by Becky Durfee
“Oh, dear,” Detective Brennan said. “Does this mean you won’t be able to help us?”
“I may not get much from this scene,” Jenny replied, “but if I can get into Sonya Lee’s apartment, I might be able to get something there.”
Jenny froze for a moment, allowing herself to absorb the wave that came over her. Once the image exited her head, she asked, “Is there a walking trail around here? Or a park or something? Something with paths and trees?”
“Buford Park isn’t that far,” the detective noted. “It has walking trails.”
“I may want to check that out,” Jenny replied. “I just got a visual of a man sitting on a bench along a paved path. I can’t get a good look at his face, but I get the feeling that Lisa had been freaked out by him at one point.”
The detective quickly asked, “Does he appear to be older? Younger? Caucasian? African American?”
Closing her eyes to recapture the image, Jenny said, “Older. Graying hair. Caucasian. He’s looking down in the vision I have, so I can’t get a good look at his face. He appears a little dirty and unkempt, though, like he could be homeless. Maybe that was what made Lisa uncomfortable?”
Detective Brennan nodded but didn’t write anything down, causing Jenny to realize that she hadn’t said anything meaningful.
As the cat dander began to catch up with her in the hall, Jenny asked, “Is there any way I can take a look at the other crime scene? I’m hoping I can get a little something more there.”
“I think that can be arranged,” the detective said. “That apartment is not considered a crime scene anymore, and I believe it’s still vacant. Go figure, nobody wants to rent that place after what happened.”
“I can’t imagine why,” Jenny replied dryly.
“Let me get on the phone with the landlord; I’ll tell him to let you in. He shouldn’t argue—he wants this thing solved as much as anybody. Besides, he’s a twitchy little guy. I’m pretty sure he’d do anything we told him to.”
“How many apartments are in that building?” Jenny asked.
“Four,” Detective Brennan said as she pulled out her phone, “but everyone has moved out except for one person.”
“Hmmph,” Jenny grunted.
“I know.” The detective pushed some buttons on her phone, placing it to her ear. “Suspicious, right? He was on the suspect list, believe me. You should see the guy…he’s got to be six-nine or…Hello, Mr. Hallberg?” She interrupted herself, speaking into the phone. “Detective Brennan. I have a woman here who would like to get into Sonya Lee’s apartment to do some investigating. I was hoping you’d be able to let her in.”
Jenny waited in silence as the detective listened.
“Great. Thanks,” Detective Brennan said. “She can be there in about five minutes, I’m guessing. Her name is Jenny Larrabee.” She hung up the phone and, without missing a beat, added, “Six-ten. He’s the center for the basketball team.”
“Is he skinny enough to fit through a window?” Jenny asked.
“Absolutely. He looks like he was once a normal-sized guy who was put on a rack and stretched out. But we haven’t discounted that the slit screen may have been a ruse, designed to throw us off. It could be that it was an inside job, and the killer got in some other way. Shit, for all we know, he could have been invited in. That doesn’t bode well for the neighbor…he claims that he and Sonya were friendly.”
“They were friendly?” Jenny repeated. “Not friends, but friendly?”
“I asked him about that, too. It was a strange way to put it. He said he didn’t mean it in a sexual sense; they were just acquaintances. Although, that doesn’t mean he didn’t want it to be sexual.” She looked at Jenny with raised eyebrows. “That could provide a nice little motive, couldn’t it? Although, it wouldn’t explain a damn thing about what he would have been doing over here, or how he got in.” She pointed toward Lisa’s apartment. “Why don’t you get on over there and see what you can find. God knows we’re not figuring a whole lot out the old fashioned way.”
“Will do. But first, can you tell me the name of the basketball player and exactly which apartment he lives in?”
“His name is Luke Thomas, and he lives directly upstairs from Sonya.” She gave Jenny the address and a brief description of how to get there before ending their meeting with a handshake.
Relieved to be back outside and away from the dander, Jenny headed back to the car and got into the driver’s seat, closing the door behind her.
