What Have You Done(18)
The apartment was small. From what he could tell, everything seemed pretty basic. The bedroom and bathroom were off to his left, down a slender corridor. The kitchen, dining area, and living room were no more than a single space, sectioned off by new pink wall-to-wall carpeting and white linoleum tiles. There was a couch, a tiny entertainment center with a television and stacks of books, and a coffee table with a laptop on it. That was all.
Don slipped off his shoes to make sure he left no wet footprints on the floor and put on gloves he had in his pocket. He turned on his flashlight and walked farther inside. Dirty dishes sat in the sink. Countertops were filled with snack foods and cereal. It was nothing out of the ordinary. He turned on the laptop that was sitting on the coffee table and waited for it to boot up. Framed paintings hung on yellow walls. Silver radiators kept the place warm. Plants hung in front of the windows that flanked the entertainment center. The place looked peaceful.
After a few minutes, the computer was on and waiting. Don sat down and took a flash drive from his pocket. In the silence of the apartment, he could hear the machine’s fan spinning. It sounded so much louder than it normally should. He plugged the drive into the USB port and began copying all the files. When he was done, he wiped the files from the laptop’s hard drive, leaving the basic functionality systems and her social media accounts. He shut the computer down, knowing that when Heckle and Keenan turned the laptop in for analysis, it would perform like a regular computer but would be absent of whatever these files might contain. He was banking on Forensics concentrating on her social media feeds to try to see who she’d been in contact with versus doing a full top-to-bottom scan. It was a risk, but taking the entire computer would put up more red flags than leaving it as it was. No computer on the premises would look too suspicious. A computer with light use could just be a user’s preference.
“Okay,” he whispered to himself. “What’s next?”
Don snuck his way from the living room area toward the bedroom. He shined his light as he went. Photographs of Kerri with friends and family, housed in a variety of frames, were all around him. He looked at them as he passed and could see the bright-eyed young woman so full of life smiling back at him. She was dead now, and he wondered if any of the people in the pictures were aware of what had happened yet.
There was a bed, a dresser, and a full-length mirror in the bedroom. Not much else. He went to the dresser and began pulling at clothes, moving items to study its contents. He really had no idea what he was looking for and searched quickly, going on to the next drawer and so on until the entire dresser had been turned over with nothing found. He went to the closet. It was small. Clothes hung with no space separating them, pushed together in a mass of hangers and material. He aimed his flashlight behind the clothes. Again, nothing. The shelf above held the same result. When he bent to take a look at the cubbyholes, he found only shoes. The closet was a closet.
“What do you have me chasing, Sean?”
He moved to the bed. A tangle of sheets and blankets hung from the mattress. He flipped them back and peered underneath. Groups of boxes filled the dusty floor. Something gold caught his attention, and he pulled it out. The box was square and shallow, the top gold, the bottom black. He stood and opened it.
The photo album within the box was leather bound with the initials KM embroidered in the corner and Memories in the center. He opened the album and noticed an inscription.
To Kerri,
Fill this album with every memory of our lives together. I love you and will always love you. Happy birthday.
Liam
Don flipped through the pictures to find the same couple in every shot. Smiling in each other’s arms. Smiling on the beach under an umbrella in Atlantic City. Smiling on the couch he’d just passed in the living room. They were on every page. It was Kerri and Liam. It was the victim and Liam Dwyer.
“Got it.” He closed the album, took the now-empty gold box, and carefully placed it back under the bed so there would be no dust markings from something he’d taken. Everything would look as it had been before. That was the trick.
Don remained on his hands and knees, checking every box, the flashlight his only source of light. He wouldn’t leave for another two hours.
13
Forensics was on the third floor of the Market Street precinct. Liam sat in his office looking at the set of fingerprints he’d lifted from the hotel crime scene, his thoughts a million miles away. The day had just begun, and already he was feeling the effects of not being able to sleep the night before. His heart ached as he read reports and filed notes into the computer. Each image or description from the units on scene stabbed at him, reminding him of the love he felt for Kerri and how alive he’d been whenever he was with her. He still couldn’t wrap his head around the fact she was gone.
The team had found a set of prints on the dresser and a partial print on the crystal of Kerri’s watch. Curiously, there had been nothing else anywhere in the hotel room. An area with such high traffic was bound to have more than a single set of prints, so they figured the killer must have wiped everything clean and left what the forensics team had found in error.
Liam took the fingerprints and scanned the card through his computer, watching as the images magnified and displayed on the monitor. The set they’d taken from the dresser appeared to be an index finger and pinky, both full and detailed. The partial on the watch was that of a thumb, a bit smudged but distinguishable nonetheless. He put both sets side by side on the screen and could see similar islands, dots, bifurcations, and ridges. There was no way to be certain, but it appeared the prints were from the same person.