"No. He was pushing for it, but she didn’t want that kind of commitment.” Grace frowned. “Honestly, if you ask me, I think she had been wanting to break up with Noah for a long time. I think maybe that's part of the reason she moved out here. To get away from him. But he followed her. I think they had broken up when she first moved, then got back together. She told him she wasn't going back to Iowa, and he stayed here. I think they had been trying to make it work for the last year, but…”
I thanked her for the info.
JD and I stepped back into the bedroom, and I found Abigail's cell phone on the nightstand by the bed. I put on a pair of nitrile gloves, then brought the phone to her face after Brenda had removed the cloth. The security screen cleared with facial recognition, giving me access to the device.
I scrolled through her recent calls and texts, taking screenshots. I sent them to my phone. I read some of the recent text messages. There were several calls and messages from Brandon, several from Grace, and dozens of spam telemarketers.
When I was done, I gave the phone to the forensic guys and headed down to the main office with Jack.
Paris accosted us as we stepped out of the apartment. Thecamera closed in. “Deputy Wild, can you confirm the victim was strangled?”
My eyes narrowed at her. “I can’t discuss anything at this time.”
She had a source inside the department and knew just about everything as it happened.
The property manager had let the police into the unit. Tabitha was aware of the incident, but she didn't want to stick around any longer than she had to.
I knocked on the door to the leasing office and pushed inside. I flashed my badge, and Tabitha looked at me with a grim face. She was in her late 30s, with short auburn hair and ice-blue eyes.
"That's just so terrible what happened to Abigail." She shook her head. "She was such a sweet girl." A look of fear crept into her eyes. "How worried do I need to be? Do you think someone targeted her specifically? Are the residents at risk?"
"I wish I could tell you more," I said.
"I suppose you want security footage?”
I nodded. "That would be a huge help.”
Tabitha forced a solemn smile. "Well, you're in luck. I thought ahead and pulled it up for you. If you tell me when you think this happened, I can scroll back through the timeline and see what we see.”
I gave her the approximate time of death, and Tabitha reviewed the footage.
"I only have feeds for the lobby and the parking garage. We don't have cameras in the hallways, but we do have a camera on the rooftop pool."
JD and I huddled around Tabitha's desk and looked at the monitor. At that time of night, it wasn't particularly busy. A few people came and went.
I didn't see anything unusual. I told Tabitha to scrub back through the timeline.
She did, and we didn’t see anything suspicious. Just normal traffic for that time of night—people coming back from the bars.
No Abigail.
We looked at the parking garage feed. Something struck me as odd. Around 3:20 AM this morning, a guy in a motorcycle helmet stepped off the elevator, walked across the garage, and waited in the shadows until the gate opened when a car entered.
I pointed at the screen. “That’s our suspect.”
I asked Tabitha to keep scrubbing back through the footage to the night before last.
She did, and we saw what appeared to be Abigail enter the lobby around 2:45 AM. She waited for the elevator, stepped aboard, and presumably went up to her apartment.
We checked the feed from the parking garage that night, and there was nothing unusual. Nobody loitering around. No one had entered from the garage around that time.
I told Tabitha to scroll back a little further.
She did.
Around 2:00 AM, the gates to the parking garage below the building opened, a car drove in, and found a place to park.
Before the gate closed, a man wearing a motorcycle helmet with a blacked-out visor stepped into the parking garage. It was the same guy who left the following morning around 3:20 AM.
