Page 10 of What’s Left of Me (What Left #1)
He's fucking infuriating.
“Constantine under your skin already?” Agent Tyler Harrison jokes, grinning at me as we walk into the apartment building. There’s a guy with a set of keys waiting for us, and a few tenants peek out their doors.
I roll my eyes at Tyler and nod to the guy. “Special Agent Sterling Gideon. This is Agent Harrison. Are you the maintenance supervisor Ben?”
Ben swallows and nods. Soto used the address to get us a number for the building, and routed to the landlord who grumpily told us the maintenance supervisor would be on site to let us into Swan’s apartment.
Apparently murder isn’t a good enough reason to get people out of bed to open a door, but at least Ben here is available to do the job.
He pivots on his heel, shoulders scrunched to his ears. “This way.”
We follow behind him, and Tyler nods to a few of the people peeking out. “Step back please. We need to keep the area clear.”
Behind us I can hear one of the local officers talking to someone. They are here for crowd control while we look, and if I remember anything about my hometown it’s that people like to snoop. If they haven’t heard about Swan’s death yet they’ll be gossiping about this before noon.
“Her apartment is on the second floor,” Ben explains, glancing at us as we climb the steps.
His eyes keep darting to Tyler and then away, and that’s pretty usual when we’re out and about.
Tyler is beautiful, with flawless mahogany skin and dark black curls that she keeps tied back from her face half the time.
She’s tall too, making her impossible to ignore.
That commanding presence works in her favor when men just can’t stop staring.
Tyler’s the only female agent who traveled to Florida with me.
She’s commuted back and forth until this last week, and is now permanently staying in town with the rest of us for the foreseeable future while we work the case.
Finley Soto, the technical analyst, stayed behind back at our Quantico office to keep working on anything we send her way.
She’s computer savvy and prefers being behind a screen.
We each slide on a pair of gloves as Ben pauses in front of a door, and someone further down the hall cracks their door open. I watch as an officer breezes past us, squaring her shoulders as Ben pushes the door open.
“Ma’am! Ma’am, please step back into your apartment…”
“We should’ve just asked Lapin to come with,” Tyler sighs. “Everyone listens to Gabe.”
“That’s because Gabe doesn’t have patience for people’s shit,” I reply, stepping into the apartment.
Tyler follows, and I turn when Ben moves to come in too.
“We’ll take it from here. Thank you for opening the apartment.
My team will handle things and we’ll get the space cordoned off.
We’ll call you or your boss if we need something else. ”
Ben rolls his eyes. He’s basically pouting, and I can tell he planned on walking in and watching us. “Sure.”
I close the door when he steps out so we have some privacy.
Until the apartment is taped off to preserve the crime scene we’ll have an officer standing outside so no one disturbs us, but I don’t really need an eavesdropper either.
The local PD isn’t thrilled that we’re here, and I saw this particular officer in the captain’s office at the precinct several times.
I don’t need a lurker reporting everything we find back to the pretentious Captain that doesn’t want us in town anyway.
It’s bad enough that Kyle is the Captain’s son. He’s in his Dad’s ear far too often, gossiping about how often and when we visit the penitentiary. That connection is extremely inconvenient but there isn’t much I can do about it.
Tyler sighs and stops in front of the kitchen, where bags of nonperishables still sit in paper grocery bags. She pulls out a couple things, studying the contents. “Looks like she just went shopping. Girl ate healthy.”
I hum in response, looking around the space.
Candace has her Nursing Degree proudly displayed above a two-person table in the kitchen, and there’s fresh green scrubs in a laundry basket and partially laid out on the arm of her sofa like she was in the middle of folding.
There’s a book and candle on the coffee table, and shelves with more novels line the walls.
All of it speaks to an average woman in her twenties who appeared to lead an everyday life.
As Tyler keeps digging in the kitchen I study the shelves.
It’s all romance novels, and nothing in particular sticks out to me.
I’m looking for a diary of some sort that might indicate who Candance spent time with and if she had any suspicions of something happening to her.
The original CGS was predictable because of his preferred victim type, but the two women who have died so far, there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to connect them.
They could possibly be victims of circumstance killed because it was convenient for the killer.
