Free Night Corridor by Joan Hall Hovey

bad man who killed her?"
     
    "How do you know it was a man, Miss Hill?" Detective Aiken asked.
     
    "It's almost always a man, isn't it? Maybe her boyfriend. I saw a TV show once where the boyfriend did it, except he poisoned her. But not all at once. It took a long time for her to die."
     
    Neither policeman said anything, but she saw in their eyes that the actress didn't die right away either, and knowing made her feel sad. "Another woman was murdered too. A nurse. It might be a serial killer. Do you think it was?"
     
    "That's what we're trying to find out, Miss," Detective O'Neal said. Then he thanked her for her help and handed her a card. "If you think of anything that might be useful, give us a call."
     
    Back inside her room, the door locked behind her, she sat back down on the sofa. Her tea was cold. The credits were rolling on her game show over the applause of the audience. Restless and anxious, she got up again, paced. What could she possibly tell them? She set the card on the dresser. She didn't know the woman. Had only just moved here. And yet she felt she had already said too much. She had prattled on like a magpie? She wrung her hands. Why was she like this? Why couldn't she act like a normal person?
     
    The question pulled her gaze to the trunk that sat on the floor by the sofa, still locked.
     
     
     
    Detective Aiken stopped on the stairs to jot down some notes in his notebook, and O'Neal halted his own step to wait for him. Not one to rely on memory, his partner was a copious note taker. Not just facts, statements, but his impressions, thoughts. Reminders.
     
    When they reached the bottom of the stairs, the landlady was waiting for them.
     
    "I told you she wouldn't know anything. How could she? She just moved in on Monday. You two probably scared the wits out of her."
     
    Ignoring her comments, Detective O'Neal asked to see inside Lorraine Winter's old room.
     
    "I don't see the point; she hasn't lived here in weeks. But okay."
     
    "Anyone in there?" Detective Aiken asked, as they followed the labored, uneven step of the landlady up the stairs. "We can let ourselves in no problem," Glen said, behind her, concern in his voice.
     
    "No, I'm fine, Detective. Still under my own steam. Such as it is." The keys dangled from her left hand, the other clutching the banister. "What are you looking for anyway?"
     
    "Not sure. Anyone been in there lately?"
     
    "Sure. The cleaner. Also hired a fellow from the homeless shelter come paint and lay some tile. Did a nice job, too. Got the place rented to an older lady."
     
    As they passed Caroline's door," she said, "I suppose she told you she heard someone in there."
     
    Caroline had heard them coming back upstairs, and now hearing the trace of irritation in the landlady's voice, she backed away from the door.
     
     
     
    ***
     
     
     
    Driving back to the station. Detective Aiken got stuck behind a green Honda Civic, and now moved at a snail's pace because the woman driver had spotted a cop's car behind her. At the first opportunity, he took a left down a side street, so she could breathe again and they could get back to the station sometime today.
     
    "Hope that Hill woman is wrong about it being a serial killer," Glen said beside him.
     
    "Yeah, me, too. She was just repeating what she heard, of course. But the public buys it. Still, two murders don't necessarily add up to a serial killer."
     
    Two in our jurisdiction, he corrected himself mentally. The nurse's body was also found in an alley, one wider with grassy patches, near an elementary school. It was around midnight when the girl's mother reported her missing, and the following morning some kids on their way to school spotted her in there. Freaked them out, no surprise there. The nurse had been walking, on her way home. No car. She'd died where he'd dragged her. No one saw anything. Late at night, quiet street. Different circumstances.
     
    They'd questioned everyone close to her, the