“I’m here.” She sounded even younger now. “I just can’t believe it.”
Jeremy watched as Kira crossed the lobby. She stopped in front of him, and he looked down at her with concern.
“Listen, I’d like to talk to you,” Kira told the woman. “I’m taking over Ollie’s cases, and I’m reaching out to everyone he was working with recently.”
“But . . . we weren’t working together.”
“Are you at your office?”
“I’m . . . no.” Clearly, she was rattled. “I’m on my way to the post office with a batch of certified mail.”
“Downtown post office?” Kira didn’t know Duffy & Hersch, but she guessed it was downtown.
“That’s right.”
“I’ll meet you at Café Lu in thirty minutes.”
“I really need to get back after—”
“No problem. This won’t take long.”
Charlotte’s crime scene was buzzing with people, but they weren’t the ones she’d expected to see here. A pair of workmen with face masks ripped up flooring in the foyer, while another crew was in the courtyard with a table saw, cutting tile for the kitchen.
Diaz walked through the front door, taking off his sunglasses. They’d spent the morning apart and arrived in separate cars.
“You coming from the station?” she asked him.
“Yeah.”
“How’d the sketch turn out?”
“Pretty good.” He shrugged. “Not that I recognize him or anything. He’s not one of our frequent flyers.”
“Yeah? And what does the witness think of it?”
“I don’t know. She took off before I could ask her about it.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
“That little sneak.”
Diaz glanced around. “He’s tearing everything out?”
“It’s tough to get blood out of tile grout. Or so I hear.” Charlotte sidestepped the workmen and walked into the breakfast room, where someone had cleaned up the mess that had been here on her last visit. Charlotte’s favorite CSI stood at the bar setting up a laptop computer.
“What have you got for us, Lacey?”
The blond CSI didn’t look up from her work. “Almost ready.” She tapped a few keys and pivoted her computer to face Charlotte and Diaz. “Okay, digital reenactment. I’ve been working on this since yesterday.”
They stepped closer. The screen showed a mannequin-like figure wearing a gray sweatshirt and a ski mask standing in the courtyard in front of Brock Logan’s front door. The figure had a black duffel bag on his shoulder, and he held a gun with a suppressor in his right hand. The scene featured details of the courtyard.
“You included the lions. Nice touch,” Charlotte said.
“Couldn’t resist. You ready? I’ve got about—”
The deafening buzz of a table saw drowned out whatever she’d been about to say, and Charlotte cringed. When the noise ceased, she looked at Lacey.
“You were saying?”
“It’s about four and a half minutes,” Lacey said. “Give or take a few seconds. That’s about how long I believe the attack lasted.”
“And that’s based on what?” Diaz asked.
“Witness accounts, the nine-one-one call. It’s a pretty solid estimate.”
“Okay, let’s roll it,” Charlotte said, and Lacey tapped a key.
The front door was opened by another mannequin-looking figure. Based on the size and build, this was Oliver Kovak.
“First shot,” Lacey narrated as the victim crumpled to the ground. The gunman stepped around him. He immediately pivoted left and ran into the dining room, where he ducked behind the dining table. A female-looking mannequin rushed through the archway leading from the kitchen to the foyer.
“Kira Vance,” Diaz said, watching the screen.
“She doesn’t see the shooter at first,” Lacey said. “That’s according to her statement.”
Kira dropped to her knees beside the victim.
“Okay, watch.” Lacey pointed at the screen. “The shooter waits until Logan enters the foyer, too, and then he rushes through this side door from the dining room into the kitchen. Logan sees him, goes after him.”
“Why would he go after a guy with a gun?” Diaz shook his head.
“Maybe he didn’t realize he had it,” Charlotte said. “Remember, the pistol had a suppressor.”
The video continued from the perspective of the shooter as he rushed into the kitchen and turned to confront Logan.
“Okay, two more shots,” Lacey said. “Now Logan’s down by the cooking island.”
The shooter then ran back into the foyer and fired another round.
“That shot was wild,” Lacey said. “Ended up embedded in the wall.”
“He’s in a hurry,” Diaz muttered.
The shooter rushed back to the kitchen, dropped his duffel beside the breakfast table, and grabbed items off the table: two cell phones, two laptops. He rummaged through files, snatching up folders and stacks of paper, and shoved everything into the bag.
“According to Logan, he was in the kitchen bleeding and pretending to be dead during this time,” Lacey said.
The shooter heaved the duffel onto his shoulder and took a quick look around before running through the back door. Charlotte recognized the patio beside Logan’s pool.
“He seems to know his way around,” Lacey said, as the animated figure rounded the pool and ran straight for a side yard. He passed some pool equipment and opened the gate, ran through, and then scaled the fence, landing in the neighbor’s backyard.
“What’s this based on?” Charlotte asked. “It was raining that night, so I heard we had trouble getting footprints. Do we know for a fact he took this route?”
“This is an educated guess,” Lacey said, “based on the door where he exited and the witness who saw him on Lark Street.”
“The delivery kid,” Diaz said.
“Correct. This would be the most likely route between Logan’s backyard and the BMW, but we have no witnesses to corroborate it, except for the delivery person who spotted him getting into the vehicle.”
Charlotte returned her attention to the screen as the gunman pulled off his ski mask and gloves, stuffed them in his duffel bag, and then emerged from a side yard onto a driveway. He walked briskly down the driveway to the street, where a black BMW was parked.
“What about security cams?” Charlotte looked at Diaz, who’d been responsible for following up with the neighbors.
“Nothing.”
The figure reached the getaway car, and the video stopped.
“And that’s it,” Lacey said.
“Nice work.” Charlotte stared at the screen. “If we had more corroboration, we might even be able to show it to a jury at some point.”
“Not happening,” Diaz said. “We’ve been by every house twice. Nobody saw him.”
“Lacey, thanks for this,” Charlotte said.
“Sure thing. Want me to stick around while you do a walk-through?”
“Yes.”
Charlotte dug her phone out and pulled up a crime-scene photo that she’d emailed herself to remind her of what the scene had looked like after the murder. She studied the mess in the photo, focusing on the empty spaces at the table where the two laptop computers had been. Charlotte turned to look at the breakfast table, which was empty now and smelled faintly of lemon furniture polish.
“He seems interested in the hardware,” Charlotte said. “Almost like the people were secondary.”
“Kovak didn’t seem secondary. Point-blank range in the chest like that? That’s brutal.”
“Okay, you’re right.” Charlotte walked to the back door, studying the lock there. It was a thumb latch, so the shooter wouldn’t have had to track down a key to get out, even if the door had been locked. She stepped onto the patio. She remembered the outdoor seating area from the night of the murder. A mop and bucket propped beside the door reinforced her impression that a maid had been here recently, probably yesterday.