Page 31 of A Forgotten Mistake

I walk around the dead woman and stare at her for a long moment. “Whose case is this? I want to hear what the husband and wife said.”

“You think they’re lying?”

“I don’t know. Can you get it sent to me? I’ll look into it. High Street Bridge has posts that they decorate with holiday shit this time of year, right?”

Gabriel nods. “Yeah, I was commenting that the minute Halloween was over, they already had it decorated.”

“Were the decorations ripped down where she fell?” I ask.

Jesse shakes his head. “I really don’t know. I’ve just seen the body, not the scene.”

“You think someone tied her up there?” Gabriel asks.

“Maybe not tied, but if they fished her arm through the decorations, it could keep her stable long enough for them to leave, but not long enough to catch herself.”

Gabriel looks up at me. “So you think she might have been drugged or dazed?”

“Possibly.”

Jesse examines her arm carefully. “Something like that wouldn’t have caused bruising if her arm was hooked, and it’s not rough enough to scrape her. I’m just surprised no one has reported her missing.”

I flip her hand over. “Right. Her nails seem to have been professionally done, lightly grown out but no chips. She clearly didn’t work a manual job. Her hair was dyed recently; you can see the start of darker roots. She was obviously taking care of herself.”

Gabriel nods. “I agree. Not always, but often when people are depressed, they let their appearances slip. It becomes hard to brush your hair, do your nails, present yourself…”

“She was wearing a nice skirt and heels,” Jesse informs us.

“I’ll take a look at the case,” I tell him.

“Thank you,” he says. “I know they want to write it off as suicide, but I’m not convinced.”

Gabriel and I decide to head to the club from the ticket stub while Matthew and Donna check out the house that Abby had hidden inside.

“I really feel like we should have searched the house instead of the club,” Gabriel says as we walk up to the door.

“Why? I used to be a big clubber back in my day. You should’ve seen my moves. Would have made yourockhard with just a flicker of my eyes.”

“All of that just reconfirms why I really believe that we should have gone to the house with no humans instead of in herewithhumans,” he says with a grin before looking down at his phone that’d just beeped. “Oh, my parents want to know if we can do dinner tonight. This time with my sister included.”

“Is she the chosen child?”

“No, I am.”

“Makes sense. Sure. I’ll suffer again for you. I really didn’t think I’d have to suffer again so soon, but I must keep my darling happy.”

“Definitely,” he says, holding the door open for me as we head inside. Since it’s three in the afternoon, it technically isn’t open yet, but they know we’re coming and agreed to let us in while they’re setting up.

A man looks up from where he’d been fiddling with something in one of the booths and heads over. “You must be who I talked to on the phone.”

Gabriel smiles. “Yes, I’m Detective Hyde and this is Detective Paige.”

“Johnny Stuart.”

“We were wondering if a man who looks like this was here recently,” Gabriel says as he shows Johnny a picture of the man.As we didn’t have any photos with his eyes intact, we relied on the team to reconstruct one since asking people to identify an eyeless man could cause enough distress that they might focus primarily on what’s missing and not what’s in front of them. I thought it was ridiculous and was prepared to show them whatever I had if it got me some answers. People really shouldn’t be so squeamish. When I suggested to Michaels that we put his daughter’s sick Mickey Mouse glasses on the eyeless man before his photoshoot, he weirdly slammed the door to his office in my face.

“I generally don’t work out front. Give me a moment,” he says, and he heads into the back before waving a few others over. About seven people head over and take a look at the image we’re showing them.

“Do you know the exact night?” a woman asks.

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