Page 31 of Her Last Doubt

She heard the elevator open in the hallway and then voices. A moment later, another cop appeared in the living room doorway with a woman behind him. She was in her early forties, medium height, with a dark coat still buttoned from outside. Her eyes were clear and took in the scene with the watchful stillness that came from spending years showing up to scenes like this one. Her hair was pulled back simply and she had a face that was direct without being hard. She looked at the room with a single, practiced sweep before her eyes settled on Rachel.

"Agent Gift?" she said, extending her hand. "I'm Detective Purcell."

Rachel shook it. "I've been reading your work all week," she said, and meant it. "Your notes on this case are some of the most thorough I've seen from a local PD handoff. You kept this from going completely cold."

“Yeah,” Novak agreed, appearing behind Rachel. “We can’t thank you enough.”

Purcell gave a small nod, accepting the acknowledgment without deflecting it. "I wasn't going to let it sit. Three elderly residents in six weeks in the same building, all initially ruled natural causes. That's not a coincidence pattern." She looked toward the kitchen doorway, taking in what she could see of Trevors and the floor. "This one's different, from what I understand?"

"Yes," Rachel said. "She fought."

Purcell moved closer to the kitchen doorway and stood where Rachel had stood earlier, reading the room in the same methodical way. "I want you to know I've been pushing for more overnight presence in this building since the third victim. I was told resources didn't support it. And building management seemed to think it was an unnecessary measure."

"That's not on you," Novak said, from his position near the bookshelf. "You flagged it and you pushed. What you did with the ME review on the Osley case, requesting those files, making Farrar look again — that's what got us here before there were six victims instead of three."

Purcell looked at him steadily. It was the look of someone receiving a genuine thing and deciding how to hold it. "I appreciate that," she said. "Though right now I'd rather there were zero."

"So would we," Rachel said.

They spent another twenty minutes working through the apartment together, the three of them moving without overlap. Purcell asked Trevors a series of precise questions about the bruising pattern and received answers she noted on her phone without visible reaction. Rachel watched her work and felt the much-sought-after relief of being on a case where the local counterpart was actually good at the job. It didn't always go that way. Purcell was thorough and confident, and while it was clear she meant business, she didn’t throw her weight around or try to intimidate anyone.

When they came back into the hallway, Neil Baxter was still against the wall. The cop he’d been speaking to was gone, but Neil remained simply sagged against the wall. He looked at them as they emerged and Rachel could see the effort it took him not to come forward again.

Rachel stepped slightly away from the apartment door and kept her voice low as Novak joined her. "We know Shelf was working late last night," she said to Novak. "And we have two other workers that can back that up as well. So I think we can eliminate him from our list of suspects.”

“Yeah, if the time of death holds at nine to eleven, he's covered," Novak agreed, equally quiet.

"Most likely, yes. Which leaves...."

Novak glanced toward Neil Baxter and then back at her. "Baxter."

"He fits the changed profile,” Rachel said. “If the first three were controlled and planned, something shifted last night. Either this one went wrong or the approach has changed. And either way, Baxter's name is written all over the circumstantial side of this."

"The argument for him is obvious," Novak said. "The argument against him was that he was too wound up to pull something off quietly. But this wasn't quiet. Also…I mean, there’s no way to know for sure if all four of these murders are connected."

Rachel looked at the closed door to 6-A, thinking about this. Her gut told her they were indeed all connected, though there was no hard evidence of it. Not yet, anyway. She looked back to where Neil Baxter stood. He was watching them with his arms still crossed and his jaw tight. His eyes moved between them like a man waiting for a verdict he already knew was coming.

"We need to bring him in," she said. "Not a formal arrest. But we need to talk to him somewhere that isn't a hallway. In private and with the understanding that if necessary, the next step is a formal interrogation room."

"No time like the present."

They walked toward him together, and he straightened considerably when they were close.

"Mr. Baxter," Rachel said. "We need to ask you to come with us."

"You think I did it, right?" His voice was flat and rough in the way of someone who had been crying and had stopped some time ago. "You can’t possibly…you can’t…"

Rachel held his gaze. "We'll talk about everything when we’re sitting down, in private. But we need you to come with us now. This isn’t an arrest, but it can lead there pretty quickly without your cooperation."

He looked past her at the closed apartment door for a moment, then looked back. Whatever he saw in her face, he didn't argue. Maybe, she thought, he could see just how much she was really starting to despise this building.

He uncrossed his arms, pushed off the wall, and said, "Okay, so lead the way.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Hale had offered the office before Rachel could ask, which in itself was interesting. He'd come hurrying over to them across the lobby when they came down with Baxter. He’d apparently taken one look at the shape of the situation and decided this might be the first big step toward getting the FBI out of his building for good. He’d said that they were of course welcome to use his office for as long as they needed it. He'd taken his laptop and a folder of papers out to the front desk without further comment.

The office felt quite small with the three of them in it. Neil Baxter took the chair in front of the desk and Rachel and Novak positioned themselves across from him, Rachel in Hale's chair and Novak to the side, leaning against the filing cabinet with his phone out. Baxter had his jacket on and his hands loosely folded on the desk in front of him. He was so scared that it was hard for Rachel to determine if there was some guilt hiding there as well.