Page 33 of The Drowned Woman
By the time she’d reached the end of the files, Leah understood the frustration that bled through the physicians’ clinical notes. Risa’s story never changed, but somehow her lab results were all over the place, totally inconsistent one visit to the next. Two of the specialists even suggested Munchausen syndrome—a psychological disorder when patients either lied about symptoms or produced them by ingesting various substances or via artificial means.
The more Leah read, the more she heard Luka’s voice in the back of her mind, telling her to look at all possibilities, even the ones she did not like. Like the possibility of Risa faking both her illness and her stalker.
Leah closed her laptop with a sigh. She needed Ian’s files on Risa, needed to see what he’d written, needed to read between the lines. Risa might be able to fool doctors—if she was faking her symptoms—but no way in hell would she be able to fool Ian.
It was time. Time to go home.
Nineteen
When Luka arrived back at the police department, Krichek was at his desk on the phone and Harper was nowhere to be seen, so he parked himself in his office and caught up with his emails and reports.
The first was Ahearn blasting him for not making the sergeants’ meeting and implying that he was inclined to favor McKinley’s take on what had happened this morning. Thankfully, Leah’s email with the recording of her interview with Risa Saliba along with a summary report was also in his inbox, allowing him to dispatch the problem quickly, cc’ing both Ahearn and McKinley as well as the commander in charge of patrol.Let them sort it out upstairs, he thought.
Leah had also forwarded Risa’s emails and attachments with her files on her stalker. Luka should have been writing his own reports on the Orly death as well as his other open cases, but couldn’t help but take a peek. That one quick look soon turned into a journey down a rabbit hole as he skimmed the dozens of emails, Risa’s notes, and then her database.
He read the stalker’s emails first, fascinated by the psychology of the writer. More than simple narcissism, they revealed a depraved egotism typical of psychopaths. Yet, somehow, the stalker also seemed to genuinely care about Risa.
Then he turned to Risa’s notes and research. She’d collected an overwhelming amount of data. After almost an hour, he closed all the files and sat back, wondering if he’d gotten everything wrong. This level of obsession was dangerous, even in someone healthy.
Not Risa’s stalker’s obsession with her, rather Risa’s obsession with her stalker. It was statistically unlikely that an actual serial killer was behind the letters. Certainly, the letters contained no real evidence. How could a seasoned investigative journalist not see that? Maybe she was desperate to regain the spotlight, win another Pulitzer and return to her former glory?
As he clicked through the myriad of tabs in Risa’s database he wondered if maybe it wasn’t Walt faking his symptoms, but Risa. After all, who better to get close to Trudy outside her apartment than her neighbor, the one who helped her with Walt? And the stun gun changed everything about the mechanics of the crime—their killer didn’t have to be stronger than Trudy Orly, only quicker. He made a note to ask Leah more about Risa’s medical condition, see if her symptoms could be fabricated.
Before he could take his musings farther, Krichek and Harper waved at him through the glass wall of his office. Luka nodded to the conference room where they’d have space to work, grabbed his laptop and a notepad and joined them there.
Krichek sprawled in his chair, a smirk on his face, but it was Harper who was doing the victory dance.
“Warrants come through?” Luka asked as he slid into his seat.
“Got patrol searching for the phone and the stun gun,” Krichek answered. “Also have the financials and—”
“But that’s not—” Harper cut in.
“And the phone records,” Krichek drawled, clearly enjoying tormenting the junior member of the squad. “But I think maybe Harper has news from the cyber squad.”
“Yes,” she exclaimed. “Sanchez figured out that the baby monitor you found was loading to the Orlys’ cloud account and we have the password, so he was able to remotely access the monitor videos.” She paused to take a breath as she clicked her tablet. “Watch this.”
A grainy night vision video revealed Walt sleeping. The time stamp was from 8:19 this morning. Walt was tossing and turning, his hands flapping about, despite him seeming sound asleep. The chime of the doorbell made him jerk upright, eyes open. “Trudy?” he shouted. After waiting a few moments with no answer, he threw back the covers and got out of bed, his gait slow and shuffling, moving past the camera’s range. With no motion to activate it, after a minute the camera went blank.
“Did you see the time? When the doorbell rang?” Harper asked. “It was only two minutes before the first 911 call.”
Krichek was not impressed. “So? She locked herself out, he’s pissed, opens the door, argues with her, she drops her bags, he shoves her over the railing. Bing-bang-boom, two minutes is plenty of time.”
“Her keys were in the lock,” Luka reminded him.
“There’s a safety latch on the inside to prevent Walt from leaving,” Harper added. “Either Trudy or someone using her keys had to open it for him. Walt couldn’t have opened that door himself.”
Luka wasn’t sure that Walt couldn’t have opened that door, but he let Harper’s comment slide. “Maggie found marks from a stun gun on Trudy’s scalp, hidden by her hair. So whoever did this—”
“Planned it.” Krichek blew his breath out, conceding the point to Harper. “Unless they just happened to be carrying a stun gun and just happened to see Trudy right after she unlocked her door and just happened to know Walt was asleep inside so they needed to ring the bell to wake him and open the door from the outside for him…”
“We need to test those childproof latches, see how difficult they really are,” Luka said, reluctant to give up on Walt as a suspect totally. After all, the vast majority of the time, the domestic partner was involved in cases like this one.
“Dr. Wright could maybe help us know if Walt’s symptoms are as bad as everyone thinks,” Krichek said. “He could still be our actor.” He frowned. “Except for the damn monitor. It shows he was asleep before the doorbell—so who rang the doorbell? No reason for the wife to use it when she had her keys.”
“Wait.” Harper was still up, practically bouncing on her toes. “That’s not the only thing Sanchez found.” She clicked through to the Orlys’ cloud account. There were two folders labeled with numbers correlating to each of the Orlys’ phones. Harper clicked on one and the screen filled with dozens of photos.
“Look at the dates,” she told them.