“How’d it go?” Zack asked.
“Lisa Penne—that’s her name—didn’t know who her killer was. She was sound asleep, apparently, when she got knocked out and her throat got slit. She never saw it coming.”
“That’s both good and bad, I guess. It was quick, at least.”
“If you’ve got to go so horribly, I suppose quick is best.” Jenny stifled a shudder. “But, for my purposes, it would have been better if she could have gotten a look at the guy. My job would certainly be made a whole lot easier.” She typed Sonya’s address into her phone, allowing the GPS to squawk directions at her. Within two minutes, she and Zack were pulling up to the house in question, getting out of the car into the increasingly dark night. Like Lisa’s apartment, Sonya’s place appeared to be a large house converted into separate living spaces. There were two doors in the front, next to each other; she imagined each led to two of the four apartments.
Another car pulled up, and a middle aged man emerged. “Hello,” he said as he fumbled with a ring full of keys. “Are you Ms. Larrabee?”
“Yes, sir. I’m Jenny, and this is my husband, Zack.”
He bowed several times and waved awkwardly; Detective Brennan’s description of twitchy was a pretty good assessment.
“Well, let me get you in,” the landlord said. “It’s terrible what happened, isn’t it? I can’t help but feel responsible. I should have put bars on the windows. Then the guy could have never gotten in. But, then, imagine if there was a fire; she wouldn’t have been able to get out. That definitely would have been a fire hazard. The marshal never would have allowed that.” As he spoke, his jittery hands were barely capable of grasping the correct key. Eventually, he opened the front door on the right, which led to both an immediate door and a flight of stairs to the second floor—where Luke Thomas lived. It appeared he walked past Sonya’s door every time he left home. While that didn’t necessarily make him guilty, it certainly gave him the opportunity to do something horrible with minimal effort and no witnesses.
A second key was used to open Sonya’s door. Jenny acknowledged there were safety measures in place, which must have given the poor girl a false sense of security. Shaking her head clear of that thought, Jenny walked into the empty apartment, which was initially dark until the landlord turned the overhead light on. The emptiness lasted only a second before Jenny saw the apartment the way it had looked when it was occupied. A red couch was flanked by small, glass top tables. An old tube television sat on an entertainment center in the corner. The coffee table, which was covered in books and papers, was made of wood. The room looked like it had been furnished by yard sales, which Jenny imagined was also true of every other living room near campus.
Almost as soon as the furnishings appeared, they fizzled from view. Jenny looked up at Zack and said, “She’s still here.”
The landlord looked confused, but Jenny ignored it.
Another vision hit Jenny very quickly, as if Sonya was eager to tell her story. She saw a small, feminine hand wearing bright green nail polish reach out and twist the deadbolt handle and then turn the little lock on the door knob itself.
After the brief vision, she announced, “The cut screen wasn’t a ruse. She had locked the doors. The guy definitely came in through the window.”
“Or he had a key,” Zack said.
With those words, the already-nervous landlord looked as if he could have passed out. He opened his mouth to speak, but only a squeaky sound came out.
“A k
ey wouldn’t have undone the deadbolt,” Jenny replied, holding up her hand in the landlord’s direction. “Don’t worry, sir, you’re off the hook.”
He relaxed to the point of becoming physically shorter.
“I don’t think I told you,” Jenny continued to Zack, “but there’s a guy upstairs who is tall enough to take on any woman, from the sound of it. And he’s the only one who didn’t move out after the incident, is that correct?” She turned her attention back to the landlord.
“That’s right. He said he wasn’t worried about intruders. In fact, he said he hoped the guy would come back so he could get revenge for Ms. Lee.”
“How about the tenants that left?” Jenny asked. “Were they male or female?”
“Both female.”
Jenny cocked her head to the side as she processed the information. It made sense; no woman would want to live in that complex after that kind of attack. An athletic man wouldn’t have been as afraid.
