CHAPTER FOUR
Paige had to admit that she was impressed by the Estrom family home. It was huge, pretty much a mansion, and had obviously sat there for at least a hundred years or so on the same spot. It looked as if it had been built and rebuilt over that period, worked on by generation after generation of the same family, each member wanting to put their own stamp on the place.
It stood at the heart of extensive gardens, mostly lawns but with a large rose garden around to the side. Its nearest neighbors were far enough away that even calling them neighbors seemed like the wrong word to use. Paige seriously doubted that this was the kind of place where people just came over to check on one another or to speak to the occupants of the houses nearby.
Under normal circumstances, it would have been a quiet place, just far out enough from the main body of D.C. that it would have brought peace, while still being close enough to the city for easy access. The kind of place that probably had diplomats and officials living in some of the surrounding buildings.
Today, though, there was nothing peaceful about it. Police vehicles littered the driveway leading up to it, some with their lights still flashing. Paige could see a uniformed officer at the door, while around the edges of the property, reporters stood with cameras, their broadcast vans parked nearby, all obviously hungry for a story.
For a moment or two, Paige might have been back at one of the crime scenes around the women Adam Riker had murdered. She still had memories of having to push through crowds of reporters, while they called out questions that were far too personal for her. That brought feelings of worry bubbling to the surface within Paige. What if she couldn’t do this?
“Are you ok?” Christopher asked.
He’d noticed her discomfort, which suggested that he was watching her at least some of the time as he drove. Paige didn’t know what to feel about that. A part of her wanted him to watch her, wanted him to be interested in her, because he was an intelligent, kind, dynamic guy. Every time she thought that, though, Paige found herself thinking of Justine, his wife, reminding herself that she couldn’t be interested in him, and he definitely wasn’t interested in her.
“I’m fine,” Paige said, trying not to make too much of it. “I’m just remembering the last crime scene we were at.”
Christopher gave her a serious look then as they pulled up in front of the house.
“Can you do this, Paige? If you don’t think that you’re going to be able to handle this, I can take you back. I know you’re not trained yet. Maybe I’m asking too much.”
Paige tried to look as determined as possible. “I have to be able to do this kind of thing if I’m going to be an agent. I’m pretty sure that it’s not optional whether I look at crime scenes once I make it into the Bureau.”
And if word got back that she hadn’t been able to bring herself to look at another body, then Paige was pretty sure that would be it as far as her chances of joining the FBI were concerned. It needed people who could do the job, not ones who needed to be babysat through every part of it.
“That might be true,” Christopher said, “but that’s not what I asked. Can you do this, Paige?”
“I can do this,” Paige assured him, hoping that it was true as she said it. It had to be true. She would make it true.
They got out of the car and headed to the house. Christopher held up his ID and the cop at the door stood aside to let them pass. There were crime scene investigators working their way through the house, testing almost every available surface, and for a moment or two Paige was worried about the possibility that she and Christopher were contaminating the crime scene; but with both of their prints and DNA on file, she guessed that it didn’t matter so much, especially when the techs had last night to go through the place. Even so, both of them pulled on gloves as they moved into the crime scene.
“Anything?” Christopher asked one of the techs, a young man who looked to Paige as if he should still have been in school rather than working his way through a crime scene wearing a plastic evidence suit.
“Nothing so far,” he replied. “Whoever did this was careful enough not to leave anything behind.”
Which matched what Paige knew of Lars Ingram’s crimes. Until he’d slipped up with his last murder, he’d been precise about cleaning up after himself. He’d been almost clinical as he broke in, not leaving any trace. There had been an almost total contrast between that caution and the savagery of the attacks.
“This way,” Christopher said, leading Paige through to a drawing room that was tastefully decorated with antique furniture, with expensive oil paintings sitting on the walls, and a row of books that looked as though they’d been bought by the yard finishing the effect that great wealth had been accumulating for some considerable time. It was much more opulent than anything Paige had been around for most of her life.
It occurred to Paige that, if Christopher was leading her through this place so easily, he must have been there before he came to find her. He must have taken a look at this crime scene and only then decided that he needed her help. That was both gratifying and slightly worrying, because it meant a lot of pressure on Paige’s shoulders to find an answer for him.
Still, she was there to do a job, and she was determined to do it well.
“This is where the murder happened,” Christopher said.
Paige could see the blood stains on the carpet where Marta Huarez had been killed, marking the spot as surely as if the body had still been there. She could see the decanter lying empty on the floor, and the straight line from there to the door. She guessed that the killer would have hidden behind that door before he leapt out to kill her. It was a simple ambush, but effective when Marta Huarez had no reason to suspect that there was any danger.
Christopher led her over to a window. “The latch on this window was forced. The house is old enough that there aren’t locks on all the windows, so the killer was able to use that to get inside. There are partial footprints in the flowerbeds outside the window, but nothing that seems specific.”
Paige guessed that he’d gotten all of this from the techs around the scene, and there were definitely plenty of them. They would be the ones running down scraps of evidence, which meant that her job was more about working out what the killer wanted, and why he was there, trying to help Christopher in any way that she could.
“The owner of the house didn’t hear anything?” Paige asked.
Christopher gestured to the door. “You can ask her yourself. I want to hear what you make of her. Come on.”
He led the way through the house, to a large dining room where an older woman was sitting on a dining chair, being looked over by someone who appeared to be a doctor. The woman was wrinkled and white haired, wearing a severe dark dress and a set of pearls. A cane rested against the chair that she sat in, her crabbed right hand sitting on top of its handle, clutching it tightly every few seconds. She seemed distraught, but as she looked Paige’s way, her eyes were sharp and alive with intelligence.
“I think that will have to be enough for now, Henry,” she told the doctor. “I believe the FBI have more questions for me.”