Sam put the marker back and held up his thumb. “One: a random attack.” In Murder you get into the habit of numbering things; it makes O’Kelly happy. “She was out walking and someone jumped her—for money, as part of a sexual assault, or just looking for trouble.”
“If there had been any sign of sexual assault,” Cooper said wearily, to his fingernails, “I would, I think, have mentioned it by this point. In fact, I found nothing to indicate recent sexual contact of any kind.”
Sam nodded. “No sign of robbery, either—she still had her wallet, with cash in it, she didn’t own a credit card and she’d left her mobile at home. But that doesn’t prove it wasn’t the motive. Maybe she fights, he stabs her, she runs, he goes after her and then panics when he realizes what he’s done . . .” He shot me a quick, inquiring look.
O’Kelly has definite opinions on psychology, and he likes to pretend he doesn’t know about the profiling thing. I needed to do this delicately. “You think?” I said. “I don’t know, I sort of figured . . . I mean, she was moved after she died, right? If it took her half an hour to die, then either this guy spent all that time looking for her—and why would a mugger or a rapist do that?—or someone else found her later, moved her, and didn’t bother ringing us. They’re both possible, I guess, but I don’t think either one’s likely.”
"Fortunately, Maddox,” O’Kelly said nastily, “your opinion is no longer our problem. As you pointed out, you’re not on this case.”
“Yet,” Frank said, to the air.
“There’s other problems with the stranger scenario, too,” said Sam. “That area’s pretty well deserted during the daytime, never mind at night. If someone was looking for trouble, why would he hang around a laneway in the middle of nowhere, just on the off chance that a victim might wander past? Why not head into Wicklow town, or Rathowen, or at least Glenskehy village?”
"Any similars in the area?” O’Kelly asked.
“No knifepoint muggings or stranger sexual assaults,” Sam said. “Glenskehy’s a small village, sure; the two main crimes are drinking after hours and then driving home. The only stabbing in the last year was a group of lads getting drunk and stupid. Unless something similar turns up, I’d say we put the stranger on the back burner for now.”
“Suits me,” Frank said, grinning at me. A random attack would mean no info within the victim’s life, no evidence or motive waiting to be discovered, no reason to send me under. “Suits me down to the ground.”
"Might as well,” said O’Kelly. “If it’s random, we’re bolloxed anyway: it’s luck or nothing.”
“Grand, so. Two”—Sam ticked off a finger—“a recent enemy; I mean, someone who knew her as Lexie Madison. She moved in a pretty limited circle, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find out whether anyone had any problems with her. We’re starting with the housemates and working our way outwards—staff at Trinity, students—”
“With no luck so far,” Frank said, to no one in particular.
“It’s early days,” Sam said firmly. “We’re only at the preliminary interviews. And now we know she was pregnant, we’ve a whole other line of inquiry. We need to find the father.”
O’Kelly snorted. “Good luck with that. Girls these days, he’s probably some young fella she met at a disco and shagged down a laneway.”
I felt a sudden, confused spurt of fury: Lexie wasn’t like that. I reminded myself that my info was out of date, for all I knew this edition had been a five-star slapper. “Discos went out with the slide rule, sir,” I said sweetly.
“Even if he’s some fella from a nightclub,” Sam said, “he’ll have to be found and eliminated. It might take time, but we’ll get it done.” He was looking at Frank, who nodded gravely. “I’ll ask the lads from the house to give us DNA samples, to start with.”
“We might want to leave that for a while,” Frank said smoothly, “all depending, of course. If by any chance her acquaintances should end up under the impression that she’s alive and well, we don’t want to rattle their cages. We want them relaxed, off their guard, thinking the investigation’s wound down. The DNA’ll still be there in a few weeks’ time.”
Sam shrugged. He was starting to tense up again. “We’ll work that out as we go. Three: an enemy from her previous life, someone who had a grudge and tracked her down.”
“Now that’s the one I fancy,” Frank said, straightening up. “We’ve got no indication of any problems in her Lexie Madison life, right? But wherever she was before, something obviously went wrong. She wasn’t going around under a fake name just for the laugh. Either she was on the run from the cops, or she was on the run from someone else. My money’s on someone else.”
"I’m not sure I buy it,” I said. Screw O’Kelly’s feelings; I could see exactly where Frank was going with this, and I don’t like being railroaded. “The killing’s completely disorganized: one stab wound that didn’t even need to be fatal, and then—instead of finishing her off, or at least holding her so she can’t go for help and give him up—he lets her get away, to the point where it takes him half an hour to find her again. To me, that says no premeditation, maybe even no intent to kill.”
O’Kelly gave me a disgusted grimace. "Someone stuck a knife in this girl’s chest, Maddox. I’d say he knew there was a fair chance she could die.”
I have years of practice in letting O’Kelly wash over me. “A chance, sure. But if someone had spent years thinking about killing her, he’d have it planned down to the last detail. He’d have every base covered, he’d have a script, and he’d stick to it.”
“So maybe he did have a script,” Frank said, “but it didn’t involve anything like violence. Say it’s not a grudge that has him chasing her, it’s unrequited love. He’s got it in his head that they’re soul mates, he’s planning a lovey-dovey reunion and happy ever after, and instead she tells him to fuck off. She’s the one who breaks away from the script, and he can’t handle it.”
“Stalkers snap,” I said, “yeah. But they do it a whole lot more thoroughly than this. You’d expect a frenzy of violence: multiple blows, facial disfigurement, serious overkill. Instead, we’ve got one stab, barely even deep enough to kill her. It doesn’t fit.”
“Maybe he didn’t get the chance for overkill,” Sam said. “He stabs her, she runs, by the time he catches up with her she’s already dead.”
“Still,” I said. “You’re talking about someone obsessed enough to wait years and follow her God knows how far. That level of emotion, when it finally gets an outlet it’s not going to vanish just because the target’s dead. If anything, the fact that she’d escaped him again would have made him even angrier. I’d expect at least a few more stab wounds, a couple of kicks in the face, something like that.”
It felt good, getting stuck into the case like this, like I was just a Murder detective again and she was just another victim; it spread through me strong and sweet and soothing as hot whiskey after a long day in wind and rain. Frank was sprawled casually in his chair, but I could feel him watching me, and I knew I was starting to sound too interested. I shrugged, leaned my head back against the wall and gazed up at the ceiling.
“The real point is,” Frank said, inevitably, “if she’s foreign and he followed her over here, for whatever reason, then the minute he knows he’s got the job done, he’ll be out of the country like a hot snot off a slate. The only way he’ll stick around long enough for us to catch up with him is if he thinks she’s still alive.”
A brief, heavy silence.
“We can run checks on everyone leaving the country,” Sam said.
“Checks for what?” Frank inquired. “We haven’t a clue who we’re looking for, where he or she might be heading, nothing. Before we can get anywhere, we need an ID.”
“We’re working on that. Like I said. If this woman could pass herself off as Irish, then odds are English was her first language. We’ll start with England, the U.S., Canada—”
Frank shook his head. “That’s going to take time. We need to keep our boy—or girl—here until we find out who the hell we’re looking for. And I can think of exactly one way to do that.”
“Four,” Sam said, firmly. He ticked off another finger, and his eyes went to me for a split second, then slid away. “Mistaken identity.”
There was another small silence. Cooper came out of his trance and started looking distinctly intrigued. My face had started to feel like it was scorching me, like overdone eye shadow or a top cut too low, something I should have known better than to wear.