The Night Killer

She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down at their conference table to calm down. The refreshed feeling she felt from sleeping in was gone. She was exhausted and puke sick with fear. Her gaze rested on her sleeve again. In the light where she was, the small spread of glitter had a gold-orange glow. Geez, it’s everywhere, she thought.

Then why was it on only one sleeve?

For some reason, she thought about Izzy touching her shoulder not thirty minutes ago. Diane had on the same sweater yesterday, and she remembered Maud grabbing her arm, and the oddly sparkly makeup she had on for a very straitlaced woman. And she thought about Vitruvian Man.

Chapter 55

“Maud and Earl? From the church? I didn’t see that coming,” said Izzy.

They all stared at Diane. Frank and Izzy because they had met Maud and Earl. David and Liam because the others were.

“I’m thinking secondary transfer,” said Diane. “We need to find out who Maud came in contact with yesterday. She won’t respond to me. Any of you charming enough to get the information?”

“What is it you’re saying?” said Liam. “That glitter is from Andie’s shirt?”

“The Vitruvian Man T-shirts have a pale burnt-orange glitter that is meant to mimic the color of aged parchment-like Leonardo da Vinci’s journal,” said Diane. “And as everyone in the museum knows by now, the glitter we got for the T-shirts transfers quite readily. Maud grasped my arm when she came by-”

“Why did she come by?” asked Izzy.

“I’m not completely sure. They wanted me to confess to lying about Leland Conrad-that he hadn’t put me in a jail cell with a bunch of drunks-because he was too good a man to do something like that.”

Diane heard Liam snort.

“I think they were feeling a little guilty,” she continued, “because they had told Conrad I was at their church, and they wanted me to alleviate that guilt for them. Anyway, I noticed that her makeup had a golden reddish sheen to it, as did her blouse. And frankly, she isn’t the type to be wearing that look. Andie’s abductor will have burnt- orange glitter all over him. And it will transfer readily. If it isn’t Maud, she came in contact with whoever it is.”

“There’s a lot of glitter around,” said Liam. “I mean a lot. Young people wear it on their clothing, on their faces, their purses. You’re likely to find any number of people with glitter on them or their clothing.”

“We can tell if it’s our glitter,” said David.

“I take it all glitter is not created equal,” said Liam.

“Indeed not,” said David. “Glitter is actually small to almost microscopic pieces of either plastic with an aluminum layer, or just plain old aluminum foil. It varies in size, shape, thickness, color, specific gravity, chemistry- to name a few of its characteristics. Every company has its own way of making it, uses its own shapes-like carpet manufacturers do-and each company’s cutting machines have their own specific tool markings left on the tiny pieces. Different companies have their own distinctive color varieties. And different companies make glitter for different products-like clothing, makeup, crafts, confetti, and on and on. I can tell you right away if this is our glitter. And the best part-you can never get rid of all of it. There are always little bits of it stuck somewhere.”

David took a piece of tape and pressed it against the glitter on the arm of Diane’s sweater. He lifted the tape and put the sample under the microscope.

“He has a database of glitter, doesn’t he?” said Izzy.

“Of course,” said Diane. “Have you ever known David without a database? He’s even working on a database of acoustic sound qualities in different environments-caves, houses, warehouses, outdoors in summer and winter, types of vehicles, and whatever else he has thought of recently.”

Izzy shook his head. Liam smiled. The first time all day she’d seen him smile.

“It’s ours. I can tell you that,” said David, looking up from the microscope. “I can put it under the mass spec and have a detailed description, but it’s ours.”

“So,” said Liam, “we are making progress. We have a lead.”

“We do,” said David.

“Don’t Maud and Earl have a no-account son who’s been in jail?” said Izzy. “Isn’t that what the Watson daughters said? I believe Keith is his name.” Izzy rubbed his hands together. “Progress.”

“Do you think the no-account son could be the grandson of Cora Nell Dickson?” asked Diane. “Liam, what did you find out last night about Cora?”

“Nothing. She never applied for a Social Security number. It’s automatic now when children are born, but back then you applied for it when you went to work. Not everyone worked. Not everyone applied for a card. Her income is her husband’s retirement income. I might as well not have gone, and if I’d stayed here, Andie wouldn’t have gotten in harm’s way,” he said.

“Whoever it was, was stalking Andie,” said Diane. “You couldn’t be with her all the time.”

“How are we going to approach this?” said Diane. “Maud and Earl won’t talk with me. If their son is involved, I don’t want to alert them. I thought one of you could do it, and complain about me-get them talking.”

“I can do that,” said Izzy.

Diane smiled. “Good,” she said.

“No, really. I have an idea. Evie and I spoke with them at the church and we got along okay. I think I can approach it right.” Izzy headed for one of the private workstations.

Frank turned back to the video made by Andie’s kidnapper. Diane saw him go to the beginning and watch it again. He’d done it several times. Stopping, looking, examining, writing down. At one point he measured something on the screen. She watched him for several moments. He could focus so well and with such intensity. She wanted to ask him what he was doing, but she didn’t want to break his focus. She knew he would know every pixel, or whatever unit the image was in, in the video of Andie.

Diane went to another computer and called up the security video and looked at it several more times- sometimes watching for vehicles, sometimes people, sometimes both. Writing them down, looking for a pattern. Useless, probably. She was willing to bet he never ventured into the museum parking lot, but stayed out of sight. She looked at all the people again, looking for someone who didn’t belong, or someone who looked like a gardener, someone wearing a hoodie or some other clothing that might conceal his identity.

She looked again at the video with Andie in it. She looked to see if anyone was watching Andie as she said good-bye to Liam. She watched her turn and run after the puppy. Diane searched the woods. The resolution wasn’t clear enough to see deep into the woods, but she thought. . if she could just catch a glimpse of someone. She took a breath, rubbed her eyes, and started all over again. She noticed that David was doing the same thing at another computer.

Jin came back with more stuff than Diane thought he would. Her groundskeepers were pretty good about keeping the museum woods cleaned out and free of litter, but Jin managed to find quite a bit. He went into one of the workrooms with a long table and put the bags down. Diane followed him in. Jin’s short black hair was in disarray, probably from going through the woods, but the spiky, messy style looked trendy on him. Jin was usually the happiest of her crew, always a bundle of barely contained enthusiasm. But he was subdued now. They all were.

“Hey, boss,” said Jin, “I don’t think any of this will be any good. Mostly picnic junk from museum visitors. I took pictures of the tire tracks and did the measurements of a vehicle on the dirt road. It was an SUV. I’ll look up the make and model before I start on this stuff, but. .”

“But what?” asked Diane, though she knew what he was going to say. They usually did all this for a dead body-and they did a good job-but the detailed work normally was to catch the perps and convict them in court. That wasn’t the goal this time. This time the goal was to get Andie back.

“Nothing, boss.” Jin grinned. “We’re getting a lot of evidence here. We’ll find Andie.”

Jin went to the computer to fit the tires and wheelbase measurements to the vehicles in the database. It didn’t take him long. “It’s a 1997 Chevrolet Blazer, dark green metallic.”

“You got the color from the wheelbase?” said Diane.