Page 35 of Nothing Left

Juliette held her breath as they entered the apartment. It was like stepping back in time, back to the moment when Samantha Cole’s body had been discovered. The air was heavy with the smell of old blood. The place seemed to resonate with the aftermath of tragedy.

She started with Samantha’s bedroom, taking a slow and methodical approach as she combed the room for any missed clues.She stood in the room, looking around.

Had a killer stood here?

Had he looked down at Samantha in her bed and decided to stab her, and then dragged her body to the shower and dumped it in there? Had this killer prowled around the apartment before he did the deed, scoping out the place, looking at the drunk and sleeping people? And if so, why?

She had a definite feeling, a certainty, that there was more to this. All they needed to do was to look harder and to tune into this killer's mind.

Beside the bed, she looked at the victim's possessions. On the nightstand was an empty cup which had an old coffee stain on the bottom. A few books - two novels and a couple of study manuals. A box of tissues.

Inside the nightstand drawer was a wallet containing about a hundred euros in cash, as well as another twenty euros in loose cash, which had been fingerprinted and documented but hadn't been taken into evidence as it wasn't part of the crime scene. However, the police had referred to it in the case, as it proved the theory that there hadn't been a break-in. Her purse had also been left in the bedroom untouched.

But there was also something else that Juliette now noted with renewed focus.

A jewelry box covered with blue velvet was at the back of the drawer. That should have contained an item of jewelry inside, resting on the blue velvet. She guessed that maybe the box had stored a pendant and a chain.

But where were the pendant and the chain?

The necklace hadn't been on Samantha’s person. There had been no jewelry listed, either by the police or the pathologist, apart from plain gold stud earrings. She hadn't been wearing a chain. Juliette opened the opposite drawer to check, but the pendant was not in the drawer either. Then she checked on the floor, under the bed, and in the bathroom.

No pendant.

Suddenly, she felt that this was important, that a missing piece of jewelry might just give them the break they needed. Because what if this crime was not just a murder but a theft that had gone wrong? What if this killer had broken in with the intention of stealing, and it had then escalated to murder?

They wouldn't be talking about a normal thief. This MO was the hallmark of a psychopath. That person might operate that way. She had a case history proving it.

"Wyatt, Sierra," she called, and the two of them came rushing through.

"Look what I'm seeing here - or rather, not seeing," she said. "There should be a pendant in here, surely? And there's nothing?"

Sierra's eyes lit up. "So you think someone came in and stole it? That this might be a robbery?"

"Or he took it as a trophy," Juliette agreed.

Wyatt frowned. "Samantha could have been wearing it?"

"It wasn't listed with her possessions," Juliette said firmly.

But Wyatt was still looking doubtful. "Maybe she lost it, maybe it broke? I mean, all the girls were drunk. That could easily have happened. It could have broken at the nightclub."

"We need to find out. And there's one person who might know. That’s Heather," Juliette decided. "Let's go back to the prison and ask her about this. We need to find out if Samantha wore it that night or if it was in its case. Because if it was stolen, it doesn't only point the way to the killer - it also gives us a way we might find him."

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

That missing piece of jewelry might seem like a small, almost insignificant detail, something that had flown under the radar of everyone’s attention the first time around. But Juliette knew, as she sped back to the prison, that they needed those small details to find out the truth because there were no bigger details. They were all out of those.

And if this proved to be an important clue, it would change the probable motive for the murder.

Up until now, everyone was obsessed with the idea that this had been a classic crime of passion. A stabbing in a frenzy of drunken rage. That captured people's imagination in a gruesome way.

But when the motive was so unclear, and there was no real reason for the stabbing, and it had been done with such strength - then it all became cloudier.

If something had been taken, then Juliette knew it would be proof that they were dealing with a different MO entirely.

They arrived at the prison just a minute later and hustled inside. One of the advantages of having Heather moved to a solitary cell was that it was easier to go in and see her. With the permission that Ebury had obtained for them, and the fact that Heather didn't have to be moved to a visitor's room, the process was much quicker.

Right now, Juliette was relieved about that.

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