Michaels couldn’t figure out what bothered him the most – the bizarre circumstances surrounding this new case or the divorce that was hanging over his head. In both cases, he mused, the woman involved had disappeared. His wife decided she was done with him and was preparing to leave the country to ‘explore herself’. In this new case, the woman in question, Angel Ross, appeared to have flown out a window (though in reality everyone was pretty sure she was pushed) and then flown away, an incredible feat for someone who, by all rights, should be dead. Kicking his shoe through the weeds under the window he started to digest the facts in the case.
The victim was one Angel Ross, a local attorney and, interestingly enough, musician. Being a lawyer was apparently her day job. Late nights and weekends she performed her self-published music in local dance clubs. With her passion in music, it was no surprise to Michaels that she primarily represented musicians, helping them with contracts, setting up corporations, and protecting them from other lawyers. What did surprise him was the brutality with which her assumed murder had taken place, assumed only because of the lack of a dead body, though the apparent blood loss pretty much ruled out any chance of survival.
According to neighbors and her clients, Angel was just that, an angel to everyone that knew her. She was single and, as far as anyone could tell, not dating anyone, regular or not. Nobody could think of a single person that would have ill will towards her, let alone someone that would despise her enough to kill her. Even Michaels had to agree that she had no apparent enemies, even though the standard assumption was that everyone had at least one. If she were a divorce attorney he would probably be able to find a seemingly infinite list of people ready to line up and take their shot at her. But her clientele was decidedly different than, say, his wife, who would rip her throat out (and had threatened to do so to his attorney, whom she had long ago assumed he was screwing). Of course, had she actually taken the time to meet his attorney, a matronly woman more redolent of his grandmother than the young, nubile woman she assumed she was, she would have realized how asinine she was.
Two weeks ago Angel had taken her first and last flight; an unknown person had pushed her out the third-story window of her apartment, her body landing in the rose bushes far below. There were no signs of forced entry so it was assumed that she knew the person, though he or she could have just as easily posed as a delivery person to get her to open the door. The police had no leads and absolutely no idea where her body was; it was as if she had vanished from the spot, leaving behind nothing but the crushed roses and her blood. No footprints were found in the early morning dew, only the blood-covered roses, and the glass from her window, all of which were long gone by now.