Already Seen (Laura Frost FBI)

“Trust me,” Caleb said. “You were awesome.” He smiled at her in a way that made her think maybe she was awesome after all, before she shook her head and gestured towards the door with her notebook.

“That’s helpful,” she said, instead of telling him the truth: that she hadn’t tackled anyone important at all, just an idiot who thought bringing a real knife to an audition was smart. “I’d better question the others. I already have your number, so you’re free to go.”

“Sure,” Caleb said, throwing a wink over his shoulder as he went. “Make sure you call me on that number.”

She froze for a moment at his words. Would she? Could she? As much as she liked him so far, he had been a suspect. Maybe he was still.

Laura was alone with her thoughts again when the door closed behind him. She stood for a moment, thinking. She didn’t know why she hadn’t told him the truth, that she was still looking for a murderer. The words had frozen on her tongue. Was it because she didn’t want to disappoint him, after the praise he had given her?

Or was it because, given how everything had been going wrong so far, she wasn’t sure she could trust her gut – the same gut that had told her he was innocent in the first place?

Laura rubbed the back of her neck, trying to get back into the game. She had work to do. Now she thought about the vision again, with the benefit of seeing it twice, she realized there had been no knife in the vision at all. She’d put one there in her own head because it was what she knew the killer used. But in reality, all she had seen was him stalking a woman – not killing one. With that in mind, she really had no idea when he was going to strike at all.

It could be right after the vision she had seen. It could be later that night. It might not even be the same day.

The only way she could find out would be to wait, to find him, and to follow him herself. Preferably, to catch him before he did anything. But now she had to figure out how to do that, and the only way she could think to do it would be to carry on with the old-fashioned detective work she was doing now: speaking to witnesses, examining the scene, understanding the people in it.

Laura stepped back into the reception. Before she could call up anyone in particular, the director leapt out of his seat and walked towards her.

“I need to go next,” he said. “This is taking far too long. I’ve got another audition session tonight, and I need to prepare!”

“Another session?” Laura asked. “Where?”

“Well, here,” the director said, then gave her a horrified look. “Unless you’re telling me you’re not going to allow us back in?”

“I don’t know,” Laura said thoughtfully, a plan beginning to form in her head. “Come through and tell me all about it. We’ll see what we can do.”

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

Laura looked down at her phone, at the text from Nate that had popped up on the screen. He was still going through potential suspects, he said; the detectives under Captain Mills had found a new list of students that Suzanna Brice had apparently discarded a few months ago, giving them more names of people who had attended the class in the past.

They could be there for days just calling people and untangling all the rumors and suspicion. And in the meantime, the killer could strike again.

Laura looked up again, across the room. She was seated in the auditorium, among what was now a growing crowd of others. This audition, the director had told her, was for a much bigger part than the previous ones. It turned out that he was a casting director – not the director of a specific play – and he had been commissioned to fill a role for an upcoming feature film as well as the upcoming stage performance.

The audition tonight was an open call, which meant that there was no way to know ahead of time who would turn up. People could come from anywhere in the country, he’d said, though Laura thought anywhere in the state was probably a more realistic guess. There was a buzz in the air, much more than there had been earlier. Actors were coming and going in their droves, sitting in front of the director on the stage and performing to a single camera, saying the same lines each time.

It had become boring very quickly. Laura decided the time for observation was over. She was studying the crowd, and she’d seen that there were a few instances of people who appeared to be more in charge than others. People who were coaching the actors, it seemed, straightening collars and smoothing flyaway hairs, gripping them by the shoulders to give them confidence. She drifted over to the nearest one and got her attention.

“Hi,” she said. “Are you an acting coach?”

“No, I’m a manager,” the woman said. She looked Laura up and down sharply. “Are you looking for representation?”

“No, no,” Laura said, holding up her hands with a polite smile. “I was looking for a coach. Do you know if there are any here?”

The manager looked around, her gaze skimming over the assembled people filling the chairs. “Not that I recognize. You’d be better off searching online, dear. Coaches don’t tend to come for auditions, unless they’re still working actors themselves.”

Laura nodded. “Thanks,” she said, trying not to sound disappointed.

She repeated her questions a few more times, all with women who turned out to be agents or managers, or – in one instance – an overly pushy mother. Then she turned to speaking to some of the better-connected actors, judging by the way people would come up and talk to them. None of them could recognize any coaches around them, although a few gave her cards to recommend their own coach.

Those were leads, maybe. But it wasn’t as though there was no other way to find an acting coach in Seattle than to ask an actor. If they had to investigate and protect every single one in the city, they would run out of police officers before they covered them all.

There were dozens of people in the auditorium at any one time, all of them waiting their turn to get on the stage and then disappearing afterwards. Hundreds, perhaps, overall. And there were so many women here with long, brown hair. Frustratingly so. Laura thought that she had seen the woman from her vision everywhere she turned, the details beginning to slip out of her hands as she was distracted by so many similar, but not quite right, options.

Laura looked down at her watch and realized it had been a couple of hours already. People were still going up on stage, saying their lines, disappearing. There were fewer of them left in the seats, now. She realized that the doors must have been closed, that the people who were here were the only ones left to take their turn. And still, she hadn’t seen her. Hadn’t seen anyone go behind the partition, even. Not from the walkway leading to the stage, which was where she knew the killer would go.

The window of time seemed to be disappearing in front of her eyes. Where was the killer? Where was his victim? Had she missed them already, somehow? Had the disruption earlier in the day changed his plan, changed