“Do you mind if I go into the bedroom?” Jenny asked.
“Go right ahead,” he said. “I’ll just wait out here, if it’s all the same to you.”
Somehow, Jenny wasn’t surprised by that response. She and Zack walked alone into the only bedroom, where she paused to try to get a feel for what the room could tell her. As was the case in Lisa’s apartment, she got the impression that the victim had no idea who the killer had been. Sonya had gone straight from sleeping to dead with no period of awareness in between.
Jenny hung her head with defeat. “I’ve got nothing,” she admitted. “We’re going to have to go about this a different way. The victims don’t even know who we’re dealing with.”
“What are we going to do, then?”
She let out a sigh and put her hands on her hips. “I guess we’ll have to try to find out what places the victims had been—see if there were any links between the two. Maybe I can go to those places and get some insight that the police can’t? I don’t know.”
Zack wordlessly put his arm around Jenny’s shoulder.
“At Lisa’s place, I got a vision of a guy sitting on a bench by a walking trail. He definitely creeped her out; I guess I can start by looking into that.” She glanced up at Zack. “Although, I have to admit, he didn’t look all that scary to me. He appeared to be homeless, which may have made Lisa uncomfortable, but you and I both know that homeless doesn’t mean violent.” She thought back to her last case, where she helped a Veteran with PTSD who had been living on the streets.
For a brief moment, she wondered how he was doing.
“You have to trust your Spidey-senses, though,” Zack replied, snapping Jenny out of her thoughts. “Homeless doesn’t mean violent, but if Lisa was creeped out by the guy, there may have been a reason for it.”
Jenny nodded, silently agreeing to his statement. “I also want to talk to Luke Thomas, the guy upstairs. I have this visual in my head that the guy looks like Plastic Man and could worm his way through any window he wanted.”
“Where is that coming from?” Zack asked.
Jenny laughed. “He’s been described as extremely tall and skinny. Detective Brennan said he looks like he’s been stretched out on a rack. He’s on the suspect list in this case, simply because he lives upstairs, but it sounds like he has the build that would allow him to sneak in through windows if he wanted.”
“Do you think he’s home?”
With a shrug of her shoulder, Jenny replied, “There’s only one way to find out.”
The couple walked back out into the living room where the landlord nervously played with his fingers. “Did you get everything you needed?”
Jenny smiled graciously. “Yes, sir. From here, anyway. I’d like the chance to talk to the upstairs tenant if he’s around, but you don’t need to be here for that.”
With a move that was a combination of a bow and a nod, the landlord said, “Well, I’ll just lock up here, I guess.”
The couple walked past him, waiting in the narrow entryway while he made sure the door was secure. They thanked him for his time, heading up the stairs while the landlord went outside.
The stairs did a switchback halfway up, leading to a door that was in the same location as Sonya’s but on the second floor. Jenny knocked, hearing commotion come from behind the door. Eventually, she heard an alarmingly deep voice say, “Yeah?”
“Hi, Mr. Thomas. My name is Jenny Larrabee; I’d like to speak to you about Sonya Lee, if you’re willing.”
She heard some clicking as the locks became undone. The door opened to reveal one of the tallest men she’d ever seen in her life. He had black hair and soft brown eyes with long lashes, making him look like a harmless person, despite his towering presence. “Hey,” he said, “come on in.”
They stepped inside the apartment, which had the exact same layout as Sonya’s. “Thanks for seeing us,” Jenny began. “This is my husband Zack; we’re trying to get some answers on behalf of Sonya Lee and Lisa Penne. Is it okay if we ask you some questions?”
He nodded his head and looked down, sadness apparent on his face. Gesturing toward his sofa, he said, “You can sit down if you want. I know the routine by now. You’re, like, the millionth people to come here and ask me about it.”
“Thanks. I’ll try to be quick; I don’t want to bother you,” Jenny replied as she and Zack both took him up on his offer to sit down. Once she was comfortable on the couch, a quick wave hit Jenny, leading her to point to the other side of the room. “The sofa used to be over there, no?”
