“We’d never call you sentimental,” Neil assured her from the back of the room.
Phil nodded grudgingly. “Saw the mom leaving yesterday. Tough cookie, but definitely shaken up.”
“She was at Flora’s apartment,” Alex spoke up. All heads turned toward him. “At D.D.’s request, I swung by. Rosa Dane was already there. She’d brought a tin of muffins for the landlords and was waiting for me on the third-floor landing to break the crime scene tape. She’s, uh, she’s something else.”
“She baked homemade muffins in a hotel room?” D.D. was still trying to work that out.
“If you let her stay in her daughter’s apartment, she’s promised us cake.”
“You let her in?”
“Judging by the look on her face, it was going to happen. At least this way she had supervision.”
“Was an FBI officer, Dr. Keynes, with her?”
“No. Just her.”
D.D. nodded but remained frowning. Her conversation with Keynes still bugged her.
“Did Rosa notice anything?” D.D. asked at last.
“Nothing appears missing, all Flora’s clothes are intact, that sort of thing. The bed was unmade, but according to Rosa that’s not atypical. Flora isn’t a stickler for neatness. That’s more the mom’s department.”
“What did she do in the apartment?” D.D. asked.
Alex shrugged. “Walked around. Seemed to be absorbing the space. She spent a fair amount of time in her daughter’s room, reading the articles on the wall.”
“Are any of those cases Natalie Draga or Kristy Kilker?” a new detective spoke up.
“No,” D.D. answered. “Neither girl was ever reported missing. Natalie was in Boston on her own. Kristy Kilker’s mother thought her daughter was in Italy. So, in theory, Flora was focused on Stacey Summers.” She returned her attention to Phil. “Any leads from Flora’s cell phone or computer?”
“Working through both of them now. Flora was definitely fixated on the bar scene in Boston. She’d been reading up on Tonic in the days before she headed there.”
D.D. frowned. “But Stacey Summers disappeared from Birches, meaning something else would had to have put Tonic on Flora’s radar screen. What?”
Around the table, no one had any answers.
“Natalie Draga used to work at Tonic,” Carol Manley piped up. “Maybe Flora did know something we didn’t know. I mean, just because Natalie wasn’t formally declared missing doesn’t mean a friend hadn’t started asking around, hey, any of you seen Natalie lately, that kind of thing. Given Flora’s obsession, maybe such rumors caught her attention.”
D.D. nodded. Which was exactly why she’d grilled Keynes on the subject. Because Flora did have an obsession when it came to missing persons, and seemed to be better informed than even the police.
“All right,” D.D. said. “For now, let’s focus on the case we know Flora was definitely working, Stacey Summers. I want some suits paying visits to Stacey’s family and friends. Except, this time, show them Flora’s picture. Let’s see how far she got with her own investigation. Because if Flora was looking at other bars in the area, then I’m guessing one of Stacey’s friends must have mentioned something. Maybe Tonic was a nightclub they’d visited often in the past, or Stacey knew someone who worked there. Maybe Flora even figured out that another pretty girl who used to work at Tonic hasn’t been seen for months. Honestly, I have no idea. But whatever the connections are here”—D.D. drew lines between Natalie, Kristy, Goulding, and Stacey Summers—“we need to figure them out.”
“I might have one clue,” Alex offered. He’d finished his sandwich, was now wiping his hands. “On the fire escape outside Flora’s apartment, I found traces of glitter.”
“Glitter?” D.D. didn’t mean to sound so dubious; it just wasn’t the type of clue she’d expected.
“Hey, for us crime scene geeks, glitter is the new duct tape.”
“I don’t even understand that statement,” D.D. assured her husband. Around the table, her fellow detectives were nodding.
Alex leaned forward. “Glitter is nearly perfect trace evidence. It’s very easy to transfer while also being highly unique. Better yet, like duct tape, there are extensive databases available to help determine the particular source of the glitter in question. For example, glitter is present in everything from women’s makeup to greeting cards to various clothing items. Needless to say, the size, color, cut of each of these sources is different. Better yet, on a microscopic level, you can tie an individual piece of glitter to a specific cutting machine from a specific manufacturer, proving once and for all the glitter found on the victim’s bed definitely came from the same source as the glitter on the killer’s fancy shirt. Good stuff, glitter.”
“So what did you find on the fire escape?”
“I found traces of gold on the handrail, I’m guessing transferred from contact with a subject’s hand. With Rosa’s help, I examined Flora’s clothing. No sources of glitter there. No glitter in the bed either, which would have occurred if Flora had gotten some on her skin, say, when she was out and about, then transferred it to her sheets when she tucked in at night. She did have glitter in some of her cosmetic products, but those particles are too fine to match with the fire escape sample.”
“What does that mean?” D.D. asked him.
“It means someone was out on the fire escape with traces of glitter on his hands, clothes, et cetera.”
“And that helps us how?”
“Find a suspect, we can use glitter to place him or her on Flora’s fire escape. Or—” Alex’s gaze grew more thoughtful. He pointed at the circle of names D.D. had joined with lines on the whiteboard. “We believe these cases are all interconnected, yes?”
D.D. nodded.
“Then let’s search Devon Goulding’s house for signs of glitter. Kristy Kilker’s body as well. If we find traces matching Flora’s fire escape on either of these other sources, then there’s your proof. These cases are related.” Alex nodded solemnly. “The glitter tells us so.”
Chapter 33
THE GIRL IS INSANE. Molly, Stacey, whoever she is, has definitely been shut up too long, suffered too much trauma. I don’t know. But she’s crazy to think I’m the one who has something to do with this. I save people. Which sometimes does involve hurting others.
Devon Goulding, his skin smoking, then catching on fire.
But I only attack bad people.
And this girl here.
That doesn’t count.
I make the girl move. Actually, I advance closer and she drags herself off the mattress, away from me in the dark. Whatever. It allows me to retrieve the last shard of pine coffin from inside the mattress lining. It’s thinner than I’d like. Decent length, though.
I bring it to the door and get to work. My first challenge, trying to figure out in the dark the approximate location of the latch in the switch plate. I have to think back to other doors. It works best to stand and simply reach automatically for a doorknob.
Once I have that height, I attempt to slide in the wooden shard, only to discover that, as flimsy as it is, it’s still too thick. I sit in the dark and shred it down. Not hard really. The wood pulls away in long strips.
There’s something rhythmic to the work. Therapeutic.
Why would the girl think I had something to do with this?
A shadow looming in my doorway, voice thick with menace. An intruder who got through all my locks without ever waking me. An attacker who removed me from my apartment before I struck a single counterblow and delivered me here.
Sitting in the dark, shredding a piece of pine coffin, I feel the memory become thinner and thinner. Less a memory and more a bad dream. The man’s face . . . I can’t picture it. What did he do next? Lunge forward, I would guess, but I can’t recall. And I . . . I lay in my bed and waited for him to ambush me?
My head hurts again. I instinctively raise a hand to rub my temples, and hit myself with the tethering chain.