Page 60 of She Didn’t See It Coming

On Monday morning, Kilgour greets Jayne with, “You look like you hardly slept.”

Jayne gives him a tired grimace. “That’s because I haven’t.” She confides, “I think someone broke into my apartment yesterday.”

“Are you serious?”

“Nothing is missing. Just—some things were moved.” She sighs wearily. “Poor Michael ended up getting out of bed and coming over.” She glances at Kilgour. “He’s changing the locks and putting up a security camera for me later today.”

“Good idea.”

Jayne pretends to be unaffected by the break-in, but the truth is, it’s rattled her. Nothing like this has happened to her before. She has to ask herself, why now? Is it connected to the case? She thinks of Alice, the coldness behind her eyes, remembers Michael telling her to trust her instincts.

Jayne puts Alice out of her mind and together she and Kilgour make their way to the incident room, where she faces the team for the morning briefing.

“We have too many suspects, and so far, no evidence,” she begins.

“We’re waiting for forensics on the clothes and the plastic bag they were found in.

Maybe we’ll get lucky. But if we find trace evidence on the clothes from Sam Frost, he’s got an explanation—he says he hugged her that morning.

And if we find evidence of Sam Frost on the plastic bag, he could argue that the plastic bag could have been taken from the kitchen drawer, and that he’d touched it previously.

Of course, if we don’t find anything, that doesn’t mean he didn’t kill her.

“We haven’t been able to confirm alibis for either Sam Frost or Derek Gardner, so they remain viable suspects.

Either one of them could have been buzzed into the underground garage by Bryden that day.

Either one of them could have killed her and used the suitcase in the apartment and gotten away without being seen at all.

The killer would almost certainly have been wearing gloves.

We have the vague witness, Francine Logan, who claims to have seen someone with a suitcase in the elevator at the relevant time but has no description whatsoever.

It’s just as likely the killer used the stairs. Both men had motive.

“Alice Gardner also has motive—jealousy. She, too, has no alibi. But it’s less likely that Bryden would have buzzed in someone from the underground parking that she didn’t know and wasn’t expecting, and we know Alice didn’t show up on the CCTV on the ground floor.”

She reviews what they’ve discovered on the Facebook group over the weekend. “I want to look into Lizzie Houser. She doesn’t have an alibi either. I want to know everything about her. Full background—mental history, work history, everything.”

···

Paige had gone to Sam’s condo this morning to take Clara to day care.

He’d asked her to do it; he didn’t want to face the people there.

She got the sense that he wanted some space, so she dropped Clara at Dandylion and is now heading back to her own place.

She has taken some vacation days, but she wonders if it’s time she went back to work.

Now, as she drives home, she thinks unhappily about how Sam had been this morning.

How he’d handed the responsibility for Clara over to her, leaving her to pack the bag of Clara’s things for the day.

He was distant, even when Clara was not in the room.

She thinks that he can afford to be affectionate with her in private.

He doesn’t have to hold her at arm’s length when they are alone.

Maybe she needs to tell him that. They could have spent time alone together, now, while Clara’s at day care. But he’d wanted to be alone.

Does he not care for her? It’s so hard to tell with Sam. He doesn’t talk about his feelings. She tells herself she must be patient.

But he seems to think that she will do whatever he wants, whenever he wants. She’s not so sure anymore. He really should be more considerate of her, she tells herself. What she knows could hurt him.

···

Alice has decided to go in to work today.

She’s looked up Dr. Michael Fraser, PhD in psychology, who lectures in the Psych Department and also, apparently, has a small private practice. He is giving a lecture at two o’clock in one of the large halls. She decides to stop in and listen; it might be fun. And she’s curious.

She arrives while the students are getting settled and slips into an aisle seat a few rows from the front. It must be a first-year course, given the size of the lecture hall and the number and age of the students around her. They are children. They seem to get younger every year.

She turns her attention to the man at the podium.

This is the man who sleeps with her nemesis, Detective Salter, who sees her in her racy pink and black panties.

He’s tall and well built, and definitely handsome, in a bookish, cerebral kind of way.

Intelligence attracts her. She likes his tousled brown hair and bright blue eyes.

She likes his smile. When he begins to speak, she is attracted to his voice.

It’s pleasant to listen to—masculine, confident, engaging.

He’s sexy, and she’s intrigued. And oh, what luck, the lecture he’s giving today is on abnormal psychology.

She listens attentively, as if falling under a spell. She will have questions, after.

She’d like to meet him.

···

Tracy has something important to do, so she has called in sick again. She’s so nervous that her hands are shaking. She must calm down or she will give herself away. She drives the short distance to Kayly Medoff’s workplace.

