Skeleton Key(99)

Neither of them minded. Mark Cashman seemed as if he would never mind much of anything again, and Stacey Spratz was obviously reluctant to go anywhere near the barn. To Gregor, police work had always had some connection with violent death. In the last ten years of his career, it had had no other connections at all. It seemed strange to think that there were men who wore police uniforms who had never seen violent death at all—and didn’t even want to.

Gregor left Mark and Stacey standing where they were and walked over to the barn. The state policeman on duty on the door nodded to him politely and let him pass. Gregor walked into the dark building and saw the body on the floor. It was right inside the bay, as if Margaret Anson had been on her way out into the drive when she’d been caught from behind. Because Gregor was fairly sure she had been caught from behind. He could see Kayla Anson being tricked by a murderer who came at her from the front, and certainly Zara Anne Moss, but Margaret Anson would have known better than to turn her back on anyone.

Tom Royce was bagging things. Gregor had never understood much about that part of police work. He went to stand in the circle around the body. This time, the white athletic shoelace was clearly visible. It was dug into the soft skin of Margaret Anson’s neck, like a cookie cutter half-pressed into dough. Margaret Anson had not been an attractive woman in life. She was even less of one in death.

Gregor cleared his throat. Tom Royce looked up and then stood up, visibly stretching.

“It’s you,” he said. “I thought you’d be along.”

“And?”

Tom shrugged. “And what? My guess is that it’s the same person, with the same method, but you’ll have to wait for the lab analysis and the autopsy. But it blows my favorite theory all to hell.”

“What was your favorite theory?”

“That this was a serial killer we were dealing with. Somebody who liked to off young women. Young women with long brown hair, specifically. That’s the way serial killers work, isn’t it?”

“There are elements to these crimes that don’t fit the pattern,” Gregor said. “The use of the garage, for one thing. Unless you meant that you thought Margaret Anson was the serial killer in question.”

“No. No, I didn’t. We had one, you know. A serial killer. Up in Hartford last year. Killing prostitutes. Why do you think so many of them kill prostitutes?”

“Prostitutes are available,” Gregor said. “They’re supposed to go to dark places alone with strangers.”

“I guess. She hasn’t been dead all that long, by the way. Not as long as Zara Anne Moss had been. The girl who found her said she was still twitching.”

“The girl was twitching, or the body was?”

“The body was.”

“That could have been an illusion,” Gregor said. “Somebody who wasn’t used to seeing dead bodies. Somebody who wasn’t really thinking straight.”

“Absolutely,” Tom Royce said. “But you know what it’s like. We have to listen to everybody. We have to know what everybody is saying.”

“I’m surprised you listen at all. I didn’t think it was customary for deputy medical examiners to sit in on interrogations. Or even casual inquiries.”

“I eavesdropped. Everybody eavesdropped. You couldn’t help but eavesdrop. She was hysterical.”

“This was Annabel Crawford?”

“Right. I felt sorry for her. I still feel sorry for her. I wish—”

“What?”

Tom Royce shrugged. “Nothing that makes any sense, I guess. That none of this had happened. That I was back in Hartford checking out the latest drug hit. That’s where you expect dead bodies. Not in places like this.”

This was nonsensical, but Gregor didn’t say so. People said a lot of nonsensical things in murder investigations. Besides, he knew, in a way, what Tom Royce meant.

“I think I’m going to go talk to this Annabel Crawford,” he said. “Unless you’ve got something else I need to know. Something unusual for once.”

“No, not a thing. Well, except for the door, and I don’t think that’s really unusual.”

“What door?”

Tom Royce pointed across the barn, to the far corner at the back. “That door. I think she must have left it open all the time. At least, it’s been open all three times we’ve been here. Although why, I’ll never know.”

“Why not?”

“Well, there’s nothing out there, that’s all. You run right into a wall of trees. The only thing I can think of is, when the door was put in there was yard back there and then it got grown over. If that makes sense to you.”