Page 43 of So Silent

“Nothing. Not a door or window out of place. Nothing unlocked, nothing forced, no scuff marks or tool marks in or out of any lock. Either this guy’s much better at breaking and entering than anyone else we’ve ever seen, or he was let inside.”

“Well, Jessica lived alone,” Wanda said, “but I’ll look up her personal life and see if she had any frequent visitors. Normally, I would say she would be the first victim if it’s a lover, but sometimes killers work their way up to their girlfriends.”

“What a lovely thought,” Michael said drily.

“You want lovely,” Wanda quipped, “go work at a carnival.”

She left the room, and Michael made a face and mimed, “You want lovely, go work at a carnival.”

Normally, Faith would laugh at that, but she wasn't in a laughing mood right now. "So now we're looking at a killer who lures people with sound and can materialize out of nowhere in someone's house."

“Looks like it.”

“Yes, but that can’t be the answer. We’re missing something. I think we’re overthinking this. What’s the easiest way he gets into the house?”

“He gets let inside.”

Faith shook her head. “That’s true, but there’s no sign of a struggle here. If there was a bad enough fight that Jessica tossed her couch cushions all over the place and fled the house in her PJs, we should be seeing something else. We should also have heard complaints of two loud voices, not one.”

“So maybe it’s not a fight.”

“Then why a single scream of rage? Why any anger at all? And where was the killer? He stabbed her from the side when she walked into the garage. No, I agree that being invited in is the simplest answer, but this is another case where Occam is wrong. There’s too much that says she didn’t know anyone else was here.”

Turk barked and ran into the room. His ears were up, and his tail swished back and forth with excitement. Faith and Michael shared a look, then followed him as he led them back into the garage.

“What is it?” Faith asked, “What do you see, boy?”

He ran to the back of the garage and put his nose down at the bottom of the door. He looked up and barked at them, then put his nose back down.

Michael and Faith shared another look.

“How about this?” Faith said. “Jessica comes home and opens her garage door to park her car inside. Then, while her garage door is slowly closing, she gets out of the car and heads inside.”

“And our killer waits until she’s inside, then quickly runs underneath the door from his hiding place and gets inside without being seen,” Michael finished.

“Then it’s just a matter of waiting for night to fall and luring her out. He kills her, and when he leaves, he can just lock the door behind him on his way out.”

“Probably the back door,” Michael surmised. “There’s nothing behind this house but a hill. He could have parked on the other side of the hill and slipped into his car without being noticed. Easy peasy.”

“I guess Occam got something right after all,” Faith admitted.

Wanda returned to the garage, the uniforms with her. “No boyfriend or frequent visitors that I could find,” she said, “but I heard barking, and I see excitement on both your faces. So we found something?”

“We know how he got in. He was hiding outside, and when she got home, he dove under the closing garage door. Then he left, probably through the back door.”

“Go out the back,” Wanda immediately commanded her uniforms. “See if you can find tracks.” She looked at Faith. “You mind if we borrow your dog?”

“Sure. Turk, go with them.”

“It’s way too late to catch him now,” Wanda said, “but maybe he’ll have left something behind we can use to find him later. You’d be amazed what a shoeprint or a tire track can tell you.”

“Oh, we know,” Michael replied. “Trust me.”

“In the meantime,” Faith said, “Did the neighbor who reported the scream mention anything about dogs barking?”

Wanda lifted an eyebrow. “As a matter of fact, he did. Said his dogs were going crazy for the half hour before he heard the scream. He thought they had smelled a raccoon. When he heard that scream, he thought maybe not.”

Faith felt another rush of excitement. Maybe David’s plan would work. The killer seemed to prefer attacking in residential neighborhoods. Tons of people had dogs at home. Rebecca Wells was an outlier since she was killed in her studio, but people were rarely alone at their businesses at night. The killer had gotten lucky with Rebecca, but his MO would tend to lead him toward people’s homes.

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