A Deadly Influence (Abby Mullen Thrillers #1)(84)
Okay, fine, but why? What had Eric done? He’d called to say he’d found something, but how would the murderer even know what—
The interview.
The realization intensified her nausea. That journalist had published Eric’s interview that morning. He must have said something that had caught the murderer’s attention, made him think Eric knew something he shouldn’t. And maybe later, Eric had figured out what it was. Called the police, left a message for Carver to get back to him. Except by the time Carver called him, the murderer had shown up.
She stepped into Eric’s spare room. Ahmed was dusting the keyboard of the computer carefully. Abby examined the computer screen, where the image Eric had been working on was still displayed. It was a picture from Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The evil queen held a cell phone, and the caption below said, Instagram, Instagram, on the phone, who’s the fairest of them all? Gabrielle’s face was pasted crudely on top of the queen’s face. A half-empty bottle of scotch stood on the desk, no glass. Eric had been drinking straight from the bottle.
“You taking the computer?” she asked.
“Yup,” Ahmed said. “We’ll start looking through it tomorrow. Emails, browsing history, porn preferences, everything.”
“How long will that take?”
He shrugged. “It might be a while if this guy used his computer often.”
“I think he did,” Abby said.
She called the photographer and asked him to capture a few shots of the desk, including the image on the screen.
After he was done, she said, “Would you mind if I take a quick look?”
“Do you need the keyboard?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then I don’t have a problem,” Ahmed said. “Keyboards are a treasure trove of dead skin cells, fingernails, and fingerprints.”
“A treasure trove, huh?” Abby smiled despite herself. “You would have made a shitty pirate.”
“Shiver me timbers,” Ahmed said in a droll tone.
Abby gently moved the mouse with her gloved hand, checking the recent projects that Eric had been working on. The most recent was Nathan Pic. She clicked it. It was the image the kidnapper had sent Gabrielle of Nathan holding the newspaper. What had Eric thought about it?
“Do you know how to use Photoshop?”
“A bit.”
“Can you see if any changes were made to the photo on this computer?”
“Sure, give me that.” He took the mouse from her and checked one of the panels. “No changes. This image wasn’t modified from what I can tell. In fact, this isn’t even a project file; it’s an image opened in Photoshop.”
She took the mouse back and checked the two files before that. They were called Gabi_110219 and Gabi_102719.
She clicked one of them. It was one of Gabrielle’s pictures. Abby vaguely remembered a similar picture on Gabrielle’s Instagram account. “Any changes to this photo?”
Ahmed checked again. “Yup. He worked on this one. Here, see? Before—and after.” He clicked between two similar thumbnails. It was almost imperceptible, but Abby knew where to look. Gabrielle was thinner in the modified picture, her breasts slightly larger, a small skin blemish on her neck gone, eyebrows sharper.
She sighed and checked the folder that contained the Gabrielle projects.
It had over seven hundred files.
“Okay,” Abby said. “Let me know once you’re done with it. I might need to go through it again.”
“Will do.” Ahmed was carefully applying translucent tape to the neck of the scotch bottle to lift the fingerprints.
“And if you find either the missing dumbbell or a misplaced knife, call me immediately.”
“Right.”
Abby moved toward the hallway, careful not to step in the blood. She followed the bloody footprints to the bathroom. They stopped at the sink. Pink water drops stained its scratched porcelain surface. The murderer had cleaned himself up after killing Eric. She noticed a speck of mud on the edge of the faucet. She placed an evidence marker on the sink, then called over the photographer to take a close-up photo of the mud.
He’d even washed his shoes of the blood. Taken his time. How long had he been there after killing Eric? Twenty minutes? Half an hour?
An hour?
If Abby had shown up faster, would she have caught him inside?
She gritted her teeth and left the bathroom, her plastic-covered shoe kicking something tiny that clattered on the floor. Abby approached it and inspected it closely. What was it? An eggshell?
No, too thick. It was another skull fragment.
She stood up, about to call Ahmed’s attention to it, when the nausea rose. She had a few seconds. She lunged to the front door, yanked it open, took two steps, and threw up on a large bush to the side of the path.
“Abby?” Carver said behind her. “Are you okay?”
“Oh shit.” Abby wiped her mouth, staring at the bush.
“I just got here. Is Eric—”
“He’s dead,” Abby said numbly, still gawking at the spray of vomit. “I can’t believe I did that.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Carver said softly. “I won’t tell.”
“I think I’m going to have to,” Abby said, pointing. “I just vomited on the murder weapon.”