I See You (Criminal Profiler 4)

“Skylar slept in her bed last night,” Zoe said. “She was awake long enough to get a cup of coffee, bring it to her room, and take a couple of sips.”

“And then all hell broke loose.”

She walked around the room, searching for anything that was out of place. She had worked a missing persons case in Nevada, and the key to finding the fourteen-year-old girl had been a collection of coffee shop receipts that had led to the store clerk, who had become obsessed with her. The smallest detail could be the important piece.

“Do you see her cell phone?” Zoe asked.

“No.”

“That’s going to be critical.”

“I hear ya. Kids all have social media pages, and most share far more than they should.”

She fished out her phone and searched a couple of social media apps.

“How many apps do you have?” he asked.

“All of them. I routinely search people I’m investigating. I often learn more about a person from their online profiles than interviewing them or their associates.” She paused and then nodded. “Here she is.” Skylar’s profile page on Instagram had been updated three days ago with a picture of the sun shining on an industrial building. The next update was several days before that, and it featured Skylar and a teenage boy. Their heads were tilted toward each other, and their outstretched hands each created the peace sign.

“Nate posts goofy pictures with his buddies. I worry about his posting enough,” he said. “But if I had a girl to raise, I would likely have gone insane with worry.”

“No pictures of her with her mother,” Zoe said, scrolling through the collection. “There are pictures of Skylar with her dad in the spring, but nothing recently.”

“Kids at that age are doing their best to distance themselves from their parents,” he said.

“Maybe. Mother-and-daughter relationships can be strained even at the best of times.”

As tempted as she was to ruffle the bedsheet and begin moving things around to look for the phone, she had to wait for the forensic team to process the room. “The phone was in her hand yesterday when she came into the house with her father. The case is pink and glittered.”

As she walked around the girl’s room, nothing caught her eye.

They left Skylar’s room behind and continued along the blood trail, which grew heavier with each step closer to the master bedroom.

There were two forensic technicians in the room dressed in lightweight protective gear, gloves, and booties. One tech sketched the room layout while the other photographed.

What struck Zoe immediately was the explosion of red on the carpeting by the dresser. The blood not only pooled on the gray carpet, but it also arched in one defined, parabolic curve on the wall. The downward strike of a weapon created the wound, and drawing it back dispersed the blood. She pictured the knife blade going into the victim and tearing skin, and then, as the killer drew back the blade, the blood flinging onto the wall.

She doubted this blood belonged to the surviving husband, because whoever had been stabbed in this room had been struck in a major artery and immediately suffered massive blood loss. And judging by the profuse amount of blood staining the carpet, that injured party had fallen to their knees and then pitched forward onto the carpet face-first.

Just beyond the blood was a king-size bed that had been neatly made. The pillows were in place and the comforter smoothed.

One tech faced them. “Scene reminds me of the motel room. What are the chances of two similar stabbings in twenty-four hours?”

“Two stabbings in a densely populated area like this aren’t out of the realm of possibilities,” Zoe said.

“Bud, this is FBI special agent Zoe Spencer,” Vaughan said. “Agent Spencer, this is Bud Clary, and his colleague is Mike Brown.”

“Gentlemen,” she said. “Feel free to kick us out if we get in the way.”

Both men glanced at each other and then nodded to her. Having the FBI on scene always changed the dynamics of their interactions.

“What’s your status of the motel scene?” Vaughan asked.

“We wrapped up late last night. But the room remains sealed should we need to double back.”

Zoe suspected now that the Foster case was front and center, the faceless sex worker’s death would sadly be shifted to a back burner. And judging by Vaughan’s frown, this truth did not sit well with him.

“We’ve only started with the house,” Bud said. “It’ll take us a good twenty-four to forty-eight hours to process it. I’ve called Fiona so she can also join us. As you can see, there is blood through most of the house.”

“Mind if we have a look?” Vaughan asked. “We won’t touch.”

“Much appreciated,” Bud said. “Just follow the path I’ve marked.”

“Will do,” Vaughan said.

“Bud, let us know if you find cell phones or computers,” Zoe said.

“Consider it done.”

She looked past the techs, noting more studio-quality photos of the Foster family. In the early pictures, when Skylar had been about twelve, there was a black lab puppy in the picture; however, in later shots, the dog was gone. How old would the dog have been now? Five or six?

Zoe walked up to the entrance of the bathroom. The floor appeared wiped clean, and there was no visible blood. The towel rack was empty. “The towels are missing.”

“Towels?” Bud asked.

“The bath towels. They were arranged neatly in Skylar’s bathroom, but they aren’t in here.”

“Someone tried to stop the bleeding.”

“Or clean up the floor,” Zoe said.

“It was the same in Jane Doe’s motel room,” Bud offered. “The bathroom had been wiped clean, and towels were missing. He took the towels he used with him.”

“Another similarity between the two crimes,” Zoe said.

“They are hard to ignore,” Vaughan said.

“A gut feeling?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“As long as you don’t mix gut feelings with facts,” she said.

The collection of perfume bottles was lined up perfectly on the marble countertop, and beside them was a small notebook that appeared to be a workout log. Today’s date was written on the left side, but there were no miles logged. She looked back to the neatly made bed. “I would bet money, given Hadley’s rigid schedule, she got up, dressed for her run, and then made the bed.”

“If she was able to make the bed, where was Mark?” Vaughan asked.

“It’s a three-bedroom house, and the extra room is Mark’s office. The pillows on the couch looked creased. Maybe he’d been banished to the couch.”

Vaughan tapped an index finger against his thigh, as if he was mentally cataloging and thumbing through the facts. “Bud, did the paramedics say what Mark Foster was wearing when they found him?”

“He was wearing his business suit pants, white shirt, and tie. His clothes are being tested for DNA as we speak,” Bud said.

“Maybe he had been up early,” Zoe said.

“Is there another shower in the house?” Vaughan asked.

“There’s one off the upstairs hallway,” Bud said. “It’s dry, just like the one in the master bathroom. No one showered here this morning.”