Page 105 of In Her Eyes

Chief Malone nods. “In your report, you said the apartment had been cleaned?”

“Y-yes.” My voice cracks.

“Just like the car from one of the victims. It was spotless,” Jake says.

I slump back into the chair and look at Jake. “I need to see everything you have.”

He returns the note to the chief and clears his desk, then brings out a plastic box.

The chief's cell phone buzzes. He grabs it out of his pocket. “Yes.”

Jake and I watch him.

“Send it to Knox and me and no one else.” He ends the call.

“They found something on the security video and are emailing a copy to you right now.”

I get up, and Jake takes the chair, his fingers flying over the keyboard as he enters his password.

As soon as his email fills the screen, he hits refresh. Again. And then again. My stomach twists in knots. A new message appears. The first email attachment shows a man dressed all in black wearing jeans, a baseball cap pulled low over his face, and a hoodie with the hood covering his head. He used the stairs, not the elevator. And by his movements—head down and body slouched—he's well aware of the cameras. He doesn’t knock and appears to have a key. The timestamp says 10:24 p.m. The video ends.

I’m shaking so much I have to hold on to the desk. Jake stands up and guides me to the chair.

“Look at the timestamp. This was minutes after I talked to Lynn. And he turned off the locator app on her phone, so the last known location is the apartment at 10:57 p.m.”

Both of them frown at me. “What locator app?” Chief Malone speaks first.

I forgot to tell them. I push the heels of my palms into my forehead, attempting to relieve the pressure behind my eyes from turning into a massive headache. “We have an app on our phones so we can check on each other. It started as a way for her to know where I was while I’m traveling. I checked the app as soon as I realized she was missing, and it said her phone was turned off.” I unlock my phone and open the app. “Look.”

Both of them lean closer to see the message on the screen.

The chief nods. “Was Miss Reynolds’ phone at the apartment?”

“No.” I look at the computer screen. “What’s the other video?”

Jake clicks on the attachment. The video plays. It’s a shot of the hallway outside the apartment. The door opens, and the same man from before leaves, but now taking Lynn with him. She, too, is wearing a baseball cap and a hoodie. Lynn stumbles at his side as he holds her up, an arm over his shoulder. Anyone seeing them would think she’s drunk. The time stamp on this video is 11:09 p.m. “He was in there for forty-five minutes. She’s been missing for nearly twelve hours.” The drugs had to have worn off by now. My God, Lynn. Please.

I press a fist to my mouth and hold in a sob. The image blurs as I blink away tears. The man takes her to the stairs, and the video ends. “That’s it? No video of him walking in or out of the building. Or the parking lot?”

Chief Malone shakes his head. “No. The security person at the building thinks he used the maintenance entrance and got in through the basement. No cameras there. He had to know the building well enough to know which camera areas to avoid. Except for the hallways. There’s no way to avoid that.”

“How easy would it be for someone to gain that information? Find out how to get into the building and avoid the cameras?”

Chief Malone rubs his face. “The building blueprint is public information. The cameras would take a little more work, but not that hard, either. He could have walked in weeks ago to scout the place, and there’s no way to know.”

Jake crosses his arms. “Wherever he’s been hiding has to be near the park. He must have easy access to it and is comfortable enough walking in there while carrying a body. Probably at night.”

I stand up and pace in the small space behind his desk. “Not necessarily. What if he’s hiding somewhere in the park? It would be easy enough for him to get rid of the bodies in the middle of the night.”

Chief Malone tilts his head. “In the park? I doubt. Both recovered bodies showed signs of being frozen for a while. He couldn’t possibly have a freezer big enough to hide bodies in the middle of the park. How would he get access to power?”

Frustration slams at me. I stare at the door. “Why can’t I just go out there and touch something from each of them? Like . . . like their car keys? That would tell me something.”

Jake takes a step back.

Chief Malone’s eyes widen, and he’s the first to recover. “That’s not a good idea. First of all, not everyone from the department is in. Some are out patrolling, and others have the day off. If the kidnapper is a cop, going out there would alert him. What if you don’t find anything incriminating? And it would, for sure, blow your cover. The press is outside, waiting. They would make a spectacle out of this if someone let that slide.”

“How many women have disappeared in total? Was it three you said when we first met?”

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