Captain entered the front door, maneuvered my way, and stood a few feet from me. He put his hands in his pockets and rocked back and forth from heel to toe as though he was working through something in his head.
Eventually he spoke. Direct and to the point. “Victim is Katrina Dushay, manager of the Valley Oak Apartments. Worked here for six years. After talking to the boyfriend, we believe Katrina left her apartment last night at midnight because she’d received noise complaints from a couple neighbors. We’ve interviewed them and all they could tell us is that they heard glass breaking and loud thumps coming from your apartment as though someone was trashing the place. At approximately twelve-thirty the neighbors said the noises stopped. That’s the last anyone heard or saw anything. The boyfriend fell asleep and didn’t even know she was missing when we showed up. He’s contacting her parents.”
Katrina was killed in my apartment between midnight and twelve-thirty. Thirty minutes and then a vibrant and beautiful young woman was taken out of this world. And no one was the wiser.
“How could something like this happen? There was so much blood…” My hands shook so I put down the mug. “She had to have screamed.”
“Look, Ms. Wright-Kerrighan, I can’t get into particulars, but I will say the killer left a message.” Captain Mandle frowned deeply and rubbed at the back of his hairy neck.
“A message?” I reached out and Jonah took my hand under the table.
Just having his presence there to lock onto kept me from passing out cold.
“Hide and seek,” the Captain said.
I frowned. “I don’t understand.”
He closed his eyes. “I really didn’t want to share this, but he carved the words into her back using a knife he found in your kitchen. Killed her on your bed. We believe he’s escalated from his activities as the Backseat Strangler. She was definitely strangled, but the added violence wasn’t there before in any of the other cases. He wrote those words for a reason and I think they’re a message for us, or perhaps for you. We need to proceed with extreme caution. This man has your phone, ID, your car, and knows where you live.” He lifted his hands around the room. “I need you to look around the room and see if there is anything you can tell may be missing.”
I blinked as though he’d asked me to search a beach for a long-lost diamond. This was needle in a haystack territory, not to mention my nerves were so far gone I wasn’t in the realm of reality let alone capable of truly seeing anything through the mess.
“I, I, d-don’t know. There’s so much…”
Jonah squeezed my hand. “We’ll do it together. Just try, yeah?”
I nodded and he helped me to stand. My arm was throbbing, and I needed a pain pill, but I had to get this over with and get back to the safety and comfort of my mother’s home. Bury my head straight under a stack of blankets and make all of this disappear.
Jonah held my hand and led me over to the center of the living room. “Start with the couch, tables, anything on them that’s not on the ground now.”
I scanned the space seeing my candle holder, coasters, magazines all spread out on the floor. I shook my head.
“Bookcase.” He brought me to the bookcase. All the books were on the floor. I used my foot to move them around. It was nothing but books and CDs.
“It looks like it could all be there, but I’m not sure. It held mostly books and CDs I’d collected over time.”
He nodded. “Okay, good. Now the entertainment center.”
I noticed the broken TV, the mangled plant and dirt, some other knickknacks, and just as I was about to move on to the next space, I crouched down and pushed the items around. Then became frantic in my pursuit as I shoved things in different directions.
It wasn’t here. I surveyed the rest of the room, my gaze jumping from point to point. “It’s not here.”
“What isn’t?”
“A picture. A framed picture of me, Sonia, my six foster sisters, and our foster mom. We had one taken in front of the house a few years ago. It was a gift for Mother’s Day, but Liliana made one for all of us. It’s gone.”
“Dammit,” Jonah growled and prowled over to Agent Russell and Captain Mandle. They said some hushed words and the Captain nodded before Jonah stormed back over to