If She Saw

Faded white letters on the mailbox read LANGLEY. Kate also spotted a decorative L hanging on the front door, made of aged wood. It stood out against the bright yellow of the crime scene tape that hung from the porch railings.

As Kate and DeMarco headed for the front porch, DeMarco half read, half recited the information they had in the reports on the Langley family.

“Scott and Bethany Langley—Scott fifty-nine years of age, Bethany sixty-one. Scott was found dead in the kitchen and Bethany was in the laundry room. They were found by a fifteen-year-old boy who was taking private guitar lessons from Scott. It’s estimated that they had only been killed a few hours before the bodies were discovered.”

When they entered the Langley residence, Kate stood in the doorway for a moment, taking in the layout of the place. It was a smaller house, but well kept. The front door opened into a very small foyer which then became the living room. From there, a small bar top counter separated the kitchen from the living room. A hallway stood off to the right, leading to the rest of the house.

The layout of the house alone told Kate that the husband had likely been killed first. But from the front door, there was pretty much a clear view into the kitchen. Scott Langley would have had to have been quite busy not to notice someone walking through the front door.

Maybe the killer came in some other way, Kate thought.

They entered the kitchen, where bloodstains still stood out prominently on the laminate floor. A frying pan and a can of cooking spray were sitting by the edge of the stove.

He was about to cook something, Kate thought. So maybe they were killed right around dinner time.

DeMarco started for the hallway, and Kate followed her. There was a small room immediately to the left, the door opening to reveal a crowded laundry room. Here, the blood splatter had been much worse. There were bloodstains on the washer, the dryer, the walls, the floor, and on a load of neatly folded clean clothes sitting in a hamper.

With the bodies already removed, there seemed to be very little the Langley residence could offer them. But Kate had one more thing she wanted to check. She walked back out into the living room and looked at the pictures on the walls and atop the entertainment center. She saw the Langleys smiling and happy. In one picture, she saw an older couple with the Langleys posing by the end of a pier at the beach.

“Do we have a breakdown of the Langleys’ family life?” Kate asked.

DeMarco, still holding the iPad in her right hand, scrolled through the information and started to read out the details they had. With each one, Kate found that the hunch she had been sitting on for a few minutes was likely true.

“They were married for twenty-five years. Bethany Langley had a sister that died in a car accident twelve years ago and neither of them have any surviving parents. Scott Langley’s father passed away recently, just six months ago, from an aggressive form of prostate cancer.”

“Any mention of kids?”

“Nope. No kids.” DeMarco paused here and seemed to catch on to what Kate was speculating on. “You’re thinking about the fabric, right? That it looks sort of like a kid’s blanket.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. But if the Langleys didn’t have kids I don’t think there would be any obvious connection to be found.”

“I don’t know that I’ve ever seen an obvious connection to anything,” DeMarco said with a shaky little laugh.

“That’s true,” Kate said, but she felt like there had to be one here. Even with the seemingly random victims, there were a few things they did have in common.

Both couples were both in their mid-to-late fifties, early sixties. Both were married. The wife of each couple had a piece of what appears to be a blanket shoved down her throat.

So yes…there were similarities, but they were leading to no real links. Not yet, anyway.

“Agent DeMarco, do you think you could make a call or two and make sure we can get some office space at the local police department?”

“Already done,” she said. “I’m pretty sure Duran handled all of that before we even arrived here.”

He thinks he knows me so well, Kate thought, a little irritated. But then, on the other hand, it appeared that he did know her pretty damned well.

Kate glanced around the house again, at the pictures, at the bloodstains. She was going to have to get deeper into the details of each couple if she wanted to get anywhere with this. And she was going to need to get some kind of forensic results on the fabric pieces. Given the similarities between the two scenes, she assumed some good old basic research more than anything would uncover some leads and clues.

They returned to the car, Kate again reminded that they had started this day ridiculously early. When she saw that it was just after ten in the morning, she was somewhat invigorated. They still had most of the day ahead of them. Maybe, if she was lucky and the case broke the way she felt it might, she’d be back in Richmond by the close of the weekend to see Michelle one more time—if, that was, Melissa would allow it.

See, some wiser part of her spoke up as she got back behind the wheel of the car. Even in the midst of multiple bloody murders, you’re thinking of your granddaughter—of your family. Doesn’t that tell you something?

She supposed it did. But even as she stepped foot into the later quarter or so of her life, it was still very hard to admit that there was something more to life than her work. It was especially hard when she was on the trail of a killer and knew that at any moment, he could be killing again.

CHAPTER SIX

A small conference room in the back of the City of Roanoke Police had been set aside for Kate and DeMarco. Once they arrived at the station, a small portly woman at the front desk led them through the building and to the room. As soon as they sat down and started to set up a makeshift workstation, there was a knock at the door.

“Come in,” Kate said.

When the door opened, they saw a familiar face—Palmetto from the State PD, the somewhat curmudgeonly man who had met them in front of the Nash residence much earlier in the day.

“I saw you guys headed back this way while I was signing all of my paperwork,” Palmetto said. “I’m on the way out, driving back to Chesterfield in a few hours. I thought I’d check in to see if there was anything else I could help with.”

“Nothing big,” Kate said. “Did you happen to know that there was also a scrap of that same fabric discovered in the throat of Bethany Langley?”

“I didn’t until about half an hour ago. Apparently, one of you called the lab to ask them to send a picture.”

“Yeah,” DeMarco said. “And it seems to be a match with the one you gave us.”

At the mention of the scrap of fabric, Kate set the plastic bag Palmetto had given her on the table. “As of right now, it’s the only solid evidence we have that links the murders in any concrete way.”

“And forensics found pretty much nothing on that one,” Palmetto said. “Aside from Mrs. Nash’s DNA.”

“The forensic report I’m seeing from the scrap from the Langleys offers up nothing, either,” DeMarco said.

“Still might be worth a trip to the forensics lab,” Kate said.

“Good luck with that,” Palmetto said. “When I spoke with them about the Nash scrap, they were clueless.”

“Were you at all involved with the scene at the Langley home?” Kate asked.

“No. I came in right after it had happened. I saw the bodies and checked the place over, but there was nothing. When you talk to forensics, though, ask them about the stray hair found on the clean laundry. It didn’t seem to belong to Mrs. Langley, so they’re going to run some tests on it.”

“Before you go,” Kate said, “do you want to offer up any theories?”

“I don’t have one,” Palmetto said dryly. “From the digging I’ve done, there seems to be absolutely no link between the Nashes and the Langleys. The fabric in the throats, though…something that personal and explicit to the killer has to link them somehow, right?”

“That’s my thought,” Kate said.

Palmetto gave the door a playful slap and then Kate saw him smile for the first time. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out. I’ve heard about you, you know? A lot of us on the State PD have.”

“I’m sure,” she said with a smirk.

“Mostly good things. And then you came out of retirement to bring someone down a few months ago, right?”

“You could say that.”

Palmetto, seeing that Kate wasn’t going to just sit there and soak in accolades, gave her a shrug. “Give the state boys a call if you need anything on this one, Agent Wise.”