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.This one was female, about the same age as the male in the hallway, still seated on her couch with her neck craned back at an awkward angle over the back of the flower-patterned couch.She, too, had a hole in her forehead.Franken asked the uniformed officer about the forensics team, and learned they’d arrive in about twenty minutes.Then he turned his attention to the woman who'd made the call.Short, just a bit on the pudgy side, with a few strands of her shoulder-length hair flying off at odd angles.Her "Georgetown University" sweatshirt hung loosely on a body too small for it.She wore no makeup that he could see.Still, she was much more pleasant to look at than the corpse on the couch.She introduced herself as Gina Cassone, which Franken wrote down."How'd you find 'em?" he asked her.She walked out of the living room into the small, cozy kitchen.A collection of three bulbs under an elaborate lampshade hung from the ceiling, and someone's paintings of sailboats on calm blue oceans hung on the walls.They looked amateurish – Franken imagined one of the residents taking a class in oil paints, and hanging the results on her kitchen wall.The girl took a seat at the kitchen table and waved for him to do likewise.Waiting for the forensics guys to show up, Franken sat down to talk to her."I rent the basement apartment below us," she said."The Conroys had it listed with the off-campus housing service last spring, and I snapped it up when I found it.Reasonable rent, nice space – it was a real find.The only drawback was that for laundry I had to come up and share a machine in the main house.But I didn't mind that much, it’s better than having to walk to a Laundromat.It's been a great place to live.I’ve got no idea what I’ll do now that they're dead.Guess I'll have to move midyear, and that's really going to suck."Franken nodded.He could already tell how this story was going to end."Anyway," the girl went on, "Earlier tonight I came up to do my laundry.I'd gotten to be pretty friendly with the Conroys over the past month or so, so I poked my head around the corner to see if they wanted to talk while the clothes got washed.That's when I saw Paul there." She inclined her head toward the male body in the hallway."So naturally I freaked out, and ran to him to see if I could help.On the way there I caught sight of Linda on the couch, and that's when I really screamed.I ran right to the phone and called 911, and here you are."Franken nodded.The scene couldn't be clearer.Paul Conroy had opened the front door to a knocker and been shot in the head for his trouble.The same knocker had then entered the house and done away with Mrs.Conroy before she'd even gotten out of her seat.Why hadn't she risen in alarm at the sound of her husband being shot?"Did you hear the shots?" Franken asked.The girl shook her head."No, but I'm afraid I'm kinda into my music.I'm usually listening to something with the headphones on."The cop nodded and sighed.There'd be a lot of legwork in this, knocking on neighbors' doors and asking if they'd heard shots.But none of that put him any closer to knowing why the burglar had been willing to kill two people to get into this house.Franken got up and paced.It would be impossible to tell whether anything had been taken without a full search of the house, but perhaps something obvious would present itself."Do you know if they had a safe?" he asked the girl.She nodded."They offered to let me store valuables in there if I wanted.But I don't really have anything that would be worth putting in a safe.""Know where it is?"She nodded and stood up."Upstairs in the bedroom.I'll show you."He followed her up the narrow staircase, catching a belt loop on the end of the banister at the start.He grumbled.Everything in Georgetown was built very narrow.For a man of Franken's girth, it was an inconvenience."They showed me this when I moved in," she said."Very trusting people, but I guess I look pretty harmless.They thought I might want to store some stuff in it, and if I did I guess I'd need to know.Actually, they gave me a tour of the whole house when I moved in.Seemed kind of weird, you know? All I wanted to do was live in the basement.But I figured it never hurts to be on good terms with the landlord, so I took the tour."Sam Franken's mental picture of the Conroys as a friendly elderly couple was solidifying.For a couple who would show a renter where their safe was, it was no surprise they'd open the door when someone knocked, even when it was a stranger.The surprise was that they'd survived so long in the city, but then, as he knew quite well, Georgetown was one of the safest places to live.The staircase ended at a landing with three doors.Gina pointed at the doors in turn, naming them."Bathroom, spare bedroom, and the master bedroom," she said, opening the last one."The safe's in here."Franken walked in behind her and entered the room.It was decorated in the same homey style as the kitchen, with homemade oil paintings, needlepoint, and embroidery hung on the wall.The safe was off in a corner next to a small television, and Gina walked over to it."I don't know the combination," she said, "but here it is."The door was closed.Franken knew an experienced safe cracker could have gotten it open and closed it again without leaving a sign.Nonetheless, it certainly gave the appearance of remaining secure.The bed, however, was a different story.The cover – which looked handmade – was askew instead of neatly made up.Franken had a feeling that this was a couple who made their bed every morning.More to the point, though, the bed was pushed up against the wall, and deep indentations in the carpet showed where the legs of the bed had stood for many years.Clearly, it had been moved out of position.The surface of the bed was nearly level with a windowsill.The window was still open.He didn't want to disturb the crime scene, but by standing at the foot of the bed he could nonetheless look out the window.Why had it been pushed there?He leaned over to get a better look.The street below him was pretty quiet at the moment, with most residents indoors, either studying or watching television.Cars lined both sides, and several trees pushed up through blank spaces of dirt left in the sidewalk.A lone empty can rattled a bit in the light wind.But one thing leapt out at Franken right away.From this window he had a clear line of sight to the place where Kathy Kelver said she found the body.He turned back to Gina."You heard nothing at all unusual two nights ago?""Two nights ago? You think they were shot that long ago?"Franken nodded."I'm thinking probably, though we won't know for sure until the forensics people do their work."She shrugged."Well, I still didn't hear anything like a gunshot.But really really late that night – actually early in the morning – I thought I heard a girl screaming.I sorta wasn't sure what I should do, you know? So I didn't go look immediately.But after a minute I got up and looked out the window, but no one was there."Franken's thoughts immediately turned to Kathy's story about finding the body.She'd claimed she screamed when she saw it, right?"About what time was that?""Not sure," Gina replied, "But after one in the morning.I remember having looked at the clock at 1:05 and wondering why I was still awake."Franken turned back to the bed and looked out the window.This was starting to look like something really unusual.Premeditated murder was by far the least common of that crime's many faces.Most killings were crimes of passion, committed with a knife, bare hands, or whatever blunt object the enraged killer could lay his hands on.When guns were involved, they were usually fired from close enough range that one could find gunpowder burns on the victim.The exceptions were drug and gang related shootings.But those were often targets of opportunity, spraying an entire neighborhood with bullets just to kill one member of a rival gang
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