A Merciful Secret (Mercy Kilpatrick #3)(49)

Bolton nodded. “I’d wondered the same. Maybe even the same weapon used on Olivia Sabin.”

Truman took a careful step forward and squatted, taking a closer look and breathing through his mouth. He didn’t see the distinctive patterning Mercy had described to him from the bodies of Malcolm Lake and Olivia Sabin. The slashes in Rob’s clothing looked random. Brutal. Angry. Multiple cuts covered his hands and arms. Rob Murray had tried to protect himself.

“I take it the ME hasn’t been here yet?” Truman asked.

“Not yet.”

Truman noticed Mercy examining the room and did the same. Grimy bare walls, a bed with no bottom sheet, dirty clothes left on the floor. The open closet was nearly empty, a few wire hangers dangling. It appeared Rob left most of his clothes on the floor or in the overflowing laundry basket. Mercy peered at a crime novel next to another full ashtray on the nightstand.

She turned in a circle, frowning. “I don’t see anything that reminds me of the other murders except for the use of the knife. It looks like he put up a fight. No neighbors heard anything?”

“We’re still checking. Anything else?”

Truman noted the hopeful tone in Bolton’s voice. He needed a lead.

“I don’t see anything,” Mercy said. “Can we get out now?”

I don’t blame her.

Truman was done too. Leaving, he noted a crime scene tech rooting under Rob’s bathroom sink with a wrench, removing the trap to search for evidence the killer might have left behind. Outside he took a breath of clean icy air and removed his gloves and booties, dropping them in an evidence bag.

“I heard Morrigan’s mother returned,” said Bolton.

“She did,” answered Mercy. “Morrigan only spent one night in temporary care.”

“That’s good. Hate to see kids kept away from their parents.” His eyes were questioning, and Truman heard the unspoken question about Salome Sabin.

“Salome wasn’t arrested,” he stated.

“Good. I didn’t want to think that Morrigan’s mother would leave her behind after that murder. She must have been cleared?” Another leading question.

Truman looked to Mercy. Do we tell him?

She nodded, but she wasn’t happy about it. No law enforcement wanted to admit a suspect had slipped away. “She hasn’t been fully cleared.” Mercy cleared her throat. “She disappeared with Morrigan last night.”

“No shit?” Bolton’s expression vacillated between amusement and concern.

“I know,” said Mercy. “We’re not happy about it. She’d agreed to an interview this morning and we trusted she’d show up. Her concern about her daughter made us all believe that she wouldn’t have left Morrigan in such a horrible situation. We were suckered.”

“That means she could have been here today,” Bolton said softly.

His first instinct was to defend Salome, but Truman knew Bolton was right. “Three victims make a serial killer. Is this the third?”

“Actually the FBI recently defined it as two, but we aren’t positive the same person killed Judge Lake and Olivia,” Mercy pointed out. “Murray could be totally unrelated. Let’s not get the media believing we’ve got a serial killer in the area.”

“The first two similar death scenes can’t be ignored,” Truman argued. “I agree the method of murder used on Murray appears a bit different, but that fancy knife sticking out of his neck makes me think it’s at least related to Olivia Sabin’s.”

Mercy watched a uniform going from door to door, asking if residents had heard or seen anything unusual. “You’d think in an apartment building where the walls are this thin, someone would have heard something. I can’t believe Rob Murray died silently. I hear plenty of racket from my neighbors, and my building has pretty thick walls, but there are some things you can’t tune out.”

Like the screams of death?

“Another reason I want to move out of there,” she added.

Truman froze, wondering if she’d bring up her new real estate hunt. Instead she said good-bye to Bolton, and Truman followed her down the stairs. Why hasn’t she talked to me about it?

A heaviness weighed him down, and his steps slowed.

Maybe Mercy didn’t see them living together in the future. Or she could be overprotective of Kaylie, not wanting to set an example by shacking up with her boyfriend. But wouldn’t she have told me?

He shoved the paranoid thoughts out of his head. He liked what he had with Mercy. She made him smile and look forward to getting out of bed each day. He’d been focused on his job to the exclusion of everything else during the six months before she came to town. Now the world looked and felt different to him. He liked it.

She stopped at her vehicle as her phone rang. “It’s my mother.” Her forehead wrinkled. “We had coffee recently, I don’t know why she’d be calling.”

Her relationship with her mother wasn’t as close as she wanted, and Truman knew Mercy kept trying. But she didn’t want to come between her father and mother. Right now her mother’s first loyalty was to her husband, and he didn’t want Mercy in their lives.

“Mom?” she said into the phone. As she listened, her forehead wrinkled even more and her lips parted. “She did what? What did Dad say to her?”