nodded curtly.
Coursey added a curt nod of his own.
'I'm sure you will.' I walked around my desk and sat down in my chair, which was unpleasantly warm. They gathered up their respective papers and headed for the door, but a lingering thought made me stop them.
'Guys -- your computer, Vicky, does it handle more than just terminal occurrences?'
'Yes. It is also a nationwide database for felonies such as rape, arson, and bank robberies.'
'How about poisoning? Product tampering?'
They nodded as one. I told them about the package I'd gotten earlier, ending the story by showing them the lethal X ray.
'Would your computer be able to locate other tamperings like this one?'
'I believe so. Can we keep this?'
I nodded, giving them directions to the lab so they could check out the goods themselves. Maybe, for the first time, the FBI would help out rather than get in the way. Hope springs eternal.
I wasn't lying about the backlog of cases, and after making a few calls and filling out a few reports, I transferred them all so I could devote my full attention to the Jane Doe murder. Going over the case again from the beginning didn't yield any new information, but it helped me organize the info I did have.
Lab report pending, I was 99 percent sure that Dr. Booster and our Jane Doe had been killed by the same perp. He was calling himself the Gingerbread Man, and after forcing Booster to write him a prescription for Seconal, he used it to abduct Jane Doe.
The note and the cookie were messages to the police, and there was a good indication that there would be more deaths. Sixty mls of Seconal was enough to knock out twenty to thirty people. Why ask for that much if he didn't intend to use it?
I scribbled a note to myself to call the DEA and check to see if they had any stats on Seconal ODs. I also wanted to call up Vice and see if Seconal had been used in any recent rapes. Jane Doe may be the first murder, but she may not be the first person our perp used Seconal on.
I picked up the packet of pictures from the crime scene and looked through them for the hundredth time. Something in my subconscious made me linger on a photo of the girl in the garbage can, her rear end sticking out. I studied it further. There was garbage covering almost the whole body, except for the buttocks. But why so much garbage, if it hadn't been in the can for more than an hour or two?
Maybe he arranged the garbage like that. Almost as if he were saying that he threw away a piece of ass. The FBI called it posing, and I was surprised I hadn't received a lecture on that as well. Positioning the body like this was the perp's way of showing how clever he was, and how much contempt he had for the victim. So did he take the time to do this in plain sight, or...
I picked up the report with the itemized list of all the garbage found in the can with the body. Mixed in with the cans and bags and wrappers and bottles were twelve receipts. The prices on the receipts were noted on the list, but not what I was after.
I picked up the phone and called Evidence.
'Bill? Jack Daniels.'
Bill had been caretaker of the evidence room since I was a rookie. He was older than God.
'Jack? How are you? I was thinking about you this morning, in the shower.'
'You should be ashamed, a man your age.'
'Chris is on his break. You could come down now. We'll go behind the storage lockers.'
I laughed. 'You're too much man for me, Bill, but I could use a favor. I need you to look up something from case 93-10-06782. Receipts that were found in the garbage can with a body.'
'That the Jane Doe got all cut up?'
'Yeah.'
'Hold on.'
He put down the phone, and I heard the sliding gate unlock and imagined him walking through the aisles of shelves in the evidence room, looking for the proper case number. I finished my coffee while waiting, then regretted my haste because now I'd have to drink the awful station slop. Eventually I would break down and get a coffeemaker, because the stuff from the vending machine tasted like brewed sewage.
I put off getting more coffee and looked at the latest sheet the Feebies left. Their number one suspect match had a 48.6 percent probability rate that it was our guy. The murder and mutilation of three women with a hunting knife was unsolved, and I was ready to call the Feds and ask for more info on this case when I noticed it took place in 1953. In Nome, Alaska. I filed the paper, throwing my empty coffee cup in after it.
'Jack?'
'Yeah?'
'Ooohh, your voice makes my toes curl. I found the receipts for you, lamb chop. What do you need?'
'Look at one. Other than the date, does it have numbers in the upper corners?'
'Yeah. Two. The left-hand corner, 193, the right one 277.'
'Try another receipt.'
'Left 193, right 310.'
