Page 74 of With a Vengeance

Lt. Col. Jack Lapsford.

“You monster,” Anna says, staring him down as he backs away from the door. “I know you did this.”

Lapsford’s eyes widen. “Me? We all know it was you. You’re the only one carrying a knife.”

Anna falters. A wobbling half step that brings her to the cusp of the room, blood-soaked carpet squishing beneath her shoes. “No, I—”

“Where haveyoubeen for the past hour?” Lapsford says.

“With me for most of it,” Reggie says, still by Herb’s corpse.

“And with me,” Seamus adds. “Right up until we saw blood trickling under the door.”

“In between, I was in Sally’s room.”

Sal doesn’t immediately speak up to confirm her claim. Thesilence, combined with the hesitant expression she wears, makes Anna realize nothing between them has changed since their conversation. She still hates Sal for what she did, and Sal still suspects her of being a killer. Knowing that, Anna sees no reason for Sal to speak up in her defense. That’s why it’s a complete surprise when Sal, slowly and grudgingly, says, “And she was with me before that. She’s not lying, Jack.”

“Well, I didn’t kill him,” Lapsford says.

“I’m not sure any of you could have done it,” Reggie says as he rotates slowly, eyeing the entire room. “The door was locked, including the dead bolt.” He points to the solid nub of metal jutting from the splintered door. “Which can only be engaged from inside the room.”

Anna looks to the doorframe, where a chunk roughly the same size as the dead bolt is missing, presumably broken off when Seamus and Reggie smashed the door open. While it’s easy to assume someone gained access to the room because Herb let them in, despite Anna telling him not to, the presence of the dead bolt complicates matters.

“How did the killer get out?” Dante says.

“Maybe Herb did it to himself,” Sal suggests with a shrug. “He locked himself inside and committed suicide.”

“Then where’s the knife?” Reggie gestures around the blood-spattered room. “There’s nothing here. If Herb slit his own throat, the knife he used would still be around, most likely in his hands.”

Anna’s gaze drifts to the sheet-covered corpse, her stomach churning as she recalls the sight of what’s beneath it. Herb’s wide, lifeless eyes. The gash across his neck. The glistening blood.

This, she thinks, isn’t the corpse of a man who slit his own throat and then somehow managed to discard the knife before settling back into a chair. It’s the corpse of someone who was killed by surprise.

Likely by someone Herb knew.

Someone he trusted and willingly let enter the room, perhaps locking the door behind him. Or maybe the killer locked it after swiping the blade across Herb’s neck. Either way, the locked door left them no means of escape.

Anna takes a halting step into the room and looks around. She can’t shake the feeling that she’s missing something. A key detail that might not only provide an idea of who the killer could be but how they left the room.

Then she sees it.

“They used the window,” she says.

Reggie turns to face her, surprised and impressed. “How do you know that?”

“The blood.”

Herb’s corpse sits at a spot where the wall and window meet behind him. To the left of the body, the wall is speckled red by arterial spray from when his throat was slit. So, too, are the curtains to his right.

But the glass of the window is free of such gore. There’s not a speck of blood on it. That means the window had been open when Herb’s throat was slit. And while the killer might have entered through the door, that window was their only way out.

Reggie nods to her, and they wordlessly approach the window.

“What do you think?” Anna says.

Reggie touches the glass, his fingers spread. “I’d say there’s no chance someone could do it—if it wasn’t the only other way out of this room. Is the window even big enough?”

Tilting her head, Anna sizes it up, estimating the window to be about three feet tall and just as wide. Big enough for Sally, Dante, Reggie, and even Seamus to fit through. The only person it would seem to rule out is Lapsford. She can’t imagine him squeezing his considerable girth through such a tight space.

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