Блейк Пирс - Before He Needs

“Signs of a struggle, I believe,” she answered.

He joined her and took note of the indentation. “Not much to go on, is it?” he asked.

“No, not really. But the blood makes it notable. That and the fact that this house is in pristine condition. It makes me think the killer did everything he could do hide any signs of a struggle. He almost staged the house, in a way. But this sign of a struggle could not be hidden.”

She looked down at the small blood splotch on the carpet. It was faded and there were even very faint traces of red around it.

“See,” she said, pointing. “Right there, it looks like someone tried cleaning this up. But he was either hurried or this last little bit just would not come up.”

“Maybe we should double-check the Kurtz house then.”

“Maybe,” she agreed, although she felt confident that she had thoroughly looked the place over.

She stepped away from the wall and went to the enormous walk-in closet. She looked inside and saw more tidiness.

She did see the one single thing that could have been considered as messy within the entire house, though. A shirt and a pair of pants were crumpled up, pushed almost against the closet wall. She pulled the shirt away from the pants and saw that they were men’s clothing – perhaps the last clothes that Gerald Sterling had ever worn.

Taking a chance, she reached into each of the front pockets. In one, she found seventeen cents in change. In the other, she found a crumpled receipt. She straightened it out and saw that it was from a grocery store five days ago…the last day of his life. She looked at the receipt and started to think.

How else can we discover what they did on their last days alive? Or the last week, or even month?

“Harrison, in those reports, didn’t the Miami PD state that they had gone through the phones of the deceased to check for any red flags?”

“That’s correct,” Harrison said as he cautiously stepped around the bloody bed. “Contacts, incoming and outgoing calls, emails, downloads, everything.”

“But nothing like Internet search history or anything like that?”

“No, not that I recall.”

Placing the receipt back into the pair of jeans, Mackenzie exited the closet and then the bedroom. She headed back downstairs, aware that Harrison was following behind her.

“What is it?” Harrison asked.

“A hunch,” she said. “A hope, maybe.”

She walked back to the roll-top desk in the sitting area and opened it again. In the back, there was a small basket. A few pens stuck out, as did a basic single-sheet personal checkbook. If they keep a house this tidy, I’d assume their checkbook is in the same condition .

She took the checkbook out and found that she was correct. The figures were kept with meticulous care. Each transaction was written very legibly and with as much detail as possible. Even ATM withdrawals were accounted for. It took her about twenty seconds to realize that this checkbook was for some sort of secondary account and not for the Sterlings’ primary checking. At the time of their death, the account held a little over seven thousand dollars.

She looked through the check register for anything that might give her some sort of clues but nothing jumped out at her. She did, however, see a few abbreviations that she did not recognize. Most of the transactions for these entries were for amounts of around sixty to two hundred dollars. One of the entries she did not recognize had been written out for two thousand dollars.

While nothing in the register seemed immediately curious, she remained hung up on the abbreviations and initials that she was not familiar with. She snapped a few pictures of those entries with her phone and then returned the checkbook.

“You have an idea or something?” Harrison asked.

“Maybe,” she said. “Could you please get Dagney on the phone and ask her to task someone with pulling up the Sterlings’ financial records over the last year? Checking accounts, credit cards, even PayPal if they used it.”

“Absolutely,” Harrison said. He instantly pulled out his phone to complete the task.

I might not mind working with him so much after all, Mackenzie thought.

She listened to him speaking with Dagney while she closed the roll-top desk and looked back toward the stairs.

Someone walked up those stairs four nights ago and killed a married couple, she thought, trying to envision it. But why? And again, why were there no signs of forced entry?

The answer was simple: Just like with the Kurtzes, the killer was invited in. And that means that they either knew who the killer was and let him in or the killer was playing a certain part…acting like someone they knew or someone in need.

The theory felt flimsy but she knew there was something to it. If nothing else, it created a fragile link between the two couples.

And for now, that was enough of a connection to go on.

While she had been hoping to avoid speaking to the families of the recently deceased, Mackenzie found herself working her way down her to-do list faster than she had expected. After leaving the Sterlings’ house behind, the next natural place to go for any answers was to the closest relatives of the families. In the case of the Sterlings, their closest family was a sister that lived less than ten miles from the Kurtzes’ townhouse. The rest of the family lived in Alabama.

The Kurtzes, however, had plenty of family nearby. Josh Kurtz had not moved very far away from home, living within twenty miles of not only his parents, but his sister as well. And since the Miami PD had already spoken extensively with the Kurtzes earlier in the day, Mackenzie opted to check in with the sister of Julie Kurtz.

Sara Lewis seemed more than happy to meet with them, and although the news of her sister’s death was less than two days old, she seemed to have accepted it as well as a twenty-two-year-old could.

Sara invited them into her house in Overtown, a quaint one-story house that was little more than a small apartment. It was decorated sparsely and held the sort of edgy silence that Mackenzie had felt in so many other houses where someone was dealing with recent loss. Sara sat on the edge of her couch, cupping a mug of tea in her hands. It was clear that she had done her fair share of crying recently; she also looked like she hadn’t slept much.

“I assume that if the FBI is involved,” she said, “that means there have been more murders?”

“Yes, there have,” Harrison said from beside Mackenzie. She frowned briefly, wishing he had not so willingly divulged the information.

“But,” Mackenzie said, interjecting before Harrison could continue, “we of course can’t make any solid claims about a connection without a thorough investigation. And that’s why we’ve been called in.”

“I’ll help however I can,” Sara Lewis said. “But I already answered the police’s questions.”

“Yes, I understand, and I appreciate that,” Mackenzie said. “I just want to cover a few things they might have missed. For instance, do you by any chance have any idea how your sister and brother-in-law were in terms of financial standing?”

It was clear that Sara thought it was a strange question but she did her best to answer nonetheless. “Okay, I suppose. Josh had a good job and they really didn’t spend too much money. Julie would even scold me sometimes for spending too frivolously. I mean, they certainly weren’t loaded…not from what I know. But they did okay.”

“Now, their neighbor told us that Julie liked to draw. Was this just a hobby or was she making any money off of it?”

“More of a hobby,” Julie said. “She was pretty good, but she knew it wasn’t anything spectacular, you know?”