My phone buzzes before I make it to the bedroom. “Gideon.”
“Boss,” Jensen says. “I’m bringing in Kyle Wallsburg for questioning.”
“He doesn’t have an alibi for last night?” I ask, rubbing my temples as I try and remember what the fuck I heard about Kyle recently.
“He’s acting suspicious like you said,” Jensen replies, and I’m pretty sure that’s just because I already aired out my opinion of the Wallsburg’s to our group.
” When Gabe questioned Constantine last month he said Kyle was aggressive towards the inmate.
Curious how suddenly Candace Swan is dead, when she was having a fling with Wallsburg.
Seemed like they wanted to keep it discreet but everyone at the penitentiary seemed to know. ”
Hmm. “Find out his whereabouts last night and verify the alibi. He could be our man but he could also be helping the copycat and using this job as a cover.”
“Already on it, boss.” I can hear the grin in Jensen’s voice. “I think Constantine’s going to drop some sort of hint. He’s grumpy as shit this morning.”
Unsurprising. “Gabe stayed with the victim?”
“He’s going with transport to the morgue to meet the coroner. He’ll going to ask about the other cases and meet the new guy. The one you said is a little nutty?”
For a moment, a smile pulls at my lips. The new coroner in Citrus Grove and the surrounding counties is a bit of a character, but in a good way.
He’s a little scatterbrained when you talk to him in person, and he introduced himself to me twice before telling me he’s better at remembering the faces of the dead than the living.
There’s nothing wrong with him, he’s just quirky.
And so far he appears to be doing a damn good job.
I believe he’s playing catchup after the sudden departure of the last coroner retiring early, but he muttered too much for me to get much else out of the guy.
Jensen is still rambling off facts to me, and I try to pull my thoughts back on track.
“The coroner who did Estrada’s autopsy was a stand-in while they searched for a replacement,” Jensen explains, and I do remember that part before we met the new guy. “ I heard from the ambulance driver on site that he’s supposed to be good.”
I agree from what I’ve seen of him so far. “Let’s hope so. Keep me updated.”
When I hang up I don’t immediately go into the bedroom, pausing long enough to let out a groan and lean against the wall.
We’ve been at this since January with not a lot to show.
Sometimes cases take an insufferable amount of time, but I remember the fear Alastair instilled in the townspeople when he went on his spree, and that terror is what I want to avoid.
I saw Swan’s body before I took off in a fit of rage to the penitentiary.
Come to think of it I remember passing fucking Wallsburg at the time as I was going through check in at CPG.
I had no idea he was even considered an issue at the time. Now he’s down at the precinct, and letting my emotions get the best of me is causing us to go about this case all wrong.
Going to Constantine this morning didn’t help. He confessed to nothing and my gut instinct is that he’s telling the truth. It’s possible that Swan could be an unplanned kill. Maybe she saw or heard something she shouldn’t have.
Kyle Wallsburg is almost too convenient of a suspect.
He hates Alastair, he was involved with the second victim intimately, and he would know plenty about the case being a guard at CGP.
I don’t like the crossovers I see in my head the longer I think about it, so instead I shake my mind clear and enter the bedroom.
So far it doesn’t appear that there was a scuffle here, making this unlikely as the location that she was killed.
Nothing seems disturbed or out of place and I don’t smell bleach from a clean-up.
We’ll have to check the security cameras and chat with all those nosey neighbors but it’s hard to tell if she even made it home last night.
There was no purse anywhere but I spotted a backpack sitting on her bed.
Checking the contents I find a laptop, another book, change of clothes, some common items like gum and sunglasses, and some other miscellaneous items. A loose key is at the bottom, separate from her key ring, and I shake my head at all of it.
Her wallet is inside, and when I open it up her ID, cards and cash appear to be in order. So she did come home, and then something distracted her. I shake my head and skim over everything again.
The book’s title sticks out, mostly because it makes me roll my eyes: Love in Lockup by C. Harrowths. There’s something sticking out of the top that I grab. It looks like a folded piece of paper, and could just be a receipt.
It’s a note. I decide to bag it separately to determine if she wrote it or not, and the swoopy script should be easy enough to compare to something she’s signed or noted at CGP.