It hadn’t been a random killing. Tanya had been targeted, and the display of her body had been planned ahead of time. Likely, it was someone who had come and gone from the Beckett house. Himself, Liam. Danny Zigler, any member of Tanya’s family, his friends at the time, his grandfather’s friends…
He was going over the names, trying to think of anyone else. Craig Beckett had been smart, but he’d also had an open heart. They’d welcomed underprivileged kids in for tea, supported the police, the firefighters and every poor wretch who stumbled upon their family. The house had been an open highway.
Sam Barnard thought that Danny was shady. David had a hard time accepting the fact that he might be guilty of murder.
Who then? Who had been around? Himself, Liam, Sam, Jamie O’Hara…no, they said that he hadn’t left his bar that night, not until the wee hours of the morning. Still, he could have hidden the body-but he hadn’t been gone between the hours of seven and nine.
She had last been seen at O’Hara’s.
There had to be something in the files.
There were pictures. Bizarre pictures, still barely real. He rubbed his finger over one of the photographs, touching Tanya’s cheek. Had she been targeted and killed because someone wanted to punish her?
For being free and loose, for finding a new lover while she’d still been engaged?
He read more of the interview notes and realized that there was a small notation next to the name Mike Sanderson. Itvw b p; subject oos. What the hell did that mean?
He frowned. They were a policeman’s notes to himself. Guy Levy. He was still a cop; he’d gotten transferred over to investigation from being a beat cop. Guy had at least ten years with the force now.
Interview by phone; subject out of state?
David pulled out his cell phone and called the station, asking for Guy. To his surprise, he reached him immediately.
“David! Saw you at the station the other day but you were gone before I could say hello. How are you doing? Dumb question. We hear about-and see-your success all the time. It’s good that you’re back.”
“Thanks. Hey, Guy, I wanted to ask you a question about Tanya’s case.”
There was silence, and then a groan. “Hey, you know, I wasn’t really in on the case. I wasn’t an official investigator. I was just doing interviews.”
“I know, I was just curious. Did you go up and see Mike Sanderson, Tanya’s new boyfriend?”
“No, no. I interviewed him by phone. He was gone, you know.”
“Right. So I heard. Where was he when you spoke to him?”
“Uh-home?”
“You sure?”
“Well, he’d left Key West, you know. Like a day or two before the murder. I didn’t talk to him until the following Monday. I’m sure he could have reached Ohio by then.”
“Did you speak to him on a landline?”
“I spoke to him on the only number I had. He was all broken up. Said he wasn’t surprised when he didn’t hear from her right away-he’d been afraid that once she’d seen you, she’d change her mind.”
Sloppy work, David thought. Well, they’d dragged in patrolmen. Men who did what they were told, and didn’t think to hunt down the man and talk to him in person.
He didn’t tell Guy that someone should have really traced Mike Sanderson’s movements; he could have been hiding out somewhere in the Keys. He could have surprised Tanya. She wouldn’t have fought him. She would have never suspected that he wanted to do her harm.
He thanked Guy and clicked the end button on his phone. He needed to get Liam going through official channels to draw credit-card receipts and find out if Mike Sanderson had really left the island.
The crime-scene photos were not good. The murder had been just ten years ago; the photos should have been better, more extensive. He turned on a high-powered light and ruffled through the desk for a magnifying glass.
There was something he hadn’t noticed before. Spots. He tried to rub them off the photos. They didn’t rub off. Was it poor photography? No, he thought. There was something there. Something that looked like light blue bruising on her nose and her lips.
He pulled out the autopsy photos and report. There was no mention of the bruising on the face.
Maybe it had been so light at the time that the coroner hadn’t seen it?
Impossible to tell at this late date, and it wasn’t evident until now, until he took out the magnifying glass.
Death was officially suffocation by strangling. The bruises on the neck were evident. There had been nothing beneath her nails. Tanya hadn’t fought her attacker. She had been taken completely by surprise.
That suggested someone strong, and, probably, an assault from behind.
He closed his eyes and tried to imagine someone coming up behind her, someone with the strength to encircle her neck with his hands and choke the life out of her before she could put her hands up to resist. It would have been natural for her hands to dig into the hands that were on her, for her nails to have curled into flesh.
Not if her attacker was wearing gloves, and not if he stole her air so quickly she couldn’t scream or do more than lift her hands.
His phone started ringing and vibrating on the desk. He picked it up and checked his caller ID before answering it.