Dear Maggie

by Brenda Novak

  “He did?”

  “Yeah. Would you like to come in?”

  Maggie didn’t answer right away. She was too busy wondering how Lowell might have known to expect her. She was a reporter, and he’d been dodging her questions. He could have made a simple assumption, but it was a little surprising that he’d been so specific about the day.

  “How did Lowell know I was coming?” she asked.

  Mary Ann smiled. “You didn’t call him?”

  “No. Is he here?”

  “I’m afraid not, but that’s no reason to let those donuts go to waste.” She stepped back. “Are you coming in?”

  “Sure. Zach would love to see Katie. It’s been almost a year since we had that picnic.”

  Katie, Mary Ann’s five-year-old, peered shyly through the railing of the balcony above as Mary Ann showed them inside. Mary Ann waved her daughter down and led them through a comfortable-looking brown-and-green living room, where her six-month-old son was sleeping in a battery-powered swing, to a large screened-in porch. They sat at an iron table on chintz-upholstered seats while Katie hung back, regarding Zach with wariness. Her reserve vanished, however, the moment he caught sight of her tricycle and appropriated it for his own use.

  Mary Ann put a halt to her daughter’s indignant cries and found a smaller riding toy for Zach. Then she and Maggie watched their children play on the flagstone patio.

  “The weather’s been great, hasn’t it?” Mary Ann asked. “I love this time of year.”

  “It’s going to be a hot summer,” Maggie replied.

  “Every summer is hot in Sacramento.”

  “I’m finding that out.”

  “Did you get air conditioning? I remember you spent last summer without it.”

  “I decided to save two thousand bucks and bought a fan instead.”

  Mary Ann laughed. “You should have saved the twenty bucks you spent on the fan because it won’t be nearly enough in another two weeks.”

  “Even after I get an air conditioner I’m hoping to open my windows at night and use the fan to keep my electric bills down, at least on the nights I’m home.”

  “Then you’re a braver woman than I am. After that Ritter murder, I’m keeping my doors and windows locked.”

  Maggie set the cups of hot chocolate aside to cool for the kids and selected a tall Starbucks cup from her cardboard tray for Mary Ann. Then she opened the donuts. “Don’t let that scare you. Most murders are committed by a friend or relative, so unless someone close to you is unstable, you’re pretty safe.” She selected a chocolate cake donut and sat back to eat it. “In Sarah Ritter’s case, I’m guessing it was her husband. She was probably going to sue for divorce or something, so he freaked out and stabbed her with a kitchen knife.”

  Mary Ann helped herself to a maple bar. “Except that she wasn’t killed with a kitchen knife. The murder weapon was sharper than that, the grooves different, more like a hunting knife.”

  Maggie nearly choked on her first bite of donut. “What?” she said, coughing.

  Mary Ann sent a furtive glance at her daughter and took a sip of coffee. “Lowell sometimes brings his work home with him, just like anybody else.”

  “So the autopsy’s finished?”

  “Of course. It was finished the same day they found the body. Lowell didn’t get home until almost midnight.”

  “And? Did he find anything unusual?”

  Mary Ann hesitated. “My husband left so he wouldn’t have to talk to you. He told me to play dumb.”

  “I still don’t understand how he knew I was going to show up here.”

  “Someone called. I thought it was you.”

  “Who else could it have been?”

  “Someone from the force, maybe?”

  Her appetite gone, Maggie pushed her donut aside. No one on the force knew her plans for this morning. How could they have alerted Lowell? Had they been following her and guessed where she was heading? Why would they waste the manpower? Mendez must have realized his gaffe the other night and had let the others know. “What’s going on, Mary Ann?” she asked. “Lowell’s never felt he had to dodge me before.”

  “He says the police are really worried about this case. They don’t want him to say anything to the press.”

  “It was a brutal murder that needs to be solved as soon as possible, but why all the secrecy?”

  “I don’t know. To tell you the truth, I think it’s wrong. I think people should know. The women of Sacramento should be warned to lock their doors and windows at night and to set an alarm, if they have one.”

  Maggie studied Mary Ann’s agitated face. “Is it that bad?”

  She nodded.

  “Are you going to tell me why?”

  With a sigh, Mary Ann lowered her voice so the children couldn’t hear. “That poor woman had her tongue cut out,” she said, her gaze pinning Maggie to her seat as effectively as her words. “Lowell said he’s never seen anything like it. He said whoever did it knew how to use a knife.”

  Maggie cringed. “A hunter or a surgeon, maybe?”

