Out of the Blue: A Pengram Mystery Read Online Free

Uniforms canvassed the houses behind the silk mill, but many of them were vacant. This wasn’t one of Darby’s nice areas. Industry had moved elsewhere over the last twenty years and the nearest elementary school had closed, sending this community into a death spiral. The few remaining residents hadn’t seen a truck parked in the driveway or a person moving things in. They hadn’t heard anything either. Tall fences framed their yards, AC kept their homes cool instead of open windows. No one had dogs outside to bark at something strange. Neighbors kept to themselves.
    It had to have been done in the night. Several nights, especially if he had to carry in those partitions one by one. Then he brought in the victim, and ran her like a rat through a maze.
    The perp had taken the murder weapon with him. Death had come so quickly that Chloe didn’t have any defensive wounds on her arms or hands.
    That was a small mercy. There were no overt signs of sexual assault, and she’d been killed with what appeared to be one blow. No overkill. It seemed to me that the joy in this had not come from the execution of the victim but the execution of the scene .
    I walked through the maze twice before it was processed, careful not to brush against anything. The amount of planning and effort this had taken was unbelievable. He was careful. Intelligent. Deliberate.
    And terrifyingly confident.
     
    *****
     
    “She was nice.”
    Lindsay Laber was packed into a corner of the sofa, her knees drawn up protectively to her chest. Her eyes gleamed with tears that had yet to fall. Major bed hair and a toddler’s chubby cheeks, she was twenty-one and had shared her apartment with Chloe Rogers for the last year.
    “When was the last time you saw her?” Halloran asked as I looked around. The living room was homey but sparse, the few pieces of furniture old and well traveled. On the walls were cartoon-bright posters of jumping dolphins over rich blue waves. There were pictures on the end table of Lindsay with family and friends. Chloe was in one, laughing with Lindsay’s arm over her shoulders. She had been a lovely young woman.
    “It was just last night,” Lindsay was saying to Halloran. “My friend Craig turned twenty-one. Craig Palmer. He’s a friend from work. Spazzo’s. We clean up after the kids’ birthday parties and set up for the next ones. I asked Lindsay if she wanted to go along with us to Bounce. She didn’t want to.”
    “Why not?” I asked.
    “She’s not . . .” One of the tears finally fell as Lindsay realized her tense was wrong. “She always had to get talked into stuff. She was kind of dark. Not like doing drugs or cutting herself or anything like that. She just saw the bad before the good, you know? She was closed in. Not that you could blame her. Her parents were killed in a car crash when she was little, two or three. She was in her car seat and lived. It was an accident, ice on the road and her father lost control. That was in Michigan, I think she said. Then she came to California to live with her grandparents and they were old, so they died when she was in high school. After that she was with some foster family and treated like the help. She didn’t have anyone. People just went away, from her perspective, or didn’t want her around, so why hang on too hard? Why reach out?”
    “Did she have a boyfriend?” Halloran asked.
    “No. Never. And no, she wasn’t a lesbian. She was just kind of . . . awkward. She said she never knew what to say to guys, or to anyone. You had to prompt her along in a conversation until you found the right angle, and then she’d talk. But she was smart. It wasn’t that. Just shy and awkward. She grew up with a couple of old people who wanted her to be quiet and weren’t involved in her life. They didn’t want to be raising a grandkid. It was like she just never learned how to converse since no one bothered to teach her. But I thought a night at Bounce would be good for her. Let