Kayly said on Facebook that she worked at Garrison Insurance Brokers. There’s only one location. And now Tracy has parked outside the building and stands looking at it. Strangely, all her nerves have suddenly dissipated.

She brushes a strand of hair out of her eyes and walks into the building and up to reception and asks to see Kayly Medoff.

“Can I ask what it’s regarding?” the receptionist inquires.

“It’s personal,” Tracy says coolly.

The receptionist makes a call and Tracy waits. A strange feeling has come over her. She can move and speak normally, but it’s as if she’s completely detached from what’s happening.

A few moments later a young woman approaches her with a tentative smile. “Hi, I’m Kayly. Do I know you?”

She’s even prettier in person, Tracy thinks. About ten years younger than Tracy herself. “No. But I hoped maybe we could talk.”

Now the younger woman looks suspicious. “About what?”

“Please,” Tracy implores. “Just a few minutes?”

“All right.” Kayly walks her over to some leather chairs in the corner of the lobby, far enough from reception to afford them privacy. They sit.

Tracy has already decided how she’s going to approach this. She begins, “You were so brave, when it happened to you.”

Kayly knows immediately what she’s talking about. “Were you assaulted?” There is genuine concern and compassion on her face and in her voice.

Tracy swallows, nods. “I haven’t gone to the police.”

“It’s a big step,” Kayly says. After a pause, she says gently, “You know there are support groups you can go to. I did. It helped me.” She adds, “But I don’t think you ever really get over it.” Her eyes change and her voice trembles with emotion. “I thought he was going to kill me.”

Tracy knows there’s no way this woman is making up what happened to her. She swallows again and asks, “Do you regret going to the police?”

Kayly sighs heavily. “Yes and no. He was arrested but never charged because they said there wasn’t enough evidence.

I should have gone to the hospital or the police right away, shouldn’t have showered away all the evidence.

I regret that more than anything. They couldn’t find the van he raped me in.

” She says, more bitterly, “But I know who did it. It made his life hard for a few days, but that’s all.

He’s out there, free to do it again to someone else. ”

Tracy takes a deep breath and asks, “But how can you know for sure—wasn’t he wearing a mask the whole time?”

“I recognized his voice. He came into Dunkin’ Donuts, where I worked, almost every day.

I know it was him.” She pauses for a moment.

“And he had this thing he did, tapping the fourth finger on his right hand. He used to do that on the counter when he was ordering coffee. And he did it in that van. But it wasn’t enough for me to be able to identify him, they needed proof.

Evidence. And I didn’t have any. They knew it was him—they said they saw him tapping his finger like that in the interview room. ”

Tracy can’t seem to catch her breath. She’s suffocating. She stands up suddenly, fighting a wave of sickness. “I’m sorry,” she gasps, and flees the lobby.

She makes it to her car and climbs in and locks the door. She leans her head against the steering wheel, struggling to breathe. Henry had told her that the woman claimed to recognize his voice, and that it was bullshit. But Henry had never told her about the finger tapping.

Such an annoying habit.

Her husband is a monster.

After a while she sits up. Well, now she knows.

···

“Francine Logan is here,” one of the team says, leaning into the doorway to speak to Jayne. “She wants to talk to you.”

“Maybe she’s remembered something,” Jayne says to Kilgour. The young woman is already sitting alone in the interview room when they enter. Jayne and Kilgour sit down across from her.

“Hello, Francine,” Jayne begins. “What brings you here—have you remembered something that you want to tell us?”

Francine nods. “It’s something about the suitcase. Just a small thing, but I thought I should tell you.”

“Okay,” Jayne says patiently.

“There was a sticker, or just the remains of a sticker, on the side. It was kind of worn off, but it was yellow and red, and it made me think of Spain, because that’s somewhere that Lisa and I have talked about visiting.

I know I was thinking about Spain when I was in the elevator, but I’d somehow forgotten about the sticker. ”

Jayne glances at Kilgour. No one knows about the half-peeled-off, red-and-yellow sticker on Sam Frost’s suitcase.

This is confirmation that Francine was in the elevator with the killer and the suitcase that day.

Jayne feels a stirring of excitement but is careful not to show it.

She asks, “Francine, is there anything more you can tell us about the person with the suitcase?”

“No, I’m sorry.”

Kilgour asks, “Did you see their shoes, for example, if you were looking down?”

Francine shakes her head regretfully. “No. I was looking at my phone.” She perks up. “Oh. Wait. As I was getting out of the elevator, I heard them get a call on their phone—the ringtone was a song I like.”

“What song was that?” Jayne presses.

“The opening of ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony,’ by The Verve. I didn’t hear them answer though. Whoever it was shut it off quickly.”

Jayne startles. She’s heard that ringtone recently. She thinks she knows who was in the elevator with that suitcase.