  “A serial killer, a wacko,” Mary Ann replied. “And the most frightening thing of all is that this guy has already struck six times. The first victim was a woman in Boston.”

  So Maggie’s hunch had been right. She hadn’t found what she was looking for online last night, but she hadn’t searched very long, and she hadn’t known what she needed to track down—a monster who removed his victims’ tongues. That was certainly enough to earmark a murderer. “When?” she asked.

  “Ten months ago, and he still hasn’t been caught.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “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 D
r. 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.

  Twenty minutes later, he found it.

  “MOMMY, WHEN’S-S-S Mrs-s-s. Goober coming over?”

  “Mrs. Gruber?” Maggie corrected. “Soon.” She was sitting at the kitchen table, preoccupied with the various newspaper articles she’d copied off the Internet a few hours earlier. According to what she’d found, six unsolved murders reported over the past year had enough common characteristics for investigators to assume they were committed by the same person. The victims were all Caucasian women ranging in age from twenty-four to thirty-nine. They’d been stabbed repeatedly with something resembling a butcher knife. And they’d had their tongues removed after death.

  That last gruesome detail was as good as a signature—and was more than enough to make Maggie feel ill. What kind of sick bastard was this guy? It terrified her to think of him circulating among the people of her own city. He could be the guy smoking outside the café where she bought her coffee each morning. He could be her newspaper carrier or the house painter down the street. He could be anyone. And it appeared he could go anywhere. One victim was murdered in Massachusetts, one in Missouri, two in Colorado and two in Washington state. As if what she’d found wasn’t unnerving enough, she noted that his last victim, before Sarah Ritter, had been a reporter for the Seattle Independent.

  “Gads,” she whispered. “What are we facing here?”

  “Mommy! When’s Mrs-s-s. Goober comin’ over?” This time the frustration in her son’s voice finally broke Maggie’s concentration. Crayons were scattered across the table next to her, along with several scribbled pictures. She’d tried to entertain Zach while she worked, but he was bored with it all.

  She glanced at her watch. Where had the time gone? Her “date” with John was in twenty minutes and she still needed to feed Zach.

  “Where is everyone? All the lights you got on in this place, you’d think electricity didn’t cost money.” Mrs. Gruber shuffled into the kitchen, an overnight case heavy on her arm, but probably no heavier than the industrial-sized purse she carried in the other hand. Maggie had no idea what was in her purse, but she knew the contents of the suitcase by heart. She watched Mrs. Gruber pack it up each morning. A bag of gumdrops—her diet staple and probably the culprit in her denture disaster—a pair of reading glasses, a jar of cold cream, a toothbrush, a hair net and an entire medicine cabinet of vitamins. She’d tried to get Mrs. Gruber to leave her things in the guest bathroom, but her neighbor felt more comfortable carting it all back and forth. So Maggie had given up trying to convince her. Mrs. Gruber was a fantastic baby-sitter—more like a grandma to Zach, really—but she was accustomed to certain things. She always let herself in, said whatev
er came to mind and considered it her personal mission in life to see that nothing was ever wasted. She collected aluminum foil, washed and reused disposable flatware, birthday candles and plastic bags.

  “Mrs-s-s. Goober! Mrs-s-s. Goober!” In his excitement to see her, Zach launched himself from the kitchen table and nearly tackled the old woman.

  Mrs. Gruber told him to settle down and mind his manners, but her gruffness did nothing to stifle Zach’s enthusiasm. He knew she loved him.

  She held him close, then delved into her overnight bag. “Look at this,” she told him. “I brought you something.”

  It would have been a rare night had she not brought Zach a small present—a pretty rock for their collection, a quarter for his piggy bank, a new toothbrush. Maggie filed the disturbing newspaper articles away, planning to take them to the office with her, before tossing a look over her shoulder to see what Mrs. Gruber had brought him today.

  “Pajamas-s-s with a cape!” Zach shrieked, immediately stripping off his clothes.

  A widow who lived alone, Mrs. Gruber survived on social security and what Maggie paid her. She had no business spending her money on Zach, and Maggie often told her so. But that didn’t change a thing.

  “He’s getting too tall for his football pajamas,” she explained, a defensive note creeping into her voice when Maggie cocked a brow at her. “And they were on sale.”

  “I’ll pay you back.”

  Mrs. Gruber scowled and helped Zach pull the top of his new pajamas over his head. “They didn’t cost enough to worry about.”

  “That’s what you say about everything you buy him.” Maggie started rummaging through the cupboards, wondering what to feed Zach, but Mrs. Gruber nudged her aside.

  “What are you lookin’ for?”

  “Something for dinner.”