Brenda Novak - Dear Maggie

“SO THE BLUE FIBERS are from some sort of blanket?” Nick propped the phone on his shoulder so he could thumb through the pictures of the murder victims again. They’d all been killed away from where they’d been found, and they’d all been transported, wrapped in a blanket for the journey. Evidently, Sarah Ritter had been no different.

“That’s what the tests say.” Tony Caruso’s Jersey accent carried across the line even though he’d lived in Virginia and worked at the FBI’s crime lab in Washington DC for almost twenty years.

“What kind of blanket?”

There was some paper shuffling on the other end. Caruso covered the mouthpiece to speak to someone else, then came back on the line. “Sorry about that. A new one, unfortunately. Otherwise, we might have had more luck finding something else, a strand of hair maybe, to help us. I’m still hoping for a DNA profile on this guy. But, as it stands, we know only that she was wrapped in a cheap, fuzzy blanket, the kind you can buy almost anywhere.”

“What about the other fibers? The tan ones?”

“They’re consistent with the kind of carpet found in the trunk of most cars, usually the cheaper models.”

“So if this guy is a doctor, he’s not a very successful one. He’s not using a BMW or a Mercedes to haul bodies around.”

“I’d guess he’s driving an economy car,” Tony agreed. “He could have purchased it for just this purpose.”

“Maybe.” Nick pushed his reading glasses up and rubbed his eyes. Economy cars were a dime a dozen. Cheap fuzzy blankets did nothing to narrow the field of his search, either. When was Dr. Dan going to slip up and make a mistake that would really tell him something? “Did you find anything in what the coroner scraped out from beneath Sarah Ritter’s nails?”

“No skin or anything like that. If she put up a fight, she didn’t manage to scratch him. There was soil in what you sent, but it was consistent with the samples you included from her yard. I’m guessing she had a garden of some sort. Am I right?”

“She’d just planted tomatoes.” He remembered seeing them in the back, along the fence, when he’d visited the house to search for evidence of forced entry, evidence he’d never found. The tomato plants had been tender and young and vulnerable, just like Sarah Ritter’s son. The memory of the shock and grief apparent in his small face made Nick clench his jaw. He had to bring down Dr. Dan. Before he killed again…

“There was also some sand,” Tony went on.

“What kind of sand?”

“Rocky and uneven. The kind that usually appears on the shore of a lake, or maybe along the banks of a river.”

…we shall soon see what the river turns up…

“There’re two rivers that aren’t far from where the body was found. I’ll send you soil samples from each. Maybe we can get a match.”

“I’ll be expecting them.”

The American River originated somewhere in the Sierras, descended through the foothills and cut through the Sacramento suburbs to meet the Sacramento River, which came from the north to downtown, near Discovery Park. The American River had something like thirty miles of bike path along one bank and was by far the more accessible. If Nick had to choose, he’d guess Dr. Dan had killed Sarah Ritter somewhere along it. Down by the water, there were plenty of places where screams might not be heard, where foliage would easily conceal two people. Especially at night. Car bridges spanned the river, but they were miles apart, and the bicyclists who used the path so religiously by day were gone once the sun went down. A murderer could conceivably move, undetected, from car to bike path to footpath and back again—with a woman or a body. The only question was why. Why didn’t Dr. Dan simply kill her and dump her body in the river instead of dragging it downtown?

The lock jiggled at the front door, and Rambo jumped to his feet, ears forward, tail wagging. A glance at the clock and Rambo’s eager response told Nick it was Justin, the thirteen-year-old neighbor boy Nick paid to feed and walk Rambo every day. Justin filled in for potty breaks when Nick had to work long hours, too. Fortunately the pair had taken to each other right away.

“Anything else?” he asked Tony, waving as the boy came in.

“That footprint you found in Lola Fillmore’s flower bed? The size 12? It was a Nike knock-off.”

Justin retrieved Rambo’s leash from the kitchen and fastened it to his collar. “We’ll be back in about an hour,” he whispered.

Nick acknowledged his words with a nod and the door closed behind the boy and the dog. “What about wear, Tony?”

“There wasn’t any. The shoes were brand-new.”

Nick slammed his fist down onto the desk. “Dammit! Can’t we get a break?”

“Sorry, I should have called the moment we identified the shoes, but I knew it wasn’t going to help you, anyway. Not without wear.”

“How expensive were they?”

“You can get ’em for around twenty-five dollars at the cheaper stores.”

There was a long silence while Nick sank into his chair and digested this disappointing information. Everything about Dr. Dan reeked of common. They’d found nothing unique or unusual enough to track.

“You think Dr. Dan is a poor man?” Tony asked, surprising Nick out of his thoughts. Tony was a technician and usually too busy to involve himself in conjecture. That was for the field agents, who sometimes had to take risks based on instinct alone.

“No, I think he’s smart,” Nick answered. “He’s taking his time and doing everything right. What I need is a witness.” He sighed. “What I’m afraid I’m going to get is another victim.”

THE FIRST TIME Nick remembered his date with Maggie, it was nearly five o’clock. He’d spent the day gathering the samples he’d promised the lab and combing through the statements in each victim’s file, comparing and contrasting them with those he’d collected on Sarah Ritter. He had a whole chalkboard full of similarities and differences. But now, sitting in the sparsely furnished apartment the agency had rented for him with only Rambo as company, eating a late lunch of Chinese takeout, he was eager to get his mind off Dr. Dan’s sick deeds. He wanted to replace the blood he saw, even when he closed his eyes, with the sweetness of Maggie’s smile.

Fleetingly, he wondered how she’d reacted when Lowell Atkinson had stonewalled her this morning, but he felt no guilt for interfering. He was only doing his job. He didn’t mind letting Maggie dig up something he didn’t already know, but he was holding his own cards close to his chest. The last thing he needed was the press divulging everything the investigation uncovered, keeping Dr. Dan one step ahead of him.

Besides, Nick thought, finishing his chow mein and setting it aside, if she ever learned his true identity, she’d have much bigger things to forgive him for than placing a call to Atkinson.

His cop radio hissed and sputtered in the background as one of the dispatchers announced a possible robbery attempt. Rambo barked at the noise, but Nick ignored it. He used the radio to keep a pulse on what was happening around him, but listening to it was second nature to him now. It took no energy or focus.

Plugging his laptop into the phone line, he signed on to the Internet to shop for interesting places to take Maggie on their date. He considered having her join him at a site where they could watch a movie together and communicate via instant messaging. But he knew it would fall far short of the real experience. There’d be no giant screen, no smell of popcorn and no Maggie sitting next to him. He needed to take her somewhere more exotic. Knowing that he had no hope of getting an arm around her to see if her skin was really as soft as it looked, no hope of even a chaste kiss good-night, he needed to find a place that was fascinating enough to distract him—and intrigue her.