Page 68 of Knockout

She helped Peter clear every corner, cupboard, and place where someone could hide. Then she stowed her weapon and headed for the shelves.

Peter said, “What is it?”

She couldn’t have articulated it if she tried. “Can you check those clothes? Maybe there’s evidence if he hasn’t washed them yet.”

“On it.” Peter crossed the room.

Roxie pulled a storage bin out, far enough that she could flip the lid. Winter gear, snow pants, and a pair of boots. The one beside it had a bunch of women’s clothes. She rummaged inside but found nothing between the fabric or at the bottom.

She continued down the line, checking each one.

Finally she hit on something interesting when she found a box tucked behind another one. “Here we go.”

She slid the box onto the floor and flipped the lid off.

“I’ve got trace evidence on these clothes,” Peter said. “Blood and dirt. I’m not going to touch anything else. I’ll call Clare and let her know.”

She nodded, her focus on the stack of books inside, along with some old photo albums. Roxie started to go through them. Peter knelt by her and did the same.

She said, “This one is a ledger.”

“This is a photo album but look.” He showed her a picture.

“That isn’t a vacation photo.” If it was, it would have been of Mark and the woman he’d married years ago. “That looks like a driver’s license photo.” Beside it was a cutout of a newspaper article, a local man who’d had a seizure at a baseball game. “A memento?”

“Looks like it.” Peter flipped the page. “It’s full of them. Copies of photos, and printouts of articles. Each one is a death, by many different means. Accidents, medical tragedies, and vehicle crashes. One missing person discovered dead in a river after days of dredging by rescue crews.”

Roxie shook her head. “That’s crazy. He did all that?”

“Look.” Peter showed her a newspaper article about a limo bombing that had killed a man.

“Was it Brad or Mark, though?” One of them had kept a record of random deaths. Or were they? “Recording a completed job.”

“Maybe that’s what one of these ledgers is. Someone hired him to do jobs like this, and he got away with them.”

“But who hired him?”

Peter nodded. “All good questions we need to figure out the answers to. Like why you’d hide something sensitive here instead of in a better place.”

“It’s in plain sight.”

A thunder of footsteps drew her attention to the stairs where two of the men came down. “You guys find something?”

Peter explained what they thought it might be. “How about you?”

“Evidence he’s been making bombs.”

Roxie didn’t even touch that. “Do we know for sure Brad was living here recently? It’s his stuff?”

Her colleague nodded. “And from what we can see, he’s got enough up there that he made at least one explosive device recently.”

Roxie set the album in the storage bin and stood. “Any idea where?”

They needed to find him nowandstop whatever plan he had in motion.

Her colleague shook his head. “No maps, papers, or computer. No tablet or phone. Nothing upstairs that would give us a clue where he plans to deploy the device.”

“But you did find something.” She started toward the stairs.

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