“I won’t say a word. I hope to God you’re right.”
“I should know for certain by the end of the day.”
“Anything you want, you got. Name it.”
“Not if it’s going to get you in trouble, but I need information about the Victoria Mills homicide.”
“That’s not your case.”
“No. It’s not even an FBI investigation. But I have reason to believe the Albright murders and the Mills murder are connected. All I want is to look at the forensics.”
“Detective Reed is pretty good, have you talked to her?”
“I’ve been trying. She hasn’t responded to my calls.”
“Well, you can look, but without clearance you can’t take.”
“All I want is a look.”
Ash led her to his corner of the lab. He pulled over a second stool for her, and she sat. “It’s all on the computer. I could pull the physical files, but it would take longer.”
“This is fine.”
Ash logged in and pulled up the Mills files. “What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know. I read the autopsy report, but I don’t have details that weren’t made public. I want to visualize the scene. Based on the autopsy, she was killed at close range, stabbed twice, pushed into the pool.”
“Yep.” He enlarged the autopsy report, read it along with her. “Tox screen negative—no drugs or alcohol. She was a very healthy woman.”
“May I?” she asked, and motioned to the keyboard and mouse.
“It’s all yours. I need to check on an experiment, if you’re done before I get back just log out.”
“Thanks, Ash. I really appreciate this.”
Ash left, and she scrolled through the crime scene photos. The scene itself appeared almost serene. Nothing out of place. She had been stabbed only a few feet from the pool, either fell or was pushed in. Because the killer was so close and only removed the knife twice, there wasn’t a lot of blood spatter, only a few large bloodstains on the sandstone, which had absorbed the drops before the police arrived.
Lucy brought up the police report. Some of it she already knew, like that Victoria had been found the following morning at eight by the pool maintenance guy. She’d died between ten and eleven Friday night. The investigation showed that she had disarmed the alarm at nine twenty that evening and entered through the front door. It had never been reset, but the front door was locked. No sign of forced entry, but the rear sliding glass door was unlocked—and Victoria’s fingerprints had been found on it.
Further investigation showed that she had brought over a plate of finger sandwiches, orange juice, and champagne that she’d picked up earlier in the evening—they were for an open house that was supposed to run from eleven to two Saturday. According to the police investigation, they learned that Victoria didn’t list many houses and when she did they were high-end, million-dollar properties and usually for friends. This house was listed for $1.6 million in Alamo Heights, not far from Lucy and Sean in Olmos Park. The open house had been advertised, but everything else about the murder itself suggested that Victoria knew her killer.
Lucy scrolled through the rest of the report. Her purse and wallet had been recovered in the kitchen, nothing missing. Why had she gone outside? To check on something? Did she see something? Did she just want some fresh air? The yard was beautiful, with lots of flowers and trees and a black-bottom pool with a waterfall. Maybe she wanted to walk the grounds, think about what to tell prospective buyers, or maybe she was talking to someone. Maybe someone came with her.
Victoria’s car had been dusted for prints, and there were no new prints, though both Mitch Corta’s and Stanley Grant’s prints had been found in the vehicle. Not a surprise. No prints in the house other than the owners’, a long-time housekeeper’s, and Victoria’s—which lent credence to the idea that Victoria had let her killer into the house.
A supplemental report from the owners said nothing was missing—no jewelry, art, knives, et cetera. That meant the killer brought the knife with him. For the purpose of killing Victoria, or was it a knife that he always carried? Lucy didn’t assume it was for murder—she knew many people who routinely carried a knife, mostly cops or former military as well as her husband. But a knife was a far more intimate weapon than a gun.
And much quieter.
She looked for surveillance reports. In a neighborhood like the one where Victoria was murdered, many of the residents likely had security cameras. The owners had no cameras, just the alarm system. There was no such security report. Why? Wouldn’t they canvass the neighborhood? Check cameras?
She flipped through the other pages. Two officers talked to neighbors. No one heard or saw anything. One couple who were walking their dog at eleven fifteen that night said that they saw Victoria’s car in the driveway but no other vehicle. The killer either was gone or had parked in a different location and walked over.
That seemed unlikely. A stranger walking in that ritzy neighborhood might be noticed.
Unless they looked like they belonged there.
Jennifer Reed had interviewed Mitch Corta first. In her notes, he was upset and distracted. He confirmed that she was going to the house to set up for the open house the next day. He had an alibi—he was in Bandera appraising a massive ranch. The owner of the property verified that he arrived at four that Friday afternoon and stayed for dinner, leaving around ten thirty.
Impossible to get all the way to Alamo Heights by eleven unless he was practically flying. It was nearly sixty miles, and some roads you couldn’t go sixty, let alone a hundred.
She’d also interviewed Stanley Grant. He’d had dinner with his sister that night, left at nine, and gone home. No real alibi, but he had a security system on his house. It would have been easy enough to check—which no one did. Still, many systems could be bypassed or cheated. He could reprogram it to show he was in when he was out and vice versa. But in her initial notes, Reed didn’t think Grant was guilty.
She’d interviewed Victoria’s family, including her brother, Simon, and only one comment from him was interesting:
“Victoria believed someone was following her. She didn’t know who, and she was more angry than scared. Because that was her.”
Lucy thought about the two black SUVs that had followed her and Nate and the sedan that had followed Max and Sean when they left Harrison Monroe’s office.
The notes about the alleged stalker were vague, and it didn’t appear that Reed followed up on it, other than to ask Mitch and Stan about it—they both said that Victoria mentioned a “damn SUV” that she thought she saw more than once, but it was more than a month before she was killed and they didn’t think much of it because she didn’t mention it again.
No interview of Harrison Monroe, no mention of him at all in the report. Two men had been interviewed and let go—a known sex offender who lived in the neighborhood with his sister. She said they watched a movie and were asleep by eleven thirty and her brother didn’t leave the house. Didn’t mean he didn’t but based on forensics, it’s clear that Victoria wasn’t sexually assaulted and, again, Lucy believed she knew her killer. Reed thought so as well—she’d mentioned it at least three times in different areas of the report.