Unsolved (Invisible #2) - James Patterson Page 0,9
groceries,” I say. “Never got a chance to eat them. Y’know, Robert, if we did an autopsy, we’d know about her stomach contents. Whether she ate dinner the night she died.”
“Right,” he says. “If it turns out she didn’t eat dinner the night before, we’ll know for sure she was murdered!”
“Robert, Robert, Robert.” I close the refrigerator. “I’m not saying that. But who comes home and takes a shower before eating dinner?”
“I’m sure some people do.”
I raise my eyebrows. Robert leads me out of the kitchen and into the master suite, the bedroom and bathroom. The dresser has a hairbrush on it and several photographs, presumably of Nora’s children and grandchildren. On the bed is a pile of clothes—probably the ones she took off before the shower—and a cane.
The master bath is small. A single vanity, a toilet, a bathtub/shower. A terry-cloth robe hangs from a hook on the door.
I step carefully toward the shower. A dark spatter of blood near the top curve of the tub and a drip downward. By all appearances, she was facing the shower fixture, slipped, fell back, and hit her head. As she lay there dying, her body slid farther down into the tub.
We leave; Robert locks the front door behind him.
“There’s a visitation tomorrow,” he says. “Funeral’s the next day.”
“You need to do an autopsy,” I say. “And open an investigation.”
Robert uses his arm to wipe away some sweat on his forehead. “Emmy, listen. You know how this goes. You can throw out plenty of theories that I can’t disprove. You could say that a Martian did this, and I couldn’t prove that that didn’t happen. But I also couldn’t prove that it did happen. There’s an innocent explanation for everything you’re saying. And even if you’re right about all of this, a defense lawyer would tear our case to shreds.”
“I’m not trying to convict him,” I say. “I’m trying to catch him.”
“Look, I hear you. I’ve seen some crazy shit myself. But unless you can give me more—”
“Here’s what I can give you,” I say. “I know of six victims in his current spree. Each victim did charity work of some kind for the poor or homeless or sick. Each of them lived alone. Each of them lived in a single-story house. Each of them had a garage and a private backyard hidden by foliage. Each of them lived very close to a bus stop. Each of them had his or her house for sale and posted photos and videos of the home’s interior on the internet. Each of them had tiny, needle-size puncture wounds on the torso that could not be explained.”
“And what was injected? What did the tox screens reveal?”
I let out a breath. “I can’t get anybody to investigate. Because each of the cases in isolation looks like Nora’s case. The easy explanation is the one the police choose. I don’t blame them,” I say, registering the look on Robert’s face. “It makes sense. But you start putting all these together, and there’s a pattern.”
“Okay, so investigate it yourself,” he says. “You’re the FBI. You can cross state lines.”
I do one of those double-blinks Robert has perfected.
“Oh.” He steps back from me. “Your own agency won’t green-light this.”
“That’s correct, Sergeant.”
“But I should, huh?”
“Yes,” I say, trying to control my frustration. “You should. Because it’s the right thing to do. Just do a preliminary look, Robert. What’s the harm? Check her credit cards. Find out if she went out that day. See if she ate dinner that evening. Do a tox screen and find out what was injected into her body.”
The sergeant chews on his lip.
“I think he knew all about her from researching her online,” I say. “He knew she had a single-story. He knew the interior. He knew her habits. So he traveled here and followed her during the day. He subdued her. Then he drove her back in her own car and forgot to readjust the car seat. He dragged her through wet grass and had to clean up the patio afterward. He slammed her head against the tub to make her death look like an accident. And then he left and took the bus back to wherever his car was.” I nod. “Yes. I think all of that. And he’s counting on you saying, ‘That’s going to an awful lot of trouble,’ or ‘That’s a real stretch, Emmy.’ He’s counting on local cops seeing nothing amiss and moving on.”