sorry we have to bother you this morning, but I have a warrant for one of your tenants. It’s Miss Nancy Mills, in apartment five. She doesn’t seem to be answering her door, so I’d like you to open it up for us.”
“She goes out most days. She walks a lot.”
Hobbes took a step closer. “You mean for fitness?”
“In the morning she goes out and jogs. Then around ten or so, she goes out again. She doesn’t have a car.”
Hobbes looked at Spengler. He reached into the inner pocket of his sport coat and produced some papers. “Sir, here’s a copy of the warrant. I’d appreciate it if you could open the apartment for us. It will save us all some trouble if we don’t have to break the door down.”
Norris stared at the warrant, uncomprehending. After a moment he either found the part that permitted a search of Nancy Mills’s domicile or he simply gave up. “Hold on a minute. Let me get the key.”
A moment later, he returned with a set of master keys. He led the way down the hall to the apartment, unlocked it, and stepped back.
Spengler said, “Thank you, Mr. Norris.” When he swung the door open, he looked in and said, “She’s certainly neat, isn’t she?”
“That’s not it. She’s gone,” said Hobbes. “She’s moved out.” She slipped past him into the kitchen and examined the cleaning supplies on the counter.
“Are you sure?”
“It’s a furnished apartment. There’s nothing here that’s personal.” She stepped carefully along the edge of the living room to the hallway, her eyes on the floor to keep from disturbing any evidence. She continued into the bedroom and looked into the open closet.
She turned and saw Spengler standing behind her, his eyes on the empty hangers on the pole in the closet. He took the radio off his belt. “Don’t hold your breath, guys. She’s out of here. She must have seen her picture in the paper.”
Hobbes heard a couple of tinny voices on the radio. “Roger.” “Got it.”
Hobbes said, “Can you please call for a forensic team? I’d like to be sure it’s the same girl I’ve been looking for.”
“Dave, call this in to the station,” he said into the radio. “Let them know we’ll need a forensic team. Everybody else come on in and help us canvass the rest of the tenants, and see if anybody knows where she went.”
Catherine Hobbes had tried to stay two steps behind Jim Spengler. Even though she carried a badge and a gun, she was only a guest in Los Angeles, and this was officially the investigation of the death of Brian Corey at a Los Angeles hotel. But it became evident almost immediately that she was a less intimidating interviewer than Spengler, so she began to take the lead.
The man in apartment 8 was not able to recall ever having seen the woman in the picture, nor could the couple in apartment 9. The others seemed to know very little about her. The person who lived across the hall from Nancy Mills was the one Catherine wanted most to talk to. She went back to knock on the door again, but the neighbor still wasn’t at home.
After about twenty minutes, the forensic team arrived and set to work in Nancy Mills’s apartment.
Catherine Hobbes had conducted enough interviews to persuade her that the woman who had called herself Nancy Mills had kept to herself and revealed very little. Catherine left the other detectives and returned to apartment 5, where two men and a woman were crawling on the living room carpet with rubber gloves, plastic bags, magnifiers, and tweezers, searching for physical evidence. The woman technician looked up from the carpet, and Catherine said, “Catherine Hobbes, Portland Police.”
“Hi,” said the woman. “I’m Toni.”
“Have you noticed the streaks yet?” asked Catherine.
“Streaks?”
“Yes,” said Catherine. “Look at this coffee table, and you can see what I mean. You can see it best if you look at it from the side.” Catherine knelt beside the coffee table, and Toni joined her. They sighted along the top, then along the side. It was marked with a striated pattern. “See the streaks?”
“They’re from washing it,” said Toni. “It’s been washed with a rag that was soaking wet. If you use furniture polish or wax, it forms a coating. This was just wet.”
“Any fingerprints on it?”
“Not yet. And we’re finding this everyplace. It’s on all the furniture, the windows, the counters, even the walls. Every surface has streaks on it, because it’s been washed down with a rag or cloth. You can see white cotton fibers in some spots. There were a couple of places that were still wet, so this wasn’t done long ago. Maybe last night.”
“No prints at all?”
“Not yet,” she said. “It’s pretty hard to keep prints off everything, so we undoubtedly will find some. But she sure didn’t want us to. Right now we’re collecting hairs. So far all of them are ten to twelve inches, light brown.” Toni leaned over and picked up some hairs with a pair of tweezers. “Oh-oh.”
“What?”
“More hairs. But these didn’t fall out. They were pulled out.”
“You mean violently?”
“Yes. See, even without magnifying them, you can spot little bits of tissue. That’s the root. Judging from the length, it’s probably a woman’s hair, but it’s a different woman. This is thicker and wavier, like a perm, and it has a gray root, so the brown is almost certainly a dye job.”
Catherine Hobbes said, “Excuse me, Toni.” She went to the doorway and looked down the hall. She could see Jim Spengler talking to the manager in the lobby. She walked up to them.
She said, “Mr. Norris, can you tell me about the tenant who lives across the hall in apartment four?”
“Her name is Mary Tilson. She’s almost always there this time of day. I’m surprised she isn’t now. She usually doesn’t go out until the afternoon.”
“How old is she?”
“Maybe sixty or so.”
“Can you describe her hair?”
“Her hair?”
“Yes. Is it long and straight, short, blond or brunette?”
“It’s brown. It’s not straight. Kind of wavy, maybe almost to her chin.”
“Thanks. Can you excuse us for a second?” She took Spengler’s arm and pulled him a few feet off. “The forensic tech just found some hairs that had been pulled out of a woman’s head, like in a fight. They’re six to eight inches long, brown and wavy, with a gray root.”
“You mean you think they belong to the woman who lives across the hall?”
“It wouldn’t hurt to take a quick look in her apartment. If she’s not there and everything looks normal, fine. But somebody got some of her hair pulled out, and Toni says they don’t belong to Nancy Mills.”
Spengler said, “Mr. Norris, can you come with us, please?”
They reached the door of apartment 4, and the manager unlocked it. Spengler pushed the door open a few inches, and his eyes focused on something. He said, “Thank you, Mr. Norris. We’ll take it from here.”
He turned to Catherine as Norris was moving off. “It’s not good.” He stepped into the apartment, and Catherine followed. She could see the woman lying on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood. Spengler was already hurrying to the woman, but Catherine had noticed that the outer edges of the big pool of blood were dark and dry, which meant she had been there a long time. Spengler touched her carotid artery. “She’s been dead a while. Her throat was cut. And a knife—looks like a regular butcher knife—is still in her.”
“I’ll call the forensic people over from the other apartment.”
“Yeah, thanks. We’ll get them going on this.”
Catherine stepped across the hall and said, “Toni, we’ve got a deceased victim in apartment four.”
“Oh, man.” Toni began to put her equipment back into the tackle box on the floor. “I had a feeling about this,” she said. “Too many hairs. Come on, guys. Let’s see if we can get anything fresh over there.”
Jim Spengler was gathering the other detectives in the hall to tell them what had been discovered in apartment 4. Catherine approached.
