he asked.
“We are,” Ellington said.
“Pleased to meet you. I’m Deputy Paul Rising. I thought I’d be out here when you arrived. I’m taking notes on everything stored in here, hoping to find some sort of clues. Because as of right now, there’s exactly none.”
“Were you on the scene when the body was removed?”
“Unfortunately. It was pretty gruesome. A woman named Claire Locke, age twenty-five. She’d been dead for at least a week. It’s not clear if she starved to death or bled out first.”
Mackenzie slowly took in the sight of the unit. The back was stocked with boxes, milk crates, and several old trunks—typical things to be found in a storage unit. But the bloodstain on the floor made it quite different indeed. It wasn’t a very large one, but she guessed it could have resulted in enough blood loss to lead to death. Perhaps it was her imagination, but she was pretty sure she could still smell some of the stench the body had left behind.
While Deputy Rising went on about his business with the boxes and bins in the back, Mackenzie and Ellington started to investigate the rest of the interior. As far as Mackenzie was concerned, a bloodstain on the floor pointed to something else worth finding. As she looked around for any clues, she listened to Ellington as he asked Rising about the case details.
“Was the woman bound or gagged in any way?” Ellington asked.
“Both. Hands tied behind her back, ankles tied together, and one of those ball gags in her mouth. The blood you see on the floor there came from a small stab wound high in her stomach.”
Being bound and gagged at least explained why Claire Locke had been unable to make any noise to alert people on the other side of the unit walls. Mackenzie tried to imagine a woman locked in this crammed little space with no light, food, or water. It pissed her off.
As she slowly made a circuit around the unit, she came to the corner of the doorway. Rain drummed down in front of her, slapping at the concrete outside. But just along the inside of the metal door frame, Mackenzie spotted something. It was very low to the ground, at the very base of the frame that allowed the door to slide up and down.
She dropped to her knees and leaned in closer. When she did, she saw a splotch of blood on the edge of the groove. Not much…so little, in fact, that she doubted any of the cops had seen it yet. And then, on the floor just beneath the splotch of blood, was something small, ragged, and white.
Mackenzie gently touched it with her finger. It was piece of a torn fingernail.
Somehow, Claire Locke had managed to try to escape. Mackenzie closed her eyes for a moment, trying to envision it. Depending on how her hands had been tied, she could have backed up to the door, knelt down, and tried lifting the door upward. It would have been a futile attempt due to the lock outside, but certainly worth trying if you were on the verge of starving or bleeding to death.
Mackenzie waved Ellington over and showed him what she had found. She then turned to Rising and asked: “Do you recall if there were any additional injuries to Ms. Locke’s hands?”
“Yes, actually,” he said. “There were a few superficial cuts on her right hand. And I think most of one of her fingernails was missing.”
He came over to where Mackenzie and Ellington were standing and let out a little “Oh.”
Mackenzie continued looking but found nothing more than a few stray hairs. Hairs she assumed would belong to either Claire Locke or the owner of the unit.
“Mr. Tuck?” she said.
Quinn was standing just outside of the unit, perched under his umbrella. He was doing everything he could to not be standing in the unit—to not even be looking inside. At the sound of his name, though, he stepped inside reluctantly.
“Who does this unit belong to?”
“That’s the fucked up part,” he said. “Claire Locke had been renting this unit out for the last seven months.”
Mackenzie nodded as she looked to the back, where Locke’s belongings were stacked to the ceiling in neat little rows. The fact that it was her storage unit did add a degree of eeriness to it, but, she thought, might work to their advantage in eventually establishing motive or even tracking down the killer.
“Are there security cameras around here?” Ellington asked.
“I just have one right up at the front entrance,” Quinn Tuck said.
“We’ve watched all of the footage from the last few weeks,” Deputy Rising said. “There’s nothing out of the ordinary. Currently, we’re speaking to everyone who showed up here anytime during the last two weeks. As you can imagine, it’s going to be tedious. We still have a dozen or so people to question.”
“Any chance we could get our hands on that footage?” Mackenzie asked.
“Absolutely,” Rising said, though his tone indicated that she was nuts to want to go fishing through it.
Mackenzie followed Ellington to the back of the unit. Part of her wanted to rummage through the boxes and bins but she knew it would likely not lead to much of anything. Once they had leads or potential suspects, they may find something worthwhile but until then, the contents within the unit would mean nothing to them.
“Is the body still with the coroner?” Mackenzie asked.
“To the best of my knowledge,” Rising said. “Want me to call and let them know you’re coming?”
“Please. And see what you can do about getting us that video footage.”
“Oh, I can send that, Agent White,” Quinn said. “It’s all digital. Just let me know where you want me to send it.”
“Come on,” Rising said. “I’ll lead you to the coroner’s office. It’s just happens to be two floors below my office.”
With that, the four of them exited the storage unit and walked back out into the rain. Even under the umbrella, it was loud. It came down slow but hard, as if trying to wash away the sights and smells the unit had seen.
Chapter Six
As it turned out, Quinn Tuck was extremely helpful. It seemed he wanted to get to the bottom of what had happened just as badly as anyone. That’s why, when Mackenzie and Ellington got to the police station, he had provided a link for them to access all of his digital files from the security system at the storage complex.
They decided to start with the security footage rather than the body of Claire Locke. It gave them a chance to sit down and somewhat collect their bearings. It was nearing nightfall now and the rain was still coming down. As Deputy Rising got them set up with a monitor, Mackenzie looked back on the day and found it hard to believe that she had been standing in a picturesque garden and thinking about her wedding less than nine hours ago.
“Here are the relevant time stamps,” Rising said, slipping Mackenzie a piece of paper from his notepad. “There aren’t many.” He tapped his finger at one entry in particular, written in slanted handwriting. “This is the only time we see Claire Locke enter the complex. We pulled her DMV info and got her license plate number, so we know it’s her. And this,” he said, tapping at another entry, “is when she left. And these are the only times she shows up on the footage.”
“Thanks,
