Kate watched her face and could read enough from it to know the call was not producing anything useful.

Sloane ended the call and set the phone on her knee."That was Detective Middleton at Metro.He tracked down Charles Paige.He’s living in Oklahoma.And there’s hard evidence that he was home last night."

"Any idea how long he’s been living there?”

“Roughly seven months.Middleton talked to him directly and ran it down."

“What sort of hard evidence are we talking about?”

She looked at the notes she'd typed during the call."Charles Paige was at a company dinner last night—at least forty people at a hotel banquet room.It started at seven and ran past eleven.He's in four separate photos posted to a company social media account, timestamped across the evening.He didn't know Carol was dead until Middleton called him this morning.”

"How did he take it?"

"Middleton said he was quiet for a long time and then asked about their daughter."Sloane looked up from her phone."He's not our guy."

"No," Kate agreed."He's not."

She looked out through the windshield at the quiet street.The afternoon had turned fully overcast and the light was the flat, diffuse gray of a day that had never really committed to being bright.A leaf skittered across the pavement in front of the car and she watched it go.