Luke flashed her a confused look as he sat in the recliner, making the chair look like a miniature. “Yeah. How do you know that?”
Zack chimed in, “She’s a psychic, believe it or not.”
Looking back and forth between Zack and Jenny, Luke simply said, “What?”
Jenny smiled modestly. “He’s right. That’s why I’m here. I’m hoping I can get a little insight that the regular police detectives can’t get. I’m under the impression that Sonya has been here before, but the furniture looked different.” She closed her eyes, recalling the brief image that had flashed into her mind. With each statement accompanied by a point, she added, “The sofa was there, the recliner was there, and the television was along that wall.”
“That’s right,” Luke said with awe. “I rearranged right after Sonya was…attacked. I put shit in front of the windows so that if anyone tried to sneak in, they would knock something over and I would hear them.”
Jenny looked around at the arrangement, noticing the shelving units blocking the windows, deeming that his story had merit.
“And then,” Luke added, “I’d grab one of the bats I have lying around, and I would clobber the shit out of the guy.” He gestured toward them with his head. “Go ahead. Look under the couch.”
Zack bent forward and lifted the skirt at the bottom of the sofa. “Yup,” he confirmed. “There’s a bat there.”
“Damn straight there’s a bat there. If this guy comes back, he’s all mine. After all, who would you put your money on? Some coward with a knife, or a giant pissed-off guy with a bat?”
Jenny felt a warmth encompass her body; Sonya was clearly pleased by this conversation. Jenny imagined that the two neighbors had a good relationship.
“My money’s on you, big guy,” Zack said emphatically. “I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of one of your swings.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t think it will ever happen,” Luke added. “It seems this asshole only likes to attack women—when they’re sleeping, no less, and have no chance to defend themselves.” Luke leaned back in the chair, stretching his legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankles. Jenny couldn’t help but feel like this was not the demeanor of a murderer who was being questioned about the attack.
“What type of relationship did you have with Sonya?” Jenny asked.
“We were friendly,” he said, repeating Detective Brennan’s words.
Jenny still found the phrasing to be odd. “You were friends?”
He squinted and tilted his head to the side. “Friends might be too strong of a word. We never hung out or anything, but we would stop and talk if we ran into each other. She was a nice person.”
Jenny was confused. “But she’d been in your apartment…”
“Yeah,” he replied. “She locked herself out once, and she hung out up here until the locksmith came, but that was it.”
The term suddenly made more sense to Jenny, who no longer believed that friendly was meant to have sexual overtones. “She called you Shorty.” The words popped out of Jenny’s mouth before she even realized what she was saying.
Luke studied Jenny with a mixture of awe and skepticism for a moment, before admitting, “Yeah, that’s right. She was, what, five-two or five-three?” A nostalgic smile crept onto his lips when he added, “I called her Boss.”
There was little doubt in Jenny’s mind that she was talking to an innocent man. “I imagine you’ve already told the police this, but did you hear anything that night?”
Luke sounded bitter. “From what I understand, there wasn’t anything to hear. Besides, if I did hear anything, I would have gone down to help her.”
“Did you know Lisa Penne at all?”
“The second victim?” Luke asked. “No, I didn’t know her.”
Jenny nodded, feeling like they weren’t going to get any more information out of this man, who just happened to live near the first victim. Standing up, she said, “Well, I don’t want to take up any more of your time. I just wanted to get a feel for the dynamic in this apartment building.”
“It was a great place to live until a few weeks ago. Now I’m the only one here.” Luke also stood up to walk them out.
Jenny looked at him compassionately. “Well, hopefully they’ll catch this guy soon, and everybody can move back in.”
“Do me a favor, if you can,” Luke said. “If you are the one to figure out who this guy is, tell me before you tell the police. I’ll go visit him with my bat and let him know what I think of him.”
Jenny smiled and extended her hand. “It’s a great offer, but I make no guarantees.”
