Desolate Angel (32 page)

Peggy had called in the entire staff. The overtime would be astronomical, but I knew that the one force greater than Maggie’s resolve in this matter was the commander’s desire to offer the public an antidote of competence to counteract the department’s role in putting an innocent man in prison.

Evidence from the Vicky Meeks and Alissa Hayes murders was cataloged on separate ends of a central table. The items retrieved from the compartment in the Hayes basement had already been parceled out for processing. Not a soul in the room was conscious of anything other than the microscopic world they had entered into in their quest to link Alan Hayes to the murders of both girls. The technicians worked in silence, focused on the minute mysteries before them. Peggy hopped from station to station, conferring, whispering advice, steering her crew in other directions whenever a method failed to produce results. But I sensed a growing current of distraction in Peggy as the phone rang at intervals, disrupting her concentration. When Maggie finally arrived, she gave rise to her frustration.

“Maggie,” Peggy began. “You have to get everyone off our backs. And you can’t stay here.”

“I know. I just stopped by to tell you that I don’t think they’ll find a thing at this girl’s house. Hayes is too smart. They’ll be bringing stuff in, but it’s not a priority. I need a direct link between Hayes and the Meeks murder. You have to concentrate on that.”

Peggy nodded. “It’s going to take a while yet.”

“Is there anything?” Maggie asked, her voice hopeful. “Anything at all?”

Peggy shook her head. “We can link the silt and rock residues, but that won’t get you far in court. Both substances are indigenous to this area. Anyone could pick them up walking around. The lapidary residue links him to what we found near the body, but that won’t be enough, either. He’s a geology professor. He gets around a lot of labs at the college. It could be explained away.”

“What about the items we found in his basement?”

Peggy bit her lower lip, aware she was about to disappoint Maggie. Her teeth scraped off tiny bits of orange lipstick. Some things never changed—and I found the thought comforted me. “I don’t think we’re going to get much off them. They’ve been laundered with a bleach substitute. My guess is repeatedly.”

“That bastard.” Maggie steadied herself against the table. “His memories are what he hoards, those trophies are just a catalyst for his sick memories.” She looked down, considering what she was about to say. “If I bring you something from my car, a yellow dress, can you test it?”

“For what?” Peggy asked.

“To see if it’s been laundered in the same bleach substitute.”

Peggy looked wary. “Is this off the record?”

Maggie nodded. “Yes. I can’t tell you where I got it, but I need to know if Hayes had the dress in his possession.”

“Okay,” Peggy agreed. “But can I make another suggestion?”

“Of course.” Maggie was smart enough to take her advice.

“Put the clothing you found in context. How many women of college age have gone missing from this area since he’s been here?”

“Only one that hasn’t been found either alive or dead,” Maggie said. “Not enough to account for all that clothing.”

“Some of the articles look pretty old to me.” Peggy said. “The fabric has deteriorated, especially the natural fibers. I think he’s had a couple of those things for as long as twenty years. Those earrings shaped like feathers? Everyone was wearing them in the mid-nineties. I even had a pair.”

“You’re saying most of the killings didn’t occur around here?”

“I’m saying he’s been building his collection since before he moved to town.”

“I could call around again to all the places he’s lived,” Maggie said, thinking aloud. “I’ve already started a list of incidents in places where he’s been, but I could ask to see the actual reports on missing persons or unsolved murders. If a roommate or family member was specific enough about what the girl was wearing when she was last seen, I might get a hit on some of the items.”

“Garnet earrings,” Peggy said.

“What?”

“His box held a pair of custom-made garnet and silver earrings. Nice workmanship. One of a kind. Heavy silver crosses inlaid with perfectly matched garnets of an unusually deep purplish red. If anything is in a report, it’ll be those earrings.”

“That’s it?” Maggie sounded disappointed.

“It might be enough. The garnets are exceptional. That’s probably why he couldn’t resist keeping them. Find the jeweler who made those earrings and they’d remember the stones and setting. My guess is they were made in the early nineties, post Madonna’s
Like a Prayer
.”

Maggie looked at Peggy incredulously. “I can’t believe you know that. What
are
you doing when you’re not at work?”

Peggy was pleased at being suspected of a secret life. “They would be distinctive enough to tie him to another murder victim. I’m certain of it.”

“Thanks.” Maggie hugged the older woman. “You’d make a great detective.”

