Page 39 of In Her Path

“It’s been a point of contention between them for a while now. Mr. Holt’s medication makes him confused in the evenings. He forgets things—whether he’s taken his pills, whether he’s locked the doors. Mrs. Holt used to check after him, but lately she’d been so busy with the council...” She trailed off, then added, “That door didn’t seem terribly important. This is such a quiet neighborhood.”

“And last night?” Jenna prompted.

“She must have forgotten,” Doris said. “Or been distracted. It happens. She told me just last week that she kept forgetting to check at night, and she was mad at herself about it.” She stood, leaving Gerald seated. “Let me show you.”

They moved through the kitchen to an ordinary door at the back. Beyond was a small utility porch, and beyond that, a door to the backyard. Doris turned the knob of the outside door and it swung open easily, no resistance from the lock.

“See?” Doris said. “The latch isn’t fully engaged. It’s been that way since at least last night.”

Jenna stared at the unlocked door. The pieces were falling into place—Gerald’s medication, the unlocked door, the timing. And with those thoughts came the echo of Piper’s voice from the night before: “He’ll be sleeping too deeply. Shake him awake.”

The meaning of those words was now painfully clear. Gerald’s medication, meant to manage his chronic pain, had rendered him unconscious while someone walked through this unlocked door and murdered his wife in her office. He had slept through it all, heard nothing, seen nothing—until he woke, got up, and went in search of Diane, only to find the horror in her office.

Jenna reached for her radio. “We need that backup here now,” she said, her voice sharper than she’d intended. “And I want patrol units checking every house on this block. Ask if anyone saw or heard anything unusual last night.”

She turned again to Doris Gordon.

“Does the house have a security system, Ms. Gordon? Cameras, alarms, anything like that?”

“There’s a camera system outside. Mrs. Holt had it installed about a year ago after those break-ins on Elm Street. It was quite the ordeal—the installation people were here for most of a day.” She frowned slightly. “I’m not sure how much good it does, though. Mrs. Holt complained that the image quality wasn’t what she’d paid for.”

“Where’s the recorder?” Jenna asked, trying to keep the hope from her voice. “The unit that stores the footage?”

“It’s in the utility room,” Doris said, rising from her chair. “Off the kitchen. I can show you.”

Jenna followed her through a narrow doorway into a small room crowded with the practical necessities of daily life. A stack of clean linens sat on the dryer. A shelf above the washing machine held Gerald’s medication bottles, arranged in careful rows. Cleaning supplies filled a small rack in the corner.

The recorder sat on a shelf above the washing machine—a small black box with a monitor no bigger than a paperback book. Wires ran from it to the ceiling, where they disappeared through a small hole cut into the drywall.

Doris reached for the recorder. “It captures from three cameras—one at the front door, one at the back, and one that covers the driveway. The footage loops every seventy-two hours unless you save it.”

She pressed a series of buttons on the recorder’s front panel. The small screen flickered to life, displaying a grainy, black-and-white image divided into three sections—each showing a different angle of the Holt property.

“The quality’s not great,” Doris admitted. “Especially at night. But you can usually make out if someone’s there. All it’s ever caught was some deer, a neighbor’s dog, and once something that looked like a coyote.”

Jenna studied the images, her heart beating faster. If the system had been running last night, they might have their first real break in the case. “Can you pull up the footage from last night? Starting around midnight?”

Doris adjusted the recorder’s controls. She started at 11:45 p.m., the night footage slightly darker but still visible.

“From here?” she asked.

“Go ahead.”

Doris pressed play, and they watched in silence as the timestamp advanced. The front camera showed nothing but the empty porch, the driveway camera captured a section of the street beyond the property. The back camera—the one that mattered—showed the rear of the house, the utility porch, and a slice of the backyard beyond.

The minutes ticked by on the screen: 11:47, 11:52, 11:59. The house was quiet, the night still. Jenna forced herself to keep watching, though her eyes were beginning to burn from the strain of staring at the grainy images, which continued into the wee hours.

Then, at 3:09 a.m., the back camera caught movement.

Jenna leaned forward, her breath catching in her throat. A figure approached from the yard, moving calmly, a handbag slung over her shoulder. Not hurrying, not hesitating—walking as if she had every right to be there. The image was poor, the details blurred by darkness and distance, but the basic outline was unmistakable: a woman in a pantsuit with large brass buttons and a hat with a brim, her face turned away from the camera.

“Oh my God,” Jenna whispered.

The figure reached the back door, pausing for just a moment. Then the door swung open, and she was inside. The screen returned to its previous stillness, the only evidence of what had happened the brief interruption in the pattern of shadows.

Doris looked at Jenna, confusion evident in her expression. “Do you know who that is?”

Jenna didn’t answer immediately. Her mind was processing what she’d just seen against everything else she knew about the case. The outfit was unmistakable—the style of the jacket, the angle of the hat. She had seen it just last night, on the steps of City Hall, on the woman who had stood glaring at her with barely concealed hostility as she and Jake drove away.