Thrill Kill (Matt Sinclair #2) - Brian Thiem Page 0,18

hall to 208, where she stuck a key in the upper lock. “Huh, the deadbolt’s unlocked.”

“Is that unusual?” Braddock asked.

“We don’t have many problems here, but it is Oakland, and I don’t know anyone who doesn’t use their deadbolt.”

After she turned the key, Sinclair said, “Wait out here, please,” and gently brushed past her.

Although he didn’t expect the killer to be there, the unlocked deadbolt raised the pucker factor a notch, so he swept his coat aside and rested his hand on the butt of his gun. Braddock followed him inside and did the same. Sinclair scanned the combination living room, dining room, and kitchen. The drapes were closed and the lights on. All the cabinets in the kitchen were open and cushions on the sofa were flipped over and askew. He glanced at Braddock. She nodded, understanding they would do a quick sweep of the apartment to ensure no one was present.

Sinclair opened a closet next to the front door. One coat on a hanger, a vacuum cleaner on the floor, and some shoe boxes on the shelf. He led the way down a hall and opened an accordion door to a linen closet. Sheets, towels, and a few rolls of toilet paper. The bathroom was empty. They stepped into the bedroom. A king-size bed was covered with a cherry-red satin bedspread and a pile of red and pink pillows. Sinclair peeked under the bed and opened the closet. Hanging inside was an assortment of lingerie that looked like the back wall of a Victoria’s Secret store: lace teddies, satin slips, see-through bustiers, and cutout corsets.

“Looks like we found where she works,” Sinclair said to Braddock.

They returned to the front room and told the manager, who was patiently standing in the hallway, they would notify her at her apartment when they were finished. He jotted down some notes and opened the drapes. The view was the roof of a large, old house on the next lot and another apartment building beyond it. The windows were intact and locked. He went back to the front door and examined the lock and doorjamb. Nothing indicated forced entry—no scratches on the strike plate or the locks and no impressions in the wood door frame or the door itself.

The living-room furniture was arranged as a sitting area on one side and a desk, filing cabinet, and bookshelf on the other. It was nothing fancy. The desk could be bought for a few hundred dollars, and the living-room set would go for under a grand at a dozen Bay Area stores. On the desk was a computer keyboard and flat-screen monitor. Cords hung over the back of the desk to an imprint in the carpet where a computer tower had apparently been. The bottom drawer of the filing cabinet was open and empty.

“I wonder what was so important in the computer and paper files for someone to take them,” said Braddock.

“Maybe something they didn’t want us to see.”

“I don’t see any signs of a struggle.”

“Doesn’t look like she was killed here, but we’ll need to process the apartment anyway. If nothing else, we might find some prints of whoever searched the place.”

“Should we get a warrant?”

Normally, a search warrant wasn’t required at a homicide victim’s residence, the assumption being the only person whose privacy was being invaded was the victim. A murder victim would want the police to find her killer. If the suspect also lived there, courts might determine he had a right to privacy, and any evidence the police found that connected him to the crime could be thrown out if they didn’t get a warrant. Braddock had a more conservative take on the rules of search and seizure. Sinclair appreciated that. During their time working together, she had kept him from making rash decisions more than once. “The manager says she lives alone, and we didn’t see any clothing that would indicate another person lived here,” he said, verbalizing his justification for forgoing a warrant.

“You’re assuming the lingerie was hers,” Braddock said. “What if other girls used the bedroom and one of them is our suspect?”

“Possible, but unlikely. What do you make of the office setup?”

Braddock’s fingers traced the books on the shelf. “These are mostly school books, subjects like business management, accounting, and taxation. She’s got a thick user’s manual for QuickBooks, and a copy of QuickBooks for Dummies. Maybe she really is an accountant. What if we discover evidence when we search that she worked with someone else here