Graf checked, and the techs hadn’t found one at the apartment, so if she did have it, she would have dropped it off somewhere else along the way, or someone had walked away from the scene with it.
Eventually, the two gave up their search. If Whitaker had been at the apartment recently, she’d left nothing behind, and nothing suggested Sharp had left anything about what she was currently working on.
The drive to the unrented apartment took longer since it was well out on the outskirts of town. Graf had someone trying to get a hold of the owner of the apartment, but that had turned out to be easier said than done. The apartment was owned by a company with a lawyer listed as the only name on the company’s paperwork. Graf had some people working on finding the lawyer and discovering who actually owned or worked for the company, but so far, they weren’t having any luck.
Taylor noticed the area becoming noticeably seedier the closer they got to the apartment. It was a stark contrast from the sleek and clean buildings surrounding Sharps’ apartment. Stores, single-family homes, and coffee shops gave way to apartment complexes and factories. The well-cleaned sidewalks with their manicured trees and foliage became cracked and broken concrete without the odd dying bush.
Graf didn’t seem bothered, however, so Taylor figured it was just a more blue-collar area of town and not outright dangerous. The apartment was a relatively small complex that couldn’t have more than half a dozen units in total.
Residents and lookie-loos gathered around the perimeter, which was still roped off with police tape and watched over by a handful of uniformed officers. They knew Graf on sight, lifting up the tape without him having to flash a badge, waving Taylor in behind him.
Since the coroner had already come and gone, there were no bodies in the apartment. What was left were large brownish stains covered the carpeting, it wasn’t hard to believe several people had died here.
The apartment itself was a wreck. It wasn’t empty, but everything there was temporary. What was left of folding chairs, folding tables, and a few cots made up the room's furniture. The only thing that didn’t seem temporary was the refrigerator which sat perpendicular to the entry. The whole place was a wreck. The front room was scorched, clearly the place where Sharp had been killed. The walls were riddled with shrapnel impacts, and one of the interior walls was missing a large chunk, letting Taylor see into the other room.
While the damage looked bad, whatever killed Sharp hadn’t been particularly large, at most a hand grenade or pipe bomb, since it hadn’t broken through the outside wall of the apartment. The refrigerator door swung open loosely hanging from a single hinge, the outside covered with both shrapnel impacts and bullets. The door opened out, facing the rest of the room when opened, effectively working as a shield to the explosive for anyone on the other side. Looking around the other side, only a few seemed to have gotten through the metal and thick insulation.
Looking at the walls around where the fridge, which stood perpendicular to the front door of the apartment, there was an absence of scorching or damage that roughly corresponded to the shape of the door itself. If Taylor had to guess, someone had opened up the door of the refrigerator and used it as makeshift cover. Considering how open everything was and the lack of furniture, that had probably been a good idea.
The explosive damage wasn’t the only damage. The wall around the front door and the opposing wall were riddled with bullet holes, along with a scattering of impacts in other parts of the room. From what Taylor could see a group from outside the apartment had assaulted people inside the apartment, culminating in a small explosive being tossed into the room at some point while at least one person, maybe two, inside the apartment, had used a makeshift shield to protect themselves.
“Is there anything on who anyone here was, besides Sharp?” Taylor asked
“No. We wouldn’t even have identified Sharp if you hadn’t known who she was. I’m sure we’ll get information back on them soon, but it’s a process and takes time.”
“Nothing else that would tell us what was going on here?”
“No. Beyond some clothes, personal grooming items, and weaponry, we found nothing here. Certainly, no documentation that would tell us who anyone here was. None of the victims carried anything beyond currency on them. If I had to guess, from the cots and other temporary furniture, I’d say this was a flophouse. Whoever these people are with, they weren’t local and needed a place to stay.”
“That’s what worries me.”
“Why?”
“Think about it. These guys are outside muscle brought in on a job, and they’ve been set up with an empty apartment. I bet we’re going to find that the apartment is owned by a dummy corporation that we won’t trace back to anyone, otherwise you would already know who owned this place.”
“We know they’re working for someone, and clearly involved in some kind of criminal activity. The fact that they’re covering their tracks shouldn’t be that surprising.”
“It’s more than that. If you add up the pieces we have, it suggests that there is something bigger going on here.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at it. We know Sharp was helping Whitaker with her investigation into Fredrick Wissler’s death, an investigation during which the person who asked Whitaker to investigate it was murdered. Now the person helping Whitaker has also been killed in an apartment owned by a dummy corporation and being used as temporary housing for well-armed men, judging by the damage here. It’s a safe bet that the reason Sharp was here was because whoever was in
