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Despite his suggestion that Rose was drawing a long bow by connecting all the strange things they had encountered since arriving in New York, Crowley had to admit his own curiosity was piqued. He couldn’t deny that Rose was onto something, but at the same time he couldn’t put his finger on what that something was. So they had decided to snoop a little further. Rose went off to the offices of the New York Sentinel to ask around there, and Crowley found himself outside Jazz’s apartment door. He was nervous, knowing that if he was caught here it would put him and Rose deeper in the frame for whatever had happened to Jazz. Right now they were safely distanced from it. But it wasn’t in his nature, or Rose’s, to walk away.
Marks on the top right of the doorframe and the floor on the bottom left, showed where a single strip of black and yellow plastic crime scene tape had been. Now that it was taken away, Crowley assumed the police were done with the place. Perhaps they were done with the case too, if they’d written it off as a botched robbery. The file would stay open, they’d be happy to catch the killer, but probably wouldn’t waste a lot of resources on it. Or maybe he was doing the NYPD a disservice by assuming that. He didn’t know. Either way, he hoped there was something left here that the police had missed. Something to give him a chance of learning more.
He slipped on a pair of surgical gloves he’d picked up at a pharmacy on the way over and tried the doorknob, but it was locked. There was a deep gouge in the wood beside the door handle where the door had been forced open and Crowley wondered if that was after the killing or before. It would make sense for a killer to do this and back up the robbery story, to draw the attention away from the possibility of a deliberate, premeditated murder. The police had either repaired or replaced the fixture as the door was locked again now, despite the remaining damage to the frame.
Crowley looked furtively left and right to ensure he was alone in the hallway, then crouched in front of the door and set to work with his new customized lock picks. It was startling the kind of thing you could pick up an at Army Surplus store if you knew how do co-opt one tool’s use for a more nefarious purpose. It took a couple of minutes and a high heart rate, but thankfully no one appeared to catch him until a soft click inside the door told him he was in. Crowley turned the handle, slipped inside, and quickly closed the door behind him.
The place was tiny, a true city studio apartment. Immediately on his left was a small kitchenette, with a bar fridge, microwave and two-burner stove top, all clean and well-kept. Next to that a tiny metal sink, one coffee-stained mug sitting in it waiting for rinse it would now never receive. On his right was a bathroom with toilet, tiny sink, and shower stall. He thought perhaps he’d have trouble turning around in there, let alone washing comfortably. The rest of the room in front of him was filled with a bed at one end under the window, a desk against one wall and a bookcase against the opposite wall. Next to the bookcase was a clothes rack overloaded with outfits in a kind of barely-managed jumble. But otherwise the place was neat. Not much space remained in the center between these few items of furniture.
The desk hand two drawers in it, side-by-side above where a person’s knees would be. Both were broken, forced open with a crowbar or something similar. Crowley pulled them out again and saw they were empty. There was some mail on the desktop, bills and coupons, but nothing else. He’d hoped to find some evidence of what Jazz had been working on, but nothing seemed apparent. He thought the place was too clean. He supposed he could put that down to a robbery, they would have taken any laptops or tablets or anything else of value, but working on the assumption it wasn’t a robbery and only made to look like one, he’d hoped to find something, even if the perpetrators had taken electronic items to back up the robbery story. But there were no calendars or diaries either, no notebooks, post-its, nothing. Maybe Jazz kept all that stuff on her phone like so many people did these days. The crooks would have taken her phone too, after killing her, he didn’t doubt that.
He turned and looked at the bookcase and noticed for the first time a dark stain on the thin, dark carpeting by the bed. Dark brown now, about two feet in diameter, it was clearly dried blood. He let out a slow breath and swallowed. Poor Jazz.
He went to the bookcase and started rifling through the books, checking inside the covers of the dozen or so hardbacks, shaking out the paperbacks, checking behind the books themselves. Jazz had quite a diverse and eclectic library, including a variety of thrillers kept in among non-fiction books covering everything from autobiographies to flight mechanics. But despite Crowley’s rigorous searching he found nothing.
Under the clothes rack, overhung by several pairs of jeans, he noticed a small, three-drawer cabinet and checked that. Underwear, activewear, the usual. Nothing of interest. The same in the bathroom, just a normal selection of make-up and day-to-day medications.
Crowley sighed, returning the center of the room. He was becoming tired of missions turning out to be total busts. Then again, they’d found that sub-basement on Bannerman Island, so there was something going on. Or there had been, a long time ago. He was beginning to share Rose’s view that there was definitely more to uncover here, he simply needed to start looking in the right places.
He spotted a wastepaper basket tucked into a corner at the end of the bed and went to it. Nothing but a few packets, a shopping list, some tissues. A small, red, plastic basket stood in the narrow space between the foot of the bed and the wall. It held a bunch of crumpled up clothes, no doubt Jazz’s laundry ready to be taken downstairs and washed. He had a quick look, checked the pockets of a pair of jeans in there. Tucked into the back pocket was a crumpled scrap of paper with names and notes scribbled on it. Crowley smiled. The police had missed something after all. Ironic, given they found Rose’s number in the back pocket of the jeans Jazz had been wearing, but hadn’t checked these ones too.
The list didn’t make too much sense at first glance, but could be something to follow up. He really hoped it was, because it was their last chance for a lead. He smoothed it out and was about to read it more carefully when someone rapped sharply on the apartment door. Crowley started, looked quickly around. There was no other way out of the apartment except a fire escape through the window above the bed. As soon as he saw that, he also saw the window had a lock on it and he had no way of knowing where the key might be. He was trapped.