A Rip Through Time(111)
It’s Findlay. I know it is. And I’m in his apartment.
I check the alert on the back door and peer out the kitchen window. Everything is still dark and quiet.
I hurry into the bedroom. I have what I came for, but that won’t stop me from looking for more. I find it, too. This guy might fancy himself a clever killer, leaving pristine scenes that would frustrate even a modern forensic team, but he’s shit at hiding the more circumstantial evidence.
I’m going to guess that’s ego more than carelessness. If McCreadie found Findlay’s notebook, he’d never understand the significance of it. Findlay could claim anything from memory issues to investigative practice, learning to detail observations and recollections.
No, the only person who would understand it is the woman who crossed over with the imposter. That makes it safe. It’s not as if she’s a detective or anything.
I’d bet all of Catriona’s ill-gotten gains that the imposter hadn’t even found what I uncover next. It’s an envelope, not only hidden under his mattress but fastened to the mattress itself, so when it’s lifted, it won’t be seen unless the searcher peers up. In Findlay’s list of cases with McCreadie, a perpetrator must have hidden evidence like this, and he remembered it.
I pull out the envelope and find two notes inside. Both are penned in a cramped hand, each letter printed with care, as if by someone of questionable literacy.
Dear Constable Findlay,
Your little kitty-cat is doing you wrong. You think she is so interested in your job. All those questions she asks! She is interested … in selling every tidbit you give her.
If you want to know more, leave ten bob with the barkeep at the address below.
A friend
Davina. I’m sure of it. She calls Catriona kitty-cat, and the black-market dive bar is on the street she mentions.
Catriona sold out Findlay, and Davina sold out Catriona.
I check the envelope, but that’s the only thing in it. Odd to keep it quite so hidden. A thorough search of the mattress and under the bed confirms nothing fell out.
I’m continuing my search of the bedroom when I find a second note in the same hand, folded and lying right out on the dresser along with some coins and what looks like a shopping list—a few items Findlay must have needed to pick up. In other words, the contents of an emptied pocket, complete with bits of lint.
This is what Findlay had in his pocket the night he tried to kill Catriona. Items the imposter deemed irrelevant but had kept, just in case.
The note is in the same handwriting as the hidden one. From Davina.
Dear Constable Findlay,
Thank you for your generous donation. On Thursday night, come to the address where you delivered it, wait outside and I will deliver the proof. You will hear the kitty-cat yowl with your own ears.
A friend
I read the note twice. Then I sink on the bed and read it again. Thursday night. The night Catriona was attacked. Findlay came to the dive bar and waited outside. Catriona was inside, summoned for a meeting with Davina. The two women exit. Davina gets her talking about how she’s using the police intelligence she’s getting from Findlay. Then he …
What did he do next? Follow her? Wait for Davina to leave? Confront Catriona?
I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. He overheard, and he tried to kill her. And Davina knew it. If she didn’t see the attack herself, she at least knew what happened. She had set Catriona up, and Catriona had been strangled less than fifty feet away. She couldn’t help but know why and by whom, and she must have been inwardly laughing her ass off when I came around begging for whatever scraps she might share.
Lost your memory, kitty-cat? What a shame. Pay me, and I’ll jog it for you.
It’s a good thing I didn’t get a chance to meet her tonight and pay for more information. She’d have led me on a wild-goose chase. She sure as hell wouldn’t have admitted she sold Catriona out to Findlay, and he’d tried to kill her for it.
I return the note to where I found it. The imposter has no idea what it is, not without also finding that first note, and even then, he wouldn’t understand the significance. I do, and together with the note from Evans’s pocket, it will put Findlay on McCreadie’s radar as Catriona’s attacker. I just need an excuse for McCreadie to search this apartment and find it.
Will the note from Evans’s room be enough? It’s in Findlay’s handwriting, which I’m sure McCreadie can—
A noise makes me jump. It isn’t my alert, though. This comes from the front of the house. The sound of hooves trotting along the road, which is hardly unusual. What startles me is how loud they are. Far too loud to be coming through a solid wall.
I snuff out my candle, walk to that end of the bedroom, and discover there is a window. It’s small, just a typical basement window to let in a bit of light or air. It’s doing neither because someone—Findlay or his imposter—has covered it with dark fabric as a makeshift blind.
Footsteps sound on the sidewalk right outside the window. Booted footsteps. I can’t help lifting the edge of the fabric for a peek. If Findlay returns home from hunting in the Old Town, he’ll come this way, passing the town house before circling around to the mews entrance.
It’s not him, though. Just a well-dressed couple wandering home, a little unsteadily, as if they were at a neighbor’s for drinks. Before I drop the corner of the fabric, a movement catches my eye. Someone across the road. Someone in dark clothing, tucked in beside a shrub.