On the Edge by Tess Gerritsen

Author:Tess Gerritsen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2020-12-11T15:00:43+00:00

* * *

The woman was nude from the waist down, her body crumpled on the wood floor. She had been shot once, in the head.

“The report came in at 10:45,” said Yeats from Homicide. “Tenant below us noticed bloodstains seeping across the ceiling and called the landlady. She opened the door, saw the body and called us. We found the victim’s ID in her purse. That’s why we called you.”

“Any witnesses? Anyone see anything, hear anything?” asked Gillis.

“No. He must’ve used a silencer. Then slipped out without being seen.”

Sam gazed around at the sparsely furnished room. The walls were bare, the closets half empty, and there were boxes of clothes on the floor—all signs that Marilyn Dukoff had not yet settled into this apartment.

Yeats confirmed it. “She moved in a day ago, under the name Marilyn Brown. Paid the deposit and first month’s rent in cash. That’s all the landlady could tell me.”

“She have any visitors?” asked Gillis.

“Next-door tenant heard a man’s voice in here yesterday. But never saw him.”

“Spectre,” said Sam. He focused once again on the body. The criminalists were already combing the room, dusting for prints, searching for evidence. They would find none, Sam already knew; Spectre would’ve seen to it.

There was no point hanging around here; they’d be better off trying to chase sirens. He turned to the door, then paused as he heard one of the detectives say, “Not much in the purse. Wallet, keys, a few bills—”

“What bills?” asked Sam.

“Electric, phone. Water. Look like they’re to the old apartment. The name Dukoff’s on them. Delivered to a P.O. box.”

“Let me see the phone bill.”

At his first glance at the bill, Sam almost uttered a groan of frustration. It was two sheets long and covered with long distance calls, most of them to Bangor numbers, a few to Massachusetts and Florida. It would take hours to track all those numbers down, and the chances were it would simply lead them to Marilyn Dukoff’s bewildered friends or family.

Then he focused on one number, at the bottom of the bill. It was a collect call charge, from a South Portland prefix, dated a week and a half ago at 10:17 p.m. Someone had called collect and Marilyn Dukoff had accepted the charges.

“This could be something,” Sam noted. “I need the location of this number.”

“We can call the operator from my car,” said Gillis. “but I don’t know what it’s going to get you.”

“A hunch. That’s what I’m going on,” Sam admitted.

Back in Gillis’s car, Sam called the Directory Assistance supervisor.

After checking her computer, she confirmed it was a pay phone. “It’s near the corner of Calderwood and Hardwick, in South Portland.”

“Isn’t there a gas station on that corner?” asked Sam. “I seem to remember one there.”

“There may be, Detective. I can’t tell you for certain.”

Sam hung up and reached for the South Portland map. Under the dome light, he pinpointed the location of the pay phone. “Here it is,” he said to Gillis.

“There’s just some industrial buildings out there.

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