The 7th Victim - Alan Jacobson [106]
Upon pulling up to the curb by Vail’s house, he nodded at the open front door. “Please tell me you’re expecting someone.”
She followed his gaze. “What?” Her eyes narrowed as they found the door. She reached for her Glock and got out of the car in one motion.
Robby drew his weapon and followed her oblique path across the lawn. Using hand signals, Vail indicated she’d go right and he should go left. She rested her back against the brick; Robby ducked below eye level and scrambled across the front of the house.
She nodded to him, then turned the screen door’s knob and pulled it open. He held it in place with the toe of his shoe as she entered in a crouch, gun tip out in front of her. She moved through the hallway, Robby at her heels.
She motioned him into the kitchen, while she went left, into the living room. They converged in the hallway and continued on toward the bedrooms.
Vail toed open the door to her study and peered in. She cleared the room, then took in the mess of documents scattered across the floor. Her copy of the Dead Eyes file, rifled through. At first glance, with such a blizzard of papers, it was impossible to determine what was missing.
They finished clearing the house, then returned to Vail’s study. She sat on the futon, her face resting in her hands.
Robby sat beside her. “Looks like you had a visitor.”
Without looking up, she nodded. “He got my profile. All my notes.”
“Who did?”
Vail turned her head slightly, nodded at the wall behind them. Written in lipstick were the words they’d seen so many times before: “It’s in the.”
forty-five
“Holy shit.”
Robby couldn’t help himself; the words just tumbled from his lips. “He was here, in your place. He went through your stuff—”
“And saw the profile. He now knows everything we know about him.”
“Holy shit.”
“So you said.”
“I gotta call Bledsoe,” he murmured, then rooted out his cell phone. “We gotta get crime scene here, have them comb through this place.”
“Call Bledsoe, but we can’t have any techies here. I wasn’t supposed to have the file. We’d all be canned faster than the Jolly Green Giant.”
“Just don’t touch anything. Let’s get out of here, wait out front.”
She followed him out of the house, the Glock still in her right hand, dangling at her side. She was off in another dimension, thoughts swimming in her head, gurgling up to the surface before she could push them back down.
Robby pressed END and dropped the phone back in his pocket. “He’s on his way. Should be here in fifteen, he’s at the op center.”
“He’ll make it in ten.” Her voice was flat, her mind numb. She sat down on the cement steps of the porch and cradled her head in her hands. The hard, rough surface of the Glock dug into her face. She didn’t care.
“I can’t believe it. He was in my goddamn house. Why me?”
“That’s the question, Karen. Why you?”
Vail shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Robby started walking away toward his car.
“Where you going?”
“I’ve got a kit in my trunk. We can at least document the scene, dust for prints.”
“Yeah,” she said beneath her breath, “and tighten the nooses around our necks another notch.”
Robby walked in with a medium-size toolbox. He set it on the kitchen table and removed the fingerprinting kit. “It’s been a good three years since I did this.”
“You don’t want to know how many years it’s been for me.”
He removed the two-ounce vial of black dust and handed Vail the stiff brush. “Be careful. These bristles cut the print if you’re not careful.”
“Lovely.” She headed down the hall. “I assume we start with the study because we know for sure he was in there.”
“Makes the most sense. Honestly, I doubt we’ll find anything. Guy’s been real careful up to now. Not one stray print in six crime scenes. No reason to think he’d take his gloves off for this one.”
“Maybe he doesn’t see this as a crime scene. Breaking and entering’s nothing compared to serial murder.”
Robby started at the doorway.