Blake Pierce - Once Shunned

Riley realized that the people who lived here took great pride in their surroundings, preserving its past as if the neighborhood were a large outdoor museum. There weren’t many cars on the streets, so it was easy for Riley to imagine the town in a bygone era, with horse-drawn buggies and carriages passing by.

Then it occurred to her …

An iceman used to make his regular rounds here.

She imagined the bulky cart carrying loads of ice, and the strong man who hauled the blocks to front doors with iron tongs. In those days, every housewife who had lived here owned an ice pick that she put to perfectly innocent use.

But the town had experienced a bitter loss of innocence the night before last.

Times have changed, Riley thought. And not for the better.

Riley’s nerves quickened as Agent Sturman parked the van in front of a little house in a well-kept neighborhood. This was where Robin Scoville had lived, and where she had died at the hands of a killer. Riley always felt this heightened alertness when she was about to visit a crime scene. Sometimes her unique ability to get into a twisted mind would kick in where the murder had taken place.

Would that happen here?

If so, she wasn’t looking forward to it.

It was an ugly, unsettling part of her job, but she had to use it whenever she could.

As they got out of the van, she noticed that the house was the smallest in the neighborhood—a modest one-story bungalow with a compact yard. But like all the other properties on the block, this one was immaculately painted and maintained. It was a picturesque setting, marred only by the yellow police tape that barred the public from entering.

When Riley, Jenn, Bill, and Agent Sturman entered through the front gate, a tall, uniformed man stepped out of the house. Agent Sturman introduced him to Riley and her colleagues as Clark Brennan, Wilburton’s police chief.

“Come on inside,” Brennan said in an agreeable accent similar to Sturman’s. “I’ll show you where it happened.”

They walked up a long wooden ramp that led to the porch.

Riley asked Brennan, “Was the victim able to move around independently?”

Brennan nodded and said, “Her neighbors say she didn’t much need the ramp anymore. After the car accident last year, her left leg was amputated above the knee, but she was getting around really well on a prosthetic limb.”

Brennan opened the front door, and they all entered the cozy, comfortable house. Riley noticed no further signs that anybody disabled had lived here—no special furniture or handholds, just a wheelchair tucked away in a corner. It seemed obvious that Robin Scoville had prided herself on living as normal a life as she possibly could.

A survivor, Riley thought with bitter irony.

The woman must have thought she’d endured the worst hardships life could throw at her. She’d surely had no idea of the grim fate that awaited her.

The small, tidy living room was furnished with inexpensive furniture that looked rather new. Riley doubted that Robin had lived in this house for very long. The place felt transitional somehow, and Riley thought she might know why.

Riley asked the police chief, “Was the victim divorced?”

Brennan looked a little surprised at the question.

“Why, yes,” he said. “She and her husband broke up earlier this year.”

It was just as Riley had suspected. This place seemed much like the little house where she and April had lived after her marriage to Ryan ended.

But Robin Scoville’s challenge had been much greater than Riley’s. She’d had to put both a divorce and a crippling accident behind her as she’d tried to start life anew.

A taped outline on the hardwood floor showed the position of the body. Brennan pointed to a small, dark stain on the floor.

“She’d bled from the ear just a little. Perfectly consistent with a cerebral hemorrhage. But because of the recent Cranston murder, the ME got suspicious right away. And sure enough, his autopsy showed that Robin was murdered in the same way as Cranston.”

Riley thought …

The same method, but such different circumstances.

And she knew that any differences were likely to prove as important as similarities.

She asked Brennan, “Were there any signs of a struggle?”

“None at all,” Brennan said.

Sturman added, “It looked like she was taken by surprise, attacked swiftly from behind.”

Bill asked, “Was she wearing her leg prosthesis at the time of her death?”

“No,” Brennan said. “She was using her elbow crutches to get around.”

Riley knelt down and examined the position marked by the body tape. She had fallen right in front of the window. Robin had most likely been struck while she was looking out the window.

She asked Brennan, “What was the estimated time of death?”

Brennan said, “Around four in the morning.”

Riley stood and looked through the window at the calm, pleasant street and wondered …

What was she looking at?

What had been going on in the neighborhood at such an hour that might have caught Robin’s attention? And did it matter one way or the other? Did it have anything to do with her actual killing?

Riley asked, “How was her body found?”

Brenan said, “She didn’t show up the next morning for her job as an editor at a local literary magazine. And she wouldn’t answer her boss’s phone calls. He found that to be strange and worrisome, not like her at all. He was worried that maybe she’d had some kind of an accident on account of her disability. So he sent an employee to her house to check on her. When she didn’t answer the door, the employee went around behind the house and found that the back door had been broken into. He came on inside the house and found the body and called nine-one-one.”

Riley stood there for a moment, still wondering what Robin might have been looking at outside.

Had something happened out there that awakened her and brought her to this spot?

Riley had no idea.

Anyway, what the victim had experienced just before her death was of markedly less interest to Riley than what had been going on in the mind of the killer. She hoped maybe she could get a hint of that while she was here.

“Show us where the killer broke in,” Riley said.

Brennan and Sturman led Riley and her colleagues through the little house to a door that opened onto stairs to the basement. Near the top of the stairs was a landing from which another door opened onto the backyard.

Riley saw right away that the pane of glass nearest the dead bolt and the doorknob had been broken. The killer had obviously broken the glass and reached through the frame and unlocked and opened the door.

But Riley noticed something else that struck her as important.

Pieces of contact paper were stuck to the shards that remained in the frame.

Riley carefully touched a shard with some paper on it.

The killer had carefully placed the contact paper on the pane, hoping not to make too much noise, but also …

Maybe he didn’t want to make too much of a mess.

Riley shivered at a sudden near-certainty.

He’s fastidious.

He’s a perfectionist.

It was the sort of sharp flash of intuitive insight she’d been hoping for.

How much more could she learn about the killer right here and now?

I’ve got to try, she thought.

As Riley mentally prepared to reach into a killer’s mind, her eyes met with Bill’s for a moment. He was standing with their other colleagues, watching her. She saw Bill nod, obviously understanding that she wanted to be alone to do her work. Jenn smiled a little as she, too, seemed to pick up on Riley’s intention.