Though after a sweep of the open-plan living and kitchen area of the unit, I may prefer it. “This guy is the most boring person I have ever met. He doesn’t even have Rice Bubbles. There’s just… porridge.” I wrinkle my nose and close the cupboard. Who only has porridge? Where’s the sugar rush? The sweetness? The crunch.
“Not everyone has sugar for breakfast,” Kendrick says absently. He flicks through the letters on the bench. “Just bills.” He holds one up. “Overdue water.”
“His salary isn’t something to sneeze at, and this place can’t cost more than four hundred a week. Is he just forgetful or spending his money elsewhere?”
“Excellent question.”
The question is answered the second we step into his bedroom. My stomach churns uncomfortably, and bile rises in my throat. “What the fuck?”
There’s barely any room to move in here. Pictures cover the walls. All of Vanessa Ferguson. Some alone, some with other people. The common denominator is definitely her. There’s a computer set up right beside the bed, with six monitors. They’re all on. One of them is open to the website Six sent us earlier. One is some kind of chat room. And the rest are cameras. Specifically, cameras inside Vanessa’s home. Her living area, her kitchen, laundry, and one that looks out into the backyard. Not the bathroom, bedroom, or toilet. Those are all the most intimate areas. Why have they been left out? Couldn’t get access, or something else?
“Are there any recordings? We’ll be on them if there are copies,” Kendrick says. “Six will have to go into the server and erase everything.” He strokes his jaw. “Fuckingcameras. We should have looked for that.”
Why would we? Hidden cameras aren’t on the list of things to look for in a victim’s house. Unusual, and so incredibly fucked up. “And disable the cameras. Why are they even still recording?” Wait a second. “The murder. Fuck me, he could have it recorded.”
Kendrick shoves the chair out of the way and starts playing around with the computer, half leaned over to reach the keyboard. Tech isn’t my speciality, so I leave it with him to search the room more thoroughly. The wardrobe is just as fucked up as the rest of the room. Worse, actually. There’s a goddamnshrinein here. With candles and everything. A large full-body poster of the woman that looks like it might have been in some kind of “sexy” pin-up magazine and blown up to real size. It’s all incredibly weird shit.
Dangerous weird shit. People that go to this length are capable of anything.
“The recordings are only forty-eight hours,” Kendrick says behind me. “They record over the oldest files as it records new.”
“Why?” That seems counterproductive. Doesn’t he want recordings to jerk to later or something?
“It doesn’t look like he saves anything anywhere. Doesn’t seem to be about keeping it or sharing it on his website. He likes to watch her in real time?”
“So, no murder footage?”
“Not necessarily.” Kendrick stands and looks over the back of the computer monitor. “There might be something in the hard drive that we can recover. We need to check the cameras in the house too. If they use a micro-SD card, then Six may be able to get it off using some of the software he has.”
If Six can’t, no one can. The doctor’s a powerhouse when it comes to hacking.
“Unless he has the cameras hooked up to power—in which case, the wires would make it pretty obvious, right? And we didn’t see anything—it’ll only have a certain amount of battery time.”
The implications of that don't sit well with me. It means he has to be replacing the batteries on a regular basis. “He has regular access to her home.”
“Did she let him in, or did he break and enter when she wasn’t home?” Kendrick asks.
If he was waiting for her to leave, he knew a lot about her schedule to be confident about it. How long has he been watching her like this?
“He might have witnessed the murder himself,” I say thoughtfully. “There’s no recording in the bathroom, but if there was a second person in the place, he’d have to have noticed it,right? There’s no way he’s not watching these every night, like a sick fuck.”
Kendrick scratches his forehead with a frown. “Something doesn’t feel right.”
“What do you mean? All the signs point to him.”
“Right. ForVanessa.But what about the first murder? There’s not a single thing here about her. Not a picture, nothing.”
He’s right, of course. This guy’s a one-woman show, and based on the dating of some of these pictures, he’s been on this singular track for a while.
“Let’s pack up everything here so we can sift through it, piece by piece.” Sometimes it’s the little things that make all the equations add up. I want to know if he’s hiding anything else. “You don’t think he killed the first woman? He may have been inspired by the first killer.” In which case, it’s a copycat case. Everyone’s a murderer these days. Watch enough TV and you think you can get away with it.
“I don’t know what I think. We need to question him, somehow. Without drawing attention to ourselves. We should—”
We both freeze at the sound of the front door opening, hands automatically going to the weapons at our hips.
Well, well. With a self-satisfied smirk, I say, “Looks like someone answered your call.”
“I bet our guardian angels get hazard pay.”
