But if she had been murdered by the serial killer he was currently hunting down, Luke had already learned that the man was methodical, not sloppy.
If it was a man, he added silently with a slight ironic smile.
En route here, Luke had had his uncle send him a list of things that the CSI unit had taken from the apartment to examine for possible clues as to why Kristen been chosen by the killer. Scrolling through that list now on his smartphone, he found no indication that a cell phone or a computer of any sort—laptop or tower—had been found on the premises and taken to the lab.
Luke stared at the list and frowned. That didn’t seem right. In this day and age, everyone had electronic gadgets. They were all but hermetically sealed to them. Why weren’t there any in Kristin’s room?
His first guess was that this meant whoever had killed Kristin had made off with her cell phone and whatever laptop, tablet or other electronic device she used to surf the net and entrust with her personal data.
Still, he went through her closet and her bureau drawers, just in case he was wrong. After all, the killer got his kicks terminating the lives of young women, not making off with their electronic gadgets.
The killer also didn’t sexually attack his victims, which only added to the mystery. Just why were these women killed?
Coming up empty in his search, Luke decided to check one last place—under the victim’s mattress. Lifting it as far up as he could, he reached in and felt around along the entire perimeter of the box spring.
The tips of his fingers came in contact with something hard and smooth.
“Eureka,” he declared a little louder than he had intended.
The next moment, White Hawk peered into the bedroom. “What’s up? Did you just discover buoyancy?”
After putting down the mattress, he pulled out what he had found. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You know, that Greek guy, Archimedes,” White Hawk said. “He yelled ‘Eureka’ when he realized that water caused his legs to be buoyant.”
Luke snorted. “You are one strange guy.”
“No,” White Hawk corrected, coming farther into the bedroom. “Unlike you, I read.”
Luke regarded the laptop he had uncovered. “If you ask me, White Hawk, you need to get out more. You definitely need a life.”
“I’ll tell Linda you said so,” White Hawk said, referring to his wife.
Drawn by the commotion, Frankie walked into her cousin’s bedroom, joining the other two detectives. A shiver went down her back. She did her best not to show it.
“Is this a private party, or can anyone join in?” she asked sarcastically. And then she saw the laptop O’Bannon was holding. Her heart froze for a moment. “You found something.”
Luke laughed dryly as he turned toward White Hawk. “Nothing gets past her.”
Could that possibly contain the identity of the person who had killed Kris? How had she missed that? She’d been in this room, looking for a clue. But, she recalled, Sean Cavanaugh had been with her, working the scene at the time.
“What is that?” she asked in a quiet voice.
“On second thought, maybe some things do get past her,” Luke couldn’t resist commenting.
Annoyed, Frankie asked, “Is that the victim’s laptop?”
Luke had noticed that she paled slightly when she first looked at the computer. What was up with that? Was this woman somehow involved in this latest homicide? He found that hard to believe, but there was no denying that her complexion resembled the hue of a melted marshmallow.
“I haven’t gotten on it yet, but considering where I found it, I’d say that’s a pretty good guess.” Luke turned his piercing green eyes to meet hers. “Is that a problem?”
She was careful not to blow out a breath or appear to be anything but blasé. “No, no problem,” Frankie lied. “Why should there be?”
To the best of her knowledge, Kris didn’t have any photographs of the two of them on her laptop. If her cousin did, then she’d find a way to explain it away, Frankie told herself.
Luke continued eying her. “I don’t know,” he answered. “You tell me. You’re the one who looks pale enough to have seven little men following you wherever you go.”
Frankie stared at him, confused.
“O’Bannon’s talking about Snow White,” the other detective explained. “That’s his clever way of telling you that you look ghostly pale.”
Her eyes momentarily shifted toward O’Bannon, then back to White Hawk. “Not all that good at communicating, is he?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I got my point across, didn’t I?” Luke asked cavalierly. And then the smile on his lips disappeared. “Seriously, is there anything on here you don’t want me to see?”
She lifted her shoulders and let them drop in an exaggerated shrug of indifference.
“I haven’t got the faintest idea what she might have had on her laptop,” Frankie told him, “so off the top of my head, I’d have to say that the answer to your question is no.”
“Good,” Luke pronounced—not that anything she could have said would have stopped him from putting the laptop into evidence. “Then I’ll hand this over to Valri and have her take a look at it after we get back from the second crime scene.”
The second crime scene. She’d forgotten about that. “You want me to come along to that?” Frankie asked as they walked out of the apartment.
Luke paused as he locked up the apartment again, then proceeded to replace the yellow crime scene tape across the door.
“Well, unless you want to walk back to the station on your own, yes, you’re invited to come along,” he told her as they walked back to his vehicle. He’d left it parked at the curb. “Why wouldn’t we want you to come with us?” he asked, curious to hear what her answer would be.
She had no solid answer for that. She’d assumed that he had brought her along only to work Kris’s crime scene, not anyone else’s.
“I thought you just took me along because I brought the crime to your attention,” she told him.
“I’ve decided to keep you on because of your keen insight,” Luke told her as he hit the key fob to open the car’s locks.
Frankie didn’t trust herself to answer the comment civilly. Instead, she looked at White Hawk. “Do you want to ride shotgun this time?”
The other detective laughed.
“You’ll find that O’Bannon is an acquired taste.”
She tried to find a graceful way out of the situation. “No, it’s just that I figured that I needed to ride up front before because I was giving O’Bannon directions. But now that he knows where he’s going, I thought maybe you’d want to trade seats.”
“That’s okay,” White Hawk demurred, opening the rear door and climbing into the backseat. “I’ve ridden shotgun with this guy for three years. You can keep him for today.”
“Shotgun for three years?” Frankie repeated, opening the passenger door and getting into the passenger seat. “Doesn’t he let you drive?”
White Hawk thought for a moment. “The one time he was wounded, he did. Although, as I recall, I had to bully him into that. He can be a real ornery son of a gun when he wants to be.”
Key in the ignition, Luke cleared his throat. “In case it escaped both of your keen detectives’ eyes, I’m right here,”