The Likeness

O’Kelly snorted. “Good luck with that. Girls these days, he’s probably some young fella she met at a disco and shagged down a laneway.”

I felt a sudden, confused spurt of fury: Lexie wasn’t like that. I reminded myself that my info was out of date, for all I knew this edition had been a five-star slapper. “Discos went out with the slide rule, sir,” I said sweetly.

“Even if he’s some fella from a nightclub,” Sam said, “he’ll have to be found and eliminated. It might take time, but we’ll get it done.” He was looking at Frank, who nodded gravely. “I’ll ask the lads from the house to give us DNA samples, to start with.”

“We might want to leave that for a while,” Frank said smoothly, “all depending, of course. If by any chance her acquaintances should end up under the impression that she’s alive and well, we don’t want to rattle their cages. We want them relaxed, off their guard, thinking the investigation’s wound down. The DNA’ll still be there in a few weeks’ time.”

Sam shrugged. He was starting to tense up again. “We’ll work that out as we go. Three: an enemy from her previous life, someone who had a grudge and tracked her down.”

“Now that’s the one I fancy,” Frank said, straightening up. “We’ve got no indication of any problems in her Lexie Madison life, right? But wherever she was before, something obviously went wrong. She wasn’t going around under a fake name just for the laugh. Either she was on the run from the cops, or she was on the run from someone else. My money’s on someone else.”

"I’m not sure I buy it,” I said. Screw O’Kelly’s feelings; I could see exactly where Frank was going with this, and I don’t like being railroaded. “The killing’s completely disorganized: one stab wound that didn’t even need to be fatal, and then-instead of finishing her off, or at least holding her so she can’t go for help and give him up-he lets her get away, to the point where it takes him half an hour to find her again. To me, that says no premeditation, maybe even no intent to kill.”

O’Kelly gave me a disgusted grimace. "Someone stuck a knife in this girl’s chest, Maddox. I’d say he knew there was a fair chance she could die.”

I have years of practice in letting O’Kelly wash over me. “A chance, sure. But if someone had spent years thinking about killing her, he’d have it planned down to the last detail. He’d have every base covered, he’d have a script, and he’d stick to it.”

“So maybe he did have a script,” Frank said, “but it didn’t involve anything like violence. Say it’s not a grudge that has him chasing her, it’s unrequited love. He’s got it in his head that they’re soul mates, he’s planning a lovey-dovey reunion and happy ever after, and instead she tells him to fuck off. She’s the one who breaks away from the script, and he can’t handle it.”

“Stalkers snap,” I said, “yeah. But they do it a whole lot more thoroughly than this. You’d expect a frenzy of violence: multiple blows, facial disfigurement, serious overkill. Instead, we’ve got one stab, barely even deep enough to kill her. It doesn’t fit.”

“Maybe he didn’t get the chance for overkill,” Sam said. “He stabs her, she runs, by the time he catches up with her she’s already dead.”

“Still,” I said. “You’re talking about someone obsessed enough to wait years and follow her God knows how far. That level of emotion, when it finally gets an outlet it’s not going to vanish just because the target’s dead. If anything, the fact that she’d escaped him again would have made him even angrier. I’d expect at least a few more stab wounds, a couple of kicks in the face, something like that.”

It felt good, getting stuck into the case like this, like I was just a Murder detective again and she was just another victim; it spread through me strong and sweet and soothing as hot whiskey after a long day in wind and rain. Frank was sprawled casually in his chair, but I could feel him watching me, and I knew I was starting to sound too interested. I shrugged, leaned my head back against the wall and gazed up at the ceiling.

“The real point is,” Frank said, inevitably, “if she’s foreign and he followed her over here, for whatever reason, then the minute he knows he’s got the job done, he’ll be out of the country like a hot snot off a slate. The only way he’ll stick around long enough for us to catch up with him is if he thinks she’s still alive.”

A brief, heavy silence.

“We can run checks on everyone leaving the country,” Sam said.

“Checks for what?” Frank inquired. “We haven’t a clue who we’re looking for, where he or she might be heading, nothing. Before we can get anywhere, we need an ID.”

“We’re working on that. Like I said. If this woman could pass herself off as Irish, then odds are English was her first language. We’ll start with England, the U.S., Canada -”

Frank shook his head. “That’s going to take time. We need to keep our boy-or girl-here until we find out who the hell we’re looking for. And I can think of exactly one way to do that.”