Threads of Suspicion(134)

“I’ve got a sinking feeling I already know,” John replied. “We haven’t been able to contact an assistant hairdresser Amy hired last week. Her phone isn’t picking up. Her neighbor thinks she’s out for dinner with her boyfriend.”

“You’ll let me know?”

“We’ve already pulled in some Chicago cops on it.”

David looked over at Evie on the bench inside the front door, boots off, and now pulling on crime-scene booties. “Come up with me, Evie.”

She knew what this was going to look like as well as he did. One of the good guys hadn’t killed their intruder, meaning he’d done it himself.

They found the body in Maggie’s bedroom, stretched out on her bed. The slice across the throat showed a self-inflicted angle—the knife still rested against his shoulder.

“It’s hard to kill yourself that way,” John said quietly. “Your hand wants to stop.”

David looked over at John, noting the reflective way he said it, saw the man’s military assessment along with the security guy who’d seen just about everything in his career.

Thank you, God was all he could think right then. That could have been Maggie.

“We’ve got it on video, not that the scene is going to need that much confirmation,” John said. “Got a name for him?”

“Andrew Timmets, out of Indiana.”

John glanced at Evie. “Is this the one who killed your college student?”

“He’s linked to three murders; the chosen method was smothering. We hope he’s also linked to Jenna. They were working on a search warrant for his home when the alarm here tripped.”

“Any idea why he ended it like this?”

“Only a guess. I would have expected to see some kind of message if this was a suicide plan,” Evie said, looking around.

“There’s no obvious one. Video shows him rushing in, realized from the scattered materials that Maggie had been here just moments before, looks in the closet, the bathroom, starts to leave the room to search the rest of this floor, and abruptly comes back to the closet. There’s no audio, but you can tell when he realizes he’s dealing with a safe room. He’s prying up the panel for it when he hears the security group arrive downstairs. He’s looking around, considering a confrontation, barricading himself in here. Then his body obscures the gesture, but he probably gives Maggie the finger and drops back on the bed where he does what you see here.”

David deliberately looked away to take in the rest of the room, seeing what Maggie had been working on when this happened. “We passed a lot of cops outside. How’d you keep them out there?”

“An understanding. The man in charge has been up to see the scene. They’re now watching live video. We don’t touch or move anything, we just figure out how to get Maggie out of this room without adding to the trauma she’s going to deal with. I’m all for leaving her in there until the scene’s clear, but they’re saying it’s going to be four hours minimum before they’re ready to move the body.”

“We’ll keep it simple. You hold a sheet up between us and him, and I make sure she doesn’t turn her head when she smells the blood, sees what’s splattered on that wall. Even better, we use a blindfold to override her instinct to look.”

John nodded. “Good. Let me see if we can get the stairwell debris cleared. It shouldn’t take their photographer that long to document the chaos. We escort her out and straight down to my SUV.”

“Where to from there?” David asked. John would have some options.

“I gave Bryce a call. She can stay with Charlotte and Bryce this evening, at least through the police statement. If she wants to go somewhere else after that, we’ll figure it out then. I had her travel bags cleared to take with her, as they were still packed downstairs. She’ll be comfortable for a few days.”

“Thanks, John.”

He left the room to make arrangements for her departure.

David sighed, considered the room again, avoided looking at the body. He wondered if Maggie would ever be able to live again in this home, and very much doubted it. “Evie, check the hall closet for sheets. If there’s a pillowcase, a towel, we can use that as a blindfold.”

She nodded and left.

There was no way to signal to Maggie he was opening the door. The front surface was air-gapped to prevent sound transmission. He stepped into the master closet and looked down. The blood on the floor by the access panel was the worst of it. He could block what Maggie saw in the first few seconds by how he moved into the safe room, hopefully get her turned so she couldn’t see directly into the bedroom. The smell of blood couldn’t be covered, so he’d have to deal with that question quickly.