Her Every Fear - Peter Swanson Page 0,72

did. Corbin had been involved with Audrey and was now lying about it. And here she was, in Corbin’s apartment. Even the police were interested in Corbin.

And there was Alan. What had she been thinking, sleeping with Alan? Even if he had nothing to do with what had happened to Audrey, he’d spied on her for months and months, obsessed with her, plotting a way to get to know her. Normal people don’t do that, Kate thought. But maybe Kate just wasn’t attracted to normal people. Maybe she was attracted to psychopaths. George Daniels hadn’t gotten her psychopath attraction out of her system. She needed to go to an entirely different country and find another one. She pictured Alan’s distorted face through the peephole just a few hours earlier, and she was scared. He was probably at work now, but he’d be back at her door later that evening. She was sure of it.

The phone in the living room rang, a sharp jangling sound. Kate walked toward it, her heart speeding up a little. Would Alan have this phone number? It was possible. Maybe it was even listed. She let it go till it stopped ringing. A few seconds passed and it started again. It was definitely Alan, Kate thought, and told herself to pick up. If she was going to have to speak with him—and she’d slept with him, so, yes, she needed to speak with him—it would be easier to do that on the phone than in person.

She cleared her throat, picked up the handset, and said, “Hello?”

“Is this Kate Priddy?” It was a woman’s voice.

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s Detective James calling. I was wondering if we could come by this morning and take another look at your apartment?”

“I guess so. Do you, uh, have a warrant?”

“I don’t, although we can get one if you’d prefer.”

“I think it will be okay.”

“I’m bringing Audrey Marshall’s parents to Audrey’s apartment so they can collect what they want. I thought it would be good to leave them alone for a little while. It would give us an opportunity to talk, and for one of my officers to take a better look around Corbin’s apartment. Your apartment, now, of course.”

“Oh. Okay. Is Corbin a suspect? Have you talked with him?”

“I can answer your questions when I get there, Kate, okay?”

“Okay.”

Kate hung up the phone. She wondered if they were coming back with an enormous team, with men in rubber gloves with little baggies to collect evidence. It didn’t sound like it, if they hadn’t gotten a warrant. Still, they clearly knew that Corbin had been in some sort of relationship with Audrey. As before, the imminent arrival of the police was making Kate want to search the apartment again herself. But she also wondered if she should be careful about touching things. She stood frozen by the phone. They’d want to see the key to Audrey’s apartment, she imagined. Where was that key? Kate, for a moment, couldn’t remember, then had a vague recollection of putting it back in the drawer where she had found it. She walked to the kitchen to check. It wasn’t there. There were several unmarked keys, and then the few that were labeled, although she couldn’t find the one that was labeled am. Kate thought hard. Maybe it was still in the pocket of the jeans she’d been wearing the night she went to Audrey’s apartment. She raced to the bedroom, searched through her clothes, and couldn’t find the key. She returned to the kitchen and searched the drawer again, lifting out the cutlery tray to make sure that the key hadn’t slid beneath it. She racked her brain but came up with nothing. The last time she remembered having the key was when she returned from looking at Audrey’s apartment. She’d watched Alan across the way. She shivered a little, then pushed him out of her mind.

She looked through the labeled keys again, picking up the one that was marked storage. She’d seen that key before, and assumed at the time that it was for some storage unit that either Corbin or his father had rented, but what if it wasn’t? What if it was for a storage unit in the basement of the apartment building? It didn’t seem likely that with apartments so large there’d be extra space for storage, but the more she thought about it, the more she realized that of course there would be. She gripped the key tightly between her fingers. Maybe that was

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