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Jackson Heights didn't felt like NY at all. It lacked the busy streets with people pilling one over the other, always rushing to get somewhere. It lacked the smell of spicy food and hot dog's onions frying in the open. It lacked the noise of a hundred people talking on their cell phones; a hundred cars trying to beat the heavy traffic and getting no where, exhaustion tubes coughing in to the air in revenge for being jammed.
Jackson Heights seemed even, in fact, not to belong to this century at all.
Mac and Stella were driving down the historical part of the neighbourhood, heading for the Stutons' house. The majority of houses in that particular street were of English looking architecture, three stores high with flower-covered front yards and pool decks at the back. Not the kind of home you'd find in the suburbs. It was the kind of home that only people with lots of money could afford to have.
"Not even the rich are safe," Stella commented, driving Mac's attention away from the road.
'No, apparently not,' he silently agreed, flipping the signalling light and turning the steering wheel right to park in front of the correct house.
Although their car was not identified as Crime Lab Unit, the few heads that peaked at the nearby windows, knew that they were there because of the Stutons' murder.
The whole neighbourhood had been horrified that something like that could've happened there, literally at their doorstep. Knowing that evil and disaster could so easily enter in to their homes and prey upon them left people feeling unsafe. On a place where until recently parents were unafraid for their children playing outside after dark, the streets were now deserted.
Mac wouldn't be surprise to learn that some of them were already looking for another place to live.
"You do know that I've already been through this crime scene twice," Stella reminded him as they exited the car and ducked under the yellow ribbon signalling the place as off limits.
"I know," Mac said, using his pocket knife to cut the police' stamp sealing the door.
"And you've already rechecked my findings," she went on, turning her flash light on.
"I know."
A second beam of light cut through the darkness.
"So, what are we doing here exactly?" The woman asked, pointing her flash light randomly over the deserted home.
"I don't know," Mac confessed.
Stella's flash light pointed directly in to his face.
"You don't know!" She didn't sound happy.
"We missed something, Stella," he finally admitted.
The beam of light left his eyes and returned to the empty house's walls.
"Well, let's find it… what ever it is," she simply said, slipping on a pair of latex gloves and moving on to the living room.
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Nothing had been moved or cleaned, not even a window had been opened to air the house, not while the police maintained the place status as a crime scene, which meant the smell of death was still in the air. Only, instead of staying circumspect to the area where the bodies had been found, it had now moved to involve the whole house.
Mac and Stella had long ago grown accustomed to that smell, well enough to ignore it as non existent. They meticulously went over every single surface and object on the house, focusing on the living room and the paths from there to everywhere in the house.
Nothing seemed out of place, nothing was out of context, just the house of two people that had just got up day, never knowing that it would be their last.
"I've got nothing," Stella admitted after three hours of non stop analyses. "Mac?"
The older man had stopped, lost in thought. When he moved, he had smile on his face. He knew what they had missed.
"Sylvia Norton claims that she phoned the Stutons on the night they died, right?"
"Yes, around 9 pm, according to her phone record," Stella said, even though she knew she wasn't given him any information. This was just their way of juggling ideas.
"Did you see a phone anywhere in the house?"
"No."
"Did Sylvia say anything about calling them AT the house, or was she referring to a cell phone?"
Stella mentally reviewed the other woman's testimony.
"She didn't. But her phone record tells us that she was calling a cell phone, registered under Margaret Stuton."
"So the Stutons may have not been at home when she talked to them?"
Stella nodded. They she realized it too.
"And no cell phones were found near or on the bodies of the Stutons…"
"Meaning that our missing cell phone is probably still at our primary crime scene!"
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