Before She Dies (Alexandria Novels 3)

Suzanne gripped the wallet in her fist as she stared at them. “What are you doing in my sister’s apartment?”

“Why don’t you come into the living room and have a seat?” Sinclair said. The detective could hold her own with the department’s toughest cop or face down any assailant and still possessed a surprising knack for dealing with victims and their families.

“Lady, I do not want to sit down,” Suzanne said. Tears welled in her eyes. “What are you doing here?”

Death notices were never easy, and Rokov had learned years ago from a veteran detective to make them as quick as possible. “Ms. Young, your sister’s body was found early this morning in an abandoned building. She’d been murdered.” The gruesome details would eventually be revealed to Suzanne, but for now he’d spare her.

Tears spilled down her cheeks. “What do you mean, she’s dead? You’ve got it wrong. Diane cannot be dead.”

“We’re very certain, ma’am,” Rokov said.

“How can you be certain?”

Sinclair stepped toward her. “She was wearing a very distinctive red jacket. We located the seller, and he gave us your sister’s name. The woman we have in the morgue matches your sister’s DMV photo.”

“You could have made a mistake.”

“It’s no mistake. We’ve taken prints and plan to match them to ones found in this apartment.”

Suzanne dragged trembling hands through dark hair that looked so much like her sister’s. “There has got to be a mistake.”

“No mistake,” Rokov said.

She looked to the picture taken of the two sisters. Her eyes brightened as if clinging to a happier memory. “We had that picture taken this past summer. Diane almost never got out of her apartment and I was able to coax her out. We went into Washington, had lunch, and saw a show.”

“You said she didn’t go out much?” Rokov said.

“Her work kept her busy.”

Sinclair closed the gap between her and Suzanne and cupped her elbow with her hand. “Come and sit down. Let me get you a glass of water.”

Suzanne allowed the detective to lead her onto the living room sofa. Rokov went into the kitchen and pulled a glass from the cabinet and filled it with water. He moved into the living room and handed it to Suzanne, who accepted it with trembling hands. She made no move to drink the water but held the glass tight. Pale and fragile would have described her best right now.

“Can you tell us a little bit more about what your sister did?” Rokov took a seat in one of the club chairs. Knowing his height could be intimidating, he leaned forward and dropped his gaze a fraction.

“She ran a website.”

“Beyond,” Sinclair said.

“That’s right. She read cards and did charts. She’d become widely popular in the last year. Hits on her site were over a half a million last month.”

Rokov had never heard of Beyond, but knew that rate of visitation would have put her on a lot of people’s radar. “Is that why she didn’t go out much?”

Her gaze shifted slightly as she stared at the water glass. “She said it was the work that kept her here in the apartment. She said she always had more and more requests to fill. She said it was all she could do to keep up.”

“But work wasn’t the only reason she stayed in the apartment.”

When Suzanne raised her gaze, he knew he’d hit a nerve. “It started a couple of years ago.”

“What started?” he coaxed.

“She got more and more nervous about driving on the Beltway. She said the traffic was driving her nuts. That’s when she founded Beyond. She’d work on the site on weekends and evenings. It seemed to really calm her nerves so I thought it was great. And then the site took off and she was able to quit her job as a secretary and devote all her time to it. She was so happy that I didn’t really put two and two together. Then one day I asked her if she wanted to get lunch in two weeks, and she said she’d likely have far too much work to make it. That’s when I realized she had a problem.”

“There were sedatives on her nightstand.”

“She needed those to sleep and to just walk to the mailbox.”

“The bottle was almost empty.”

“She’d said on the phone last week that she’d been considering meeting one of her clients for a date. He e-mailed her a lot, and she was kinda falling for him.”

“You know who this guy was?” Rokov said.

“No. She just mentioned him in passing. He said he wanted to take her to the carnival that had just arrived in town. He was really into astrology and energy healing. It never occurred to me that she’d really go on a date.” Suzanne shook her head. “I should have pushed this homebound thing more with Diane. I talked to several doctors about her and even a lawyer. They all said she was over twenty-one, was working steadily, and didn’t appear to be a danger to herself. They said there wasn’t anything I could really do unless she tried to hurt herself.”

“She ever try to hurt herself?” Rokov said.

“No. Never. Diane really did enjoy this world she’d created. Here, she said, she was the queen.”

Someone or something had coaxed her outside. “Did she have any tattoos?”

“Yeah. A few. She had a snake on her arm and two bands around her ankle. There is also a long string of stars tattoo at the base of her spine.”

All matched the autopsy findings. “Any words?” “Like what?”

“Any kind.”

“No.”

“When we found your sister, she had the word Witch tattooed on her forehead.”

Suzanne frowned. “Diane did not have the word Witch on her forehead. Are you really sure you have the right person?”

“Yes, ma’am. Very sure.” Had Diane summoned the courage to get out of her apartment in the last week and get the tattoo or had the killer done it?

“She had a thing about the skin on her face. It was part of her getting out of the house problem. She didn’t want the sun to ruin her skin. She took pride in how smooth and pale it was.” Her eyes watered up again. “Do you think whoever killed her did that to her?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

“How did she die?”

“She was drowned.”

“What? She doesn’t even swim. She hated the water a

nd never goes near it.”

“That’s what the autopsy revealed.”

She closed her eyes and shook her head. “This doesn’t make sense. Why would anyone want to hurt Diane? She had her quirks, but she was kind.”

“Do you happen to know the password for her computer?” Rokov said.

“It’s 1985diane. The year she was born plus her name.”

“I’d like to have a look at her computer and see if I can open her e-mails.” The question was a courtesy. With or without her permission, he was going to look.

“Sure. Go ahead.”

As he rose, Suzanne moved to stand as well. “Why don’t you stay here with Officer Sinclair?”

Sadness and sincerity rolled off her. “I might be able to help.”

“I appreciate that. Really. But until I know what I have, it’s better that I have a look first.” He felt for Suzanne Young, but at this point he didn’t know much about her or her relationship with her sister. And until he understood the players, he’d maintain strict control.

As he moved down the hallway, Suzanne’s soft weeping followed him. He sat at Diane’s desk and typed in the password. It worked and in seconds the main desktop screen appeared.

The desktop had twenty folders. Tarot. Horoscope. Clients. The Star. Moon. It would take hours if not days to dig through all that she’d created.

He opted to open the e-mail and see who’d been talking directly to her. He hit Get Mail and waited for the latest messages to load. If Diane had been dead twenty-four to thirty-six hours, it had been at least that long since she’d checked her messages. It took nearly a minute for all the messages to load, and by the time the ticker had stopped counting, he had over one thousand two hundred unread messages. He sat back in his chair. The last time she’d checked messages had been Friday, October 15. She’d died on Monday night. Had the killer held her for three days?

He arranged the messages in alphabetical order and scanned to see who had sent her the most messages. This wasn’t necessarily going to give him the killer’s contact information, but it was a place to start. The top three contenders for the most e-mail were CelticLove2, SmithAB, and Wolf-Woman Six. He opened the last message from CelticLove2.