Read Online The Darker Side by Cody McFadyen - Free Book Online Page B

stucco on the outside, with its own small driveway. No one has entered yet; there’s no yellow crime scene tape on the door. We pull in, exit, and walk up to the front door. Alan will clear the condo with me before leaving to go chase up on witnesses.
    We’d swung by the morgue so I could grab Lisa’s keys. I am fiddling with them in the bad light from the streetlamps to find the one we need.
    “Probably that one,” Alan notes, indicating a gold-colored key.
    I fit the key into the deadbolt lock and it turns with a click. I put the key ring into my jacket pocket and we both pull our weapons.
    “Ladies first,” Alan says.
     
    THE CONDO HAS TWO BEDROOMS, one of which doubles as a home office. We clear these as well as the guest half-bath and the master bathroom before holstering our guns.
    “Nice place,” Alan observes.
    “Yeah.”
    It’s decorated in earth tones, muted without being bland. Catches of color appear throughout, from maroon throw pillows on the couch to white cotton curtains with blue flower trim along the edges. It’s clean and odorless, no smell of pets or dirty clothes or food left out. She didn’t smoke. The wooden coffee table facing the couch is covered in a happy disarray of magazines and books. Lisa was tidy but not fastidious.
    “Okay if I go?” he asks.
    I glance at my watch. It’s now 5:00 A.M.
    “Sure. Before you get on to chasing down witnesses or following the money, get a search going for murders with a similar signature.”
    “The cross, you mean?”
    “The cross, or just the symbols he left on the cross. I don’t think we’re going to find any really old crimes, but we might find some new ones.”
    He frowns. “You think he’s been operating for a while and only just decided to come out into the open?”
    “I do.”
    “Bad idea on his part.”
    “Let’s hope so.”
     
    ALONE NOW. I LEAVE THE lights off. The dawn has arrived and I want to see the living room as Lisa would have seen it. I sit down on the couch, brown microfiber, a couch like a thousand others, except that this one had been hers. She’d sat here, time after time. I’m able to pick out her favored spot, a cushion that’s just a little bit more worn than the others.
    A medium-sized flat-screen TV faces the couch, placed a comfortable distance away. I imagine her sitting here, lights out, shadows dancing on her face. I see a bottle of nail polish on the coffee table and smile. Watching TV while painting her nails. I find a book on a side table, a silly romance novel. Guilty pleasures, maybe reading while her toenails dried.
    This place was a sanctum, a refuge, and I’m going to root through it with impunity. I reflect that in this way, I’m very like the killers I hunt. I will move through this home and open her drawers, read her e-mail, peer into her medicine cabinet. Cross all boundaries of privacy until there’s nothing left to find.
    Once upon a time, Lisa could turn the lock and keep the world outside from finding out her secrets, but not anymore. The killers I hunt are empowered by this concept.
    My motives are purer, obviously, but I learned a long time ago that I won’t survive doing what I do if I am dishonest with myself, and the truth is, I feel just a little hint of that power when I go through a victim’s home, the slightest thrill of the voyeur. I can look where I want, touch what I want, open any door I want. It’s heady and I can understand, just a little, why it has such a draw for psychopaths.
    I get up and move into the kitchen. It’s small but functional and very clean. Brown granite countertops. Stainless steel refrigerator with matching over-the-counter microwave, stove, and dishwasher. I open a few cabinets and peer inside. White china, neatly stacked.
    The refrigerator is nearly bare. I see a note/shopping list posted on the refrigerator door. It says, Need bottled water, napkins, mac and cheese.
    Never going to happen now, I think.
    The kitchen drawers reveal nothing.