Already Dead (Laura Frost FBI)

Only Mrs. Powers was listed in the dossier Laura had been given. One left out of three. She wondered where the father was, and whether he would be significant in any way.

“Thank you,” Laura said, as she settled into a chair to Mrs. Powers’s left, as the woman herself sat down on a sofa. The living room held more photographs, beside the furniture and a large-screen television. It all looked nice enough, if a few years old. “I’m sorry for your loss, and that we have to do this now. But we’d really like to catch this person before anyone else gets hurt.”

Mrs. Powers nodded. She lifted her chin up, like she was trying to be brave. “Please. Ask whatever you need to.”

Laura nodded. “This first question may be hard to contemplate. But I want you to think really hard. Is there anyone you can think of who might have wanted to harm your daughter, in any way? Even if you think that something like this would be a total overreaction?”

Mrs. Powers sat, looking up at the ceiling with red-rimmed eyes, like she was trying to think. Laura saw the lines of her daughter’s face in the mother’s. A resemblance that would no doubt haunt her, now, when she looked in the mirror. “No,” she said at length. Laura had the impression she really had taken the time to think about it deeply, which was something. But it was still nothing, after all. “No, there’s no one I can think of.”

“Your daughter still lived here, isn’t that right?” Laura asked, going off the information she’d read.

“Yes, she’s only twenty-one,” Mrs. Powers said. Her face crumpled a little as she seemed to realize what she’d said: is, not was.

Laura made a mental note of that. She hadn’t processed the thought until now, but Cecilia was the youngest victim so far. In fact, each of the victims had descended in age exactly: twenty-three, twenty-two, twenty-one. Was that something? Could she follow that link, start isolating any twenty-year-old women who lived in town? Maybe it was worth a shot. Or maybe she was just grasping at straws.

“What about her father?” Laura asked delicately, phrasing the question as openly as possible. Mrs. Powers could interpret it as she would and offer the most logical answer that came to her. That was probably better than going direct and getting it wrong.

“He passed about five years ago,” Mrs. Powers said. She looked at Laura with a kind of misty sadness in her eyes, a pain that was long held but still burned. “Cancer.”

For a moment, Laura couldn’t even find the words. To be widowed, and then to lose a child. It was awful. “I’m sorry,” she said, at last. At least there was nothing to follow up there. No jealous jilted parent, no suspicious circumstances surrounding two generations of deaths. She paused respectfully before continuing. “Do you know if Cecilia spent any time with either Evelina Collins or Ashley Christianson?”

“She knew Ashley,” Mrs. Powers nodded. “She never mentioned Evelina, though they went to the same school. She was a couple of years younger. Maybe just a bit too much of an age gap for them to have connected. She hadn’t gone to college, my Cici. A lot of her old friends around here drifted away from her, anyway, because they went out of town. Even if they came back, it wasn’t quite the same anymore.”

Laura nodded sympathetically. “Do you know if she had a boyfriend, or any exes?”

“A couple,” Mrs. Powers said vaguely. “But they were nice boys. I don’t always remember their names… it wasn’t ever serious, I don’t think.”

Laura wished she could get a more definitive answer, but she could see the woman was doing her best. She was starting to drift away into the grief again, to be consumed by it. Laura needed to wrap things up, to ask her final questions fast before it was too late.

“Do candles mean anything to you?” she asked, since it was worth a try.

“Candles?” Mrs. Powers said, with a sweet but sad smile. “She loved candles.”

Laura sat up straighter. “Cici did?”

“I can show you,” Mrs. Powers said, getting up. It seemed to take her an age to do so, struggling against the softness of the sofa, pushing herself to her feet. Laura was on the verge of reaching out a helping hand when Mrs. Powers managed it and began to amble away, down the hall again.

Laura followed her to a door which was decorated with cutout butterflies, layered on top of one another for a 3D effect. The door of a teenager’s bedroom, still kept the same way since she’d never left home. Mrs. Powers pushed it open and led Laura inside, into a room that was neatly kept and somewhere awkward between child and adult, a space that must have contained so many memories within its walls.

The sheets on the bed were neutral toned, silk, very mature and grown-up. The books on the shelves, though, were those of a teenager’s library – young adult titles about vampires and werewolves and gossipy intrigue. The wardrobe, hanging open, contained workwear and formalwear next to miniskirts and cropped tees. Even the walls were a mishmash of inspirational quotes in solemn frames and glossy photographs of young friends, some of them crinkled or faded with time.

But over and above it all, dominating almost every surface, were the candles.

They were all shapes and sizes, most of them in decorated containers that held labels denoting their scent. Half-baked cookie, vanilla cheesecake, fresh brownie – they sounded more like a café menu than candles. Laura stepped closer and picked one up, looking at it and bringing it to her nose. The scent of birthday cake brought a headache with it, making her stop and examine the label more closely –

Flames. Flames all around her, filling her sight until it was the only thing she could comprehend. And then a flash, a split second, and the flames were gone – blown or snuffed out.

Laura blinked. The same vision. First the fire, and then it was gone. What did it mean? Why was she seeing things twice now?

“She loved buying them,” Mrs. Powers said. “Burning them, too. I always had to watch her closely to make sure she didn’t leave one on when she went to sleep or left the house. It was a fire hazard, I used to say, but she never paid me any attention. She just loved the smell of them.”

Laura turned the candle over, looking at the bottom. There was a brief description written there: made in China stood out to her. It wasn’t one of the candles made at the local factory. She scanned across the room, looking for anything with a different label. “Did she always buy this brand?” Laura asked.

Mrs. Powers nodded. “My Tony, he used to buy them for her as birthday gifts. She loves them. She always keeps the same brand because she remembers him by them.”

Laura chewed her lip for a moment, thinking. She put the candle back, letting her fingers stray across the one next to it just in case something else would be triggered. There was nothing. For all she knew, she was just getting a vision of what was destined to happen to the candle itself, at this point. It wouldn’t be the first time a vision had turned out to be totally unconnected to a case in any way.

The candles weren’t the same type as the ones the killer used – the long-burning, thick kind, plain and white with no scent. They were seemingly unconnected. Just another clue that didn’t quite add up. Laura felt like screaming.

“Thank you, Mrs. Powers,” she said. “You’ve been very helpful. If something else comes to mind, I want you to call me, okay? No matter what it might be.”

Laura checked her watch as she left the property, heading back to the car. It was still early in the morning, but she could already feel time slipping away from her. She needed to get back to the precinct and figure out her next steps – and try not to panic about the fact that she really had no idea what to do next.