Read Online The Devil's Cinema by Steve Lillebuen - Free Book Online

contained the military blade and discovered a Toshiba laptop covered with Spider-Man stickers. There appeared to be blood on the keyboard.
    Allen delivered the laptop to Constable Michael Roszko, a computerforensic analyst in the police tech crimes unit. Given time, he could unlock the laptop like a treasure chest.
    The car had held an unexpected haul of disturbing evidence. Two knives and a trunk covered in suspected blood, sticky notes about sex and cleaning up kill rooms, maps leading from near the suspect’s house to the victim’s – but none of this would compare to what Roszko would pull from the digital files of Twitchell’s computer.
    A FEW HOURS AFTER the car had been searched, Acting Detective Dale Johnson cruised south down the highway, a copy of the yellow Post-It note map leading the way. Another detective from homicide was riding along with him. Having grown up in St. Albert, Johnson was familiar with all of the streets in the area. Reading the map, he recognized the street names written down as leading from the address of Twitchell’s St. Albert house to an unknown home south of Edmonton. After driving an hour in that direction, their car rumbled across railway tracks as the two detectives made it into the centre of the small city of Wetaskiwin. They were looking for the street address from the sticky note, not sure what they’d find at the end of their journey.
    They finally reached a quiet street with a row of trailers on one side and located the address. Just as they were walking up to the front door of the trailer, a young woman in a car pulled in and parked in the back. Seeing them waiting on the doorstep, she hurried to a back door, walked through the trailer, and opened the front door. Two little dogs came racing up with her, barking and nipping at the feet of both detectives. Over the noise Johnson told her they were police officers and he asked for her name.
    Stunned by the sudden presence of detectives on her steps, the woman meekly replied, “I’m Traci Higgins.”
    Johnson shot a look at his colleague, recalling one of the Post-It notes Twitchell had left in his car, thinking things were suddenly getting interesting.
    â€œDo you know Mark Twitchell?” Johnson asked.
    â€œYes, I do … He was my boyfriend and we went to university together.”
    She invited them in.
    The three of them sat at a small wood table near Traci’s kitchen, about halfway down the trailer. Traci had glasses, her brown hair with blondhighlights touching the edges of her frames before her bangs fell down the sides of her face, curling to an end just under her chin. She seemed taken aback from having police officers in her home but listened carefully. The detectives told her they were investigating a missing persons case and Twitchell’s name had come up. Johnson asked her broad questions before slowly moving into her history with Mark Twitchell and when she last saw him.
    â€œYeah, I’ve seen him. I’ve seen him recently.” Traci began clarifying before they could even respond. “But it was all platonic. It was nothing sexual. He’s married and I’m going through a divorce.” She stopped for a second, then launched in again. “We’re not
those
type of people.”
    Johnson pressed her on that point. “Can I ask why he would then write this?” He pulled out a copy of the sticky note from his binder and showed her what was written on it:
Fuck Traci senseless
.
    â€œOh.” Her lips tightened as she huddled closer to the table. “Uh, I have no idea. Maybe that’s just his weird sense of humour or something.”
    She remembered going to the movies with Twitchell, meeting him at a theatre in Edmonton one or two weeks ago. “But he’s never been to my house,” she added. “We’ve always met up in the city.”
    â€œThen why did he have a map from his house to your house?”
    â€œWell,