Page 28 of She Didn't See It Coming
It all started when she watched that show on Netflix—Don’t F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer.It was a documentary about agroup of people online who connected through a public Facebook group because they were outraged by the anonymous posts of some deranged person on YouTube showing cats being tortured. The group was calledFind the Kitten Vacuumer…for Great Justice.They wanted to find out who was hurting these cats, because if there’s anything that people on the internet love, it’s cats. Lizzie loves cats herself—especially Pip and Squeak. And everyone knows that lots of serial killers start out by torturing and killing animals before they move on to people—it’s a huge red flag. But the police weren’t much help with the online cat torturer. So the online sleuths, building on what one another learned, eventually discovered who the creep was—someone called Luka Magnotta, a Canadian. And they also figured out that he was responsible for the grisly murder of a man in Montreal. They did the police’s job for them, solving the murder and tracking Magnotta down so that he could be arrested, ultimately, in Berlin.
Once she saw that documentary, Lizzie, already an avid reader of true crime, was hooked. She ventured into that world, gently at first. She became obsessed with other cases, just as gripping.
Now, she logs on to the Facebook group True Crimes in Albany NY. She uses her fake profile on here. She suspects some others do too. She calls herself Emma Porter. She logs on to see what people are saying about her sister’s disappearance. She goes back to her own first post, that she’d made yesterday evening on her phone from the condo, the one that started it all. She’d posted a picture of the front of Bryden’s condominium building, a photo that was already on her phone, that she’d taken when Bryden and Sam had moved in, with the address prominently displayed. And then she’d written:
A woman has just gone missing from a condominium at 100 Constitution Drive. Police are on the scene. Stay tuned for updates!
She skims the recent posts of people speculating about what might have happened to Bryden; there is considerable interest. Well, it is an interesting case. Perfectly happy woman goes missing from her condo in the middle of the day. Lizzie reviews her own posts, the ones she’d made furtively the day before on her cell phone from the condo, with Sam sitting nearby, oblivious.
Still no sign of her, and it’s been hours. Apparently, she didn’t pick up her kid at day care.
Michelle Gautier
Oh no, she has a kid?
They’ve searched the building. I’m on the ground here, outside, and there’s police and reporters everywhere.
Tessa Workman
Post more pics!
She’d ignored that. She couldn’t post more pics because she’d been inside the apartment, and she certainly couldn’t post any pics from there, unfortunately.
It’s a pretty safe neighborhood, and a nice building—hard to believe it happened here.
Michelle Gautier
Nowhere is safe for women.
Tessa Workman
It can happen anywhere. Probably domestic violence. It usually is.
From the sound of it, it looks as if she just stepped out for a minute. Maybe she’ll turn up, safe and sound. Fingers crossed!
But Bryden hadn’t turned up, safe and sound. Lizzie hasn’t posted anything today yet. And now things are about to get a lot more interesting.
Lizzie takes a deep breath and begins to type.
18
After interviewing Sam Frost, Jayne and Kilgour return to the condo. They know for certain now that it is a crime scene. Bryden didn’t walk away—she must have been murdered and placed in the suitcase in the apartment, and then taken down to the storeroom.
But it doesn’t look like any crime scene Jayne has been to before. It looks as if nothing has happened here at all. There are no bloodstains, no yellow cards laid out by the forensics team marking evidence. Jayne watches as the technicians walk around in their white suits, dusting methodically for fingerprints, looking for hair, fibers, anything.
Jayne is very suspicious of the husband. It’s his suitcase. He has keys to the storage room. And most damning of all, he has no alibi.
•••
Alice Gardner curls upin bed in a pale-pink satin slip of a nightgown. She has brushed out her long auburn hair till it gleams.She’s studied her porcelain skin in the mirror and smiled at herself. She’s plumped up the pillows and now she pats the ones next to her for her husband, who is changing out of his clothes, to join her. She’s feeling amorous, and she hasn’t seen him all day. She got in late, because she had dinner plans. “How was your day?” she asks.
He gives her a look and slides into bed beside her in nothing but his boxers. “I had a visit from a detective today. A female detective.”
“Really? Why?”
“Do you remember a few weeks ago when that woman smashed into the back of my Tesla?”
“How could I forget? You were furious.”
