Page 18 of Autopsy of a Fairytale

“I know.” Kindness mixed with authority in the man’s eyes. Unlike Garrett, he knew every excruciating detail behind her transfer to Bajka. “Did you touch anything?”

“I covered my hands with my sleeve when I unlocked the door.” Bel shook her head in confirmation. “I saw her fingers peaking over the counter. I worried she had fallen or…” she trailed off.

“It’s all right, Emerson.” He extended a hand to her. “Deputies are setting up a perimeter. Come outside and tell me what happened.”

Bel nodded numbly, following his commanding lead as they exited the way they entered. The moment she stepped out into the morning light, Garrett was at her side.

“You okay?” he asked, and she nodded before launching into a recount of her steps, starting with parking her car and ending with the Sheriff’s arrival.

Griffin opened his mouth to speak as she finished, but a cry of anguish ignited the air. Every head turned, watching in horror as a middle-aged man barreled for the police tape.

“Emily? Oh my God, Emily,” David Kaffe screamed as he ran. Time stood still. No one moved. No one breathed. Nothing existed outside of that husband’s fear. “My wife? Where is she? Oh god, is she okay? Please say she is okay.”

He reached the police tape, ripping through it, and time sped up, careening almost too fast. Sheriff Griffin raced for him, catching his screaming mass. The distraught husband was no match for the Sheriff’s honed power, but he did not give up flailing as Griffin and three deputies attempted to calm him.

“Did you call David?” Bel whispered, struggling to maintain her composure as the man collapsed in the officers’ arms.

“No.” Bewilderment colored Garrett’s tone. “But…” He gestured to the gathered crowd, and Bel rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. A bystander had obviously alerted the husband, and all she could see as he screamed was her father’s face. How must he have looked when they notified him she might never wake up?

“I…” Bel refused to stand idly by while Emily’s husband lost his entire world. She couldn’t bring her friend back from the dead, but she would nail the guilty to the stake for this crime. She stormed for the protective gear, donning it in angry jerks, and Garrett followed suit.

“I had assumed since Brett Lumen’s scene was tailored to him that we were dealing with a single homicide,” she said to those flocking to her command. “Emily appears to have been killed the same way he was. One perfect crime scene is an anomaly, but two? The killer will make a mistake, and so help me God, we will find it.”

The Espresso Shot flared to life as the detectives led the charge inside. Every inch of the shop was photographed. Every angle was sketched. Every surface dusted for prints, but as the hours slipped by, yet another similarity to Lumen’s Custom’s crept in. The scene was immaculate. Not a cup stood out of place. No stray coffee beans littered the floor. Not a single fingerprint smudged the places dozens of people touched daily.

They didn’t need Lina Thum to estimate the time of death. Emily had been alive and well yesterday. Bel had seen her, and even though the thought turned her stomach, they would ask her husband to confirm when she left the house that morning. Like Lumen, she was most likely killed where she was laid to rest, her rigor mortis confirming that she had not been moved from her death pose.

“No sign of forced entry… except for mine,” Bel said. “The cameras were disabled the same as Lumen’s.”

“Her footage was kept on site,” Garrett said, “but their aims focus only on the register and both entrances.” Bel quirked an eyebrow at him, and he added, “She showed me when she first installed this. Asked if I thought it was adequate.”

“Do you know how to use it?” Bel asked.

“Yes.” Garrett rebooted the system, pulling up the recorded footage. They watched in silence as some of Emily’s last moments played before them. It showed Emily from the night before as she locked up, chatting all the while with Vera as Bel’s elderly neighbor clutched a bag of coffee beans. The women smiled and conversed animatedly, and then the front door shut, sealing the shop in its solitude. Night fell, and Garrett scrolled through the emptiness, but as soon as the clock struck 10:00 p.m., nothingness consumed the screens. No one entered. No one physically disabled the cameras. They just stopped working.

“Brett turned his off.” Garrett replayed the blackout, but it cut out at the exact same timecode. The image was there, then it wasn’t. “No one touched these cameras, though.”

“Is this a less expensive security system than Lumen’s Customs’?” Bel asked.

“Definitely.” Garrett nodded. “But Brett’s showroom was worth far more than this shop.”

“Could someone disrupt it from outside the building?” Bel asked.

“Possibly.”

“But if Lumen’s was more extensive, perhaps disabling it was too difficult for the killer,” Bel said.

“So, they requested Lumen turn it off under the guise of privacy.” Garrett finished the thought for her. “It’s possible. Someone as rich as Eamon Stone would have the resources to disrupt the security.”

“But why? Why kill Emily?” Bel asked. “It’s a stretch, but I can almost decipher a motive for Lumen. Perhaps they disagreed on pricing or design, but Emily? How could you not like her? She sold joy in a cup.”

Garrett shrugged as he continued scrolling through the footage.

“There is another explanation,” Bel said, studying the three limited views on the monitor. “There are blind spots. It’s feasible someone hid in the bathroom until Emily locked up and then shut down the system. If the killer stalked Emily like he did Brett, he would have known where the cameras were aimed.”

“And you believe whoever killed Lumen killed Emily?” Garrett asked.

“The details are exact. Details we haven’t released to the public. It’s the same person.”

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