LITMIR.BIZ

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one of the other guys keeps pretty good notes of the calls, too. There will be all kind of time-stamped message threads, note edits, and things like that.” He was already heading for his laptop, sitting on a desk in front of one of the large windows. “Here, I can show you if you want.”

      She was now positive that Robbie Huston was innocent but she wanted to see it through. Given the way the news had affected him, she also wanted Robbie to feel like he had contributed something to the case. So she watched over his shoulder as he went to the conference platform site, logged in, and pulled up his history not just for the last few days, but the last several weeks as well. She saw that he had been telling the truth: he’d been taking part in a conference call and planning session from 6:45 to 10:04 on Tuesday night.

      The whole process took him less than five minutes to get through, showing her the notes and edits, as well as when he logged in and signed out of the call.

      “Thanks so much for your help, Mr. Huston,” she said.

      He nodded as he walked her to the door. “Two blind people…” he said, trying to make sense of it. “Why would someone do that?”

      “I’m trying to find that out for myself,” she said. “Please do call me if you think of anything that might help,” she added, offering him one of her cards.

      He took it, waved a slow goodbye, and then closed the door as she made her exit. Mackenzie almost felt like she’d just delivered the news of the murders to family members rather than a kind-hearted young guy who seemed to genuinely care about both of the deceased.

      She almost envied that…feeling genuine remorse for strangers. Lately, she had seen the dead as nothing more than corpses – unnamed mounds, ripe with potential clues.

      It wasn’t the best way to live a life, she knew. She couldn’t let the job wipe out her sense of compassion. Or her humanity.

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      Mackenzie pulled up in front of the Treston Home for the Blind at 11:46, having made better time than her GPS had estimated. Although, when Mackenzie parked in front of the building, she double-checked the address Clarke had given her. The home looked small, no bigger than a casual storefront. It was located on the far west side of the town of Treston, which, while much larger than Stateton, still wasn’t much to brag about. While the town was many steps up from the rural squalor of Stateton, it boasted just two stoplights. The only thing that made it the least bit urban was the McDonald’s along Main Street.

      Confident that she had the right address – which was further proven by the sign that sat in front of the property in a state of disrepair – Mackenzie stepped out of her car and walked up the cracked sidewalk. The front door was separated from the sidewalk by only three concrete stairs that looked as if they had not been swept in years.

      She walked inside, stepping into what served as a lobby and waiting area. A woman sat behind a counter along the front wall, speaking on the telephone. The wall behind her was painted a startling shade of white. A dry erase board contained a smattering of notes to her left. Other than that, the wall was plain and featureless.

      Mackenzie had to walk up to the counter and stand there, pressed against it and doing her best to suggest that she needed assistance. The woman behind the counter looked horribly annoyed at this and begrudgingly ended her call. She finally looked up at Mackenzie and asked: “Can I help you?”

      “I’m here to speak with the manager,” she said.

      “And you are?”

      “Agent Mackenzie White, with the FBI.”

      The woman paused for a moment, as if she didn’t believe Mackenzie. This time it was Mackenzie’s turn to give the annoyed look. She flashed her badge and watched as the woman suddenly sprang into action. She picked up the phone, pressed an extension, and spoke briefly with someone. She avoided eye contact with Mackenzie the entire time.

      When the woman was done, she finally looked up at Mackenzie again. It was clear that she was embarrassed but Mackenzie did her best not to take too much joy in it.

      “Mrs. Talbot will see you right away,” the lady said. “Head on back. Her office is the first one you’ll come to.”

      Mackenzie walked through the only other door in the lobby and entered a hallway. The hallway was rather short, containing only three doors. At the end of the hall, a set of double doors were closed. She assumed the residences were behind these doors and hoped the rooms were in much better shape than the rest of the building.

      She approached the first floor along the hallway. A nameplate along the side of the doorframe read Gloria Talbot. The door was standing partially open, but Mackenzie still knocked. The door was answered right away by an overweight woman who wore a thick pair of bifocals.

      “Agent White, please come on in,” Talbot said.

      Mackenzie did as she was asked, taking the single seat that sat on the opposite side of the small and cluttered desk.

      “I’m going to assume that this is about Kenneth Able’s murder?” Talbot asked.

      “Yes ma’am, it is,” Mackenzie said. “We have another murder in a town about two and a half hours south of here. Another blind person – a member of a home for the blind.”

      “Two and a half hours away?” Talbot asked. “That’s got to be the Wakeman Home for the Blind, right?”

      “It is. And the manner in which this victim was killed seemed to be identical to Kenneth Able. I was hoping you could show me around the home, including the closet where his body was found.”

      “Absolutely,” Talbot said. “Come with me.”

      Talbot led her back out into the hall and then through the double doors Mackenzie had spotted on her way to Talbot’s office. They entered a large open space that emptied into what appeared to be a sort of common room. Within the open space, Mackenzie counted eight rooms.

      “These,” Talbot said, “are the rooms the residents stay in. Unlike Wakeman, we don’t have ritzy up-to-date accommodations.”

      She did not say this apologetically. In fact, Mackenzie thought she heard some venom in Talbot’s voice.

      “This one,” Talbot said, leading Mackenzie to the second door on the right, “was Kenneth’s room.”

      Talbot unlocked the door and they stepped inside. The room smelled of dust and some sort of chemical cleaner that seemed far too strong. Mackenzie did her best not to seem taken aback by the state of the room in comparison to what she had seen at Wakeman. She observed the bed, the small writing desk, the bureau, and the closet door. Everything looked aged, dulled and from another time.

      She walked to the closet and opened it. As she looked into the empty space inside, she asked Talbot: “Can you walk me through how the body was discovered?”

      “There’s another resident here, Margaret Dunwoody,” Talbot said. “She and Kenneth joked that they were dating – which is hilarious because Kenneth was thirty-eight and Margaret is pushing sixty. They were always together, having conversations in the common room, eating meals together, and things like that. Anyway, she came to his room in the afternoon to see if he wanted to step out for a bite to eat at McDonald’s. When he didn’t answer the door, she came inside. She said she knew something was wrong right away. She said the room felt too still. She was freaked out, so she went to the security guard that was here that night – a young guy named Tyrell Price. Tyrell found Kenneth in the closet, dead.”

      “Strangled, with contusions around his eyes, correct?” Mackenzie asked.

      “That’s right,” Talbot said.

      Mackenzie looked into the closet, taking the small Maglite from her belt and shining it inside. She felt around the carpet and the doorframe but found no signs that the killer had left intentional clues. The only thing to be found in the closet was a stray coat hanger, dangling from the tension rod near the top of the frame.

      This is a lot more daring than what happened to Ellis Ridgeway, she thought. Someone actually came into the room

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