pair of leather gloves. He pulled them on so he would not leave fingerprints. The couple went inside.
The shades were drawn, and the apartment was dark. There was a small penlight attached to McCaskey's key chain. He flicked it on. Neighbors might know that Kat was away. He did not want them seeing lights behind the shades.
They were in a small corridor that led to the living room. McCaskey swung the light across the floor to look for pet hair. If Kat had a pet, she might also have a walker, someone to come by and take it out.
He saw no traces of fur, nor did they hear anything. They started forward.
'I do not smell a fireplace,' Maria said.
'I know,' her husband replied.
They entered the living room. There was no fireplace there or in the master bedroom. They searched Kat's closets for the bag Rodgers had described.
'That's a good sign,' Maria said after they had finished looking in the kitchen cabinets.
'Why do you say that?'
'Those are the kinds of bags women save,' she said. 'They make good gift bags or tote bags. Ms. Lockley had other bags in the broom closet. She obviously got rid of this one.'
'Intriguing but circumstantial,' her husband replied. He looked around. He went to the bookshelf and pulled down her college and high school yearbooks. He flipped through them, looking for a name that might have come up during the investigation, a possible collaborator.
There was none.
'We should have brought Matt to get into her computer,' Maria said, pointing to a desk near the window.
'I'm sure that anything important is on a laptop, and I'm just as sure it is with her,' McCaskey said.
He heard running water. It was coming from the kitchen. It was just the freezer. The ice maker was making ice.
'That's odd,' he said.
'What is?' Maria asked, joining him.
'Ice makers only fill up when they're low.'
He went to the stainless steel unit and opened the door. The engine was humming loudly, amplified by the close walls of the small kitchen.
McCaskey flipped up the ice compartment. He dug through the new ice to the cubes below. He broke several chunks free and pulled them out.
'Damn.'
Maria moved closer. 'What is it?'
'There are blue stains in the ice,' he said, holding a cube up to the freezer light. 'See them?'
Maria nodded. 'She had the dress in the ice compartment. That's a very good hiding spot.'
McCaskey nodded. He set the ice down carefully on a shelf and used his pocket knife to poke around inside, just in case the hypodermic was there as well. It was not. That was probably in the milk, he thought only half in jest.
'If the dress was here this recently,' McCaskey went on, 'it means she may have taken it with her.'
'Isn't that risky to have evidence on your person?' Maria asked.
'It would have been riskier to leave it here or to have destroyed it when you are on a short list of suspects,' McCaskey replied. 'Think about it. Where would the garment be safer than in the hands of airport security? My guess is she will dispose of it as far from the crime scene as possible.'
Maria went back to the freezer. She stopped. Her husband smiled and handed her a spoon from the dish rack.
