Page 72 of 56 Days
Lee exchanges a glance with Karl.
“Have you talked to her already?” she asks Claire.
“She wouldn’t answer any of the set questions. Says she needs to talk to you first.”
Normally in a situation like this Lee would send someone else in topretendto be the ranking memberon-scene—this is, after all, the equivalent of asking to speak to a manager—but considering the name on that envelope...
“All right,” she says to Claire. “I’ll go.” Then to Karl, “Get that envelope into evidence for me and check on our Incident Room, will you? Once the pathologist has been and gone, I want to assemble everyone there and see what we have, so let’s be ready to go. And watch out for our friend with the CCTV. And get someone in that bloody KB Studios place who actually knows something on the phone. We have a family to notify and we have no solid information about which family that might be yet.”
Karl nods. “On it.”
“And don’t say anything about—”
“I know, I know.”
Lee indicates then that Claire should lead the way, and together they head back inside the cordon, slipping on masks as they go.
Apartment fourteen is on the opposite side of the complex to the scene—they turn left off the lobby—and one floor up. They step into a lift that has a sign printed in bold type on a sheet of paper warning that only one household can use it at a time.
When the doors open onto thesecond-floorcorridor, Lee is relieved to find she can’t detect any unpleasant smells. She asks Claire to wait by the elevators and then goes to knock on fourteen.
The door opens so fast that the woman who appears in its place must have been standing, waiting, directly on its other side.
She is blond and lean in a way that suggests she knows exactly what her percentage of body fat is and is actively working to make it a smaller number. Late thirties, ish. Wearing loose sweatpants and awell-wornT-shirtwith tiny holes in the shoulder seams. Lee catches a glimpse of a thin, white scar just above theT-shirt’s collar before the woman puts a hand there, pulling on the material absently while scanning the hall, right and then left, as if nervous that someone else might overhear them.
“Good morning, I’m Detective Inspector Leah Riordan.” She flashes her ID. “My colleague tells me that you have some information you’d like to share with me.”
“Can you come inside? I don’t really want to talk about it out here.” The woman steps back, opening the door all the way, revealing a hallway that looks identical to its counterpart in apartment one. “It’s just me. We can stand at opposite ends of the living room. And I’ll open the windows.”
Lee hesitates. “Do you have a balcony?”
The woman nods.
“Let’s talk out there, then. We’ll keep our voices low.”
The woman turns and starts down the hall. Lee follows her inside, letting the door swing closed behind her.
She notes that it doesn’t lock—there’s noclickfrom the mechanism sliding into place—which suggests the door in apartment one could have suffered the same fate. It wasn’t necessarily open on purpose. Someone could’ve thought they’d closed it, not realizing it hadn’t actually locked.
This apartment is a mirror image of the scene, with the living room to the right off the hall. As the woman hurries to the other end of it, to the balcony door, Lee does a quick scan of the space.
Everything is the same. Same glossy, clinical kitchen. Same brown leather couch. Even the abstract print on the wall is exactly the same.
What’s weird is that somethingelseis the same, too: the bare, impersonal vibe. Just like the scene, this looks like a show home someone is squatting in for a few days. There’s almost nothing on the kitchen countertops, no personal items, no decoration outside of what came with the place.
This one doesn’t even have the George Clooney coffee machine.
“Do you live here?” Lee asks as she steps outside.
The balcony is bare. It has a nice view of the courtyard and there’s a frosted privacy screen between this and the next balcony over, to the right. A leafy tree almost obscures the view of apartment number one’s terrace, but when Lee bends down a little, she finds clear air. If you were sitting down out here, you’d be able to see it perfectly.
“It’s, ah, like a corporate let.” The blond woman has gone to stand in the farthest corner of the balcony, maximizing the distance between them. “I’m just staying here for a few weeks.”
Lee pulls down her mask. “Where are you normally resident?”
“Well...” The woman shifts her weight from one foot to the other. “Dundrum.”
That’s not even half an hour’s drive from here.