“Oh, no.” Peggy’s laugh was wry. “I don’t like the big, wide world at all. My preferred world is much, much smaller.”

Chapter 32

Maggie was relentless. She called every police district and every agency in every town where Alan Hayes had ever lived, meticulously going back over the list of murdered or still-missing girls she had compiled earlier. She logged in their descriptions, asking for lists of what they had last been seen wearing, begging overworked detectives for details of any unsolved murders that might match the evidence found in the Hayes basement or fit the profile of the Hayes and Meeks murders. What she found only made her more frantic—a growing list of girls whose bodies had been discovered discarded among the weeds in remote locations, some with ritualistic cuts marring their bodies, others with signs of ligature around their wrists, ankles, and neck. Her notes revealed a portrait of an evolving obsession, but in the end, while the list mapped out a path of mental, moral, and physical destruction, it did nothing to help Maggie link Alan Hayes to any of the murders, or any of the possible victims to items in his box of trophies. Too much time had passed. He had been too careful with the items he chose to keep. And no one had reported a missing loved one or murder victim who had been wearing garnet earrings in silver cross settings.

Even worse, a call came down from Peggy in late afternoon: none of the evidence examined had yielded any traces of DNA that could be tested against the control samples. The only possible evidentiary connection between the murders of Alissa Hayes and Vicky Meeks remained the silt and rock sediments.

“It’s not enough,” Maggie said. “We can’t let this go. He could get his daughter back, even if we brought abuse charges against him. If he finds out we have nothing, he’ll surface again. Both to taunt us and to take his daughter. He’ll say we’re harassing him because we have no other suspects. Sarah could be compelled to live with him until the charges are resolved. I’ve seen it happen before, and who knows what the stepmother might say? She’ll back Hayes. She’ll say Sarah cut herself. All that woman wants is to keep her home in the suburbs. She’ll say anything to keep it.”

Whatever Peggy said in response calmed Maggie. “I know,” Maggie answered. “You’re right. I skipped lunch, too. Want me to pick up something for you while I’m out? What about the others?”

She wrote something down on a sheet of paper and folded it absently into her pocket. The long day of hopes raised and then dashed again had taken its toll. I could feel her spiraling out of her steely self-control and I knew she might break soon. But I also sensed she would prefer to display her human weaknesses in private. I watched as she collected her things, never once betraying frustration or fatigue to her coworkers. I followed her as she walked out to her car, and she was alert enough to scan the parking lot to see if Danny had showed up for work. He hadn’t. I did my part and checked the parking lot for signs of Alan Hayes or his SUV, finding nothing.

I joined Maggie in the front seat of her car, a silent witness to what her outer resolve masked. Alone in her car, hidden from the eyes of others, Maggie wept, out of sorrow and out of fear for Sarah Hayes. Those tears were followed by tears of frustration that a killer might get away with his killing, and anger that she could not stop him.

Maggie wept silently, unwilling to make a scene, even in solitude. She held her hand over her mouth to stifle her cries while tears ran down her face like tiny waterfalls of diamonds tumbling over smooth rock, each tear a treasure, each one swelling as it reached the curve of her cheekbones before it gathered and broke to run in rivulets over her fingers.

I did not know what to do and I was infuriated by my helplessness. Her strength had drawn me to her, but it was her human frailty that kept me by her side—her ability to feel what the victims had felt, her understanding of what their loved ones were going through, her despair that the world held evil and such innocence, side by side, with no way to separate the two. It was her overwhelming desire to protect the good in this world that drove her to do what she did, but it was her fury at the evil that made her fight back. But to get from one to the other, she had to release her fears and make room for fearlessness.

I felt honored to be a part of her cleansing ritual. As her tears flowed, a great constriction in her loosened, as if, in releasing her tears, she had found a way to release the burden of many sorrows while receiving strength in return. She was rejecting the power of evil and acknowledging what it was that mattered most to her: love, respect for life, joy at being here, a desire to protect the helpless—all those things that humans cannot see, but that remain more real than any tangible object could ever be.

As her strength returned, Maggie ran out of tears. She tucked the hair that had fallen across her face back behind her ears and fumbled in her knapsack for a tissue. More evidence my Maggie was resolutely human: she searched her knapsack for makeup and used a small brush dipped in powder to repair the signs that she’d been crying. I knew from watching Connie over the years that it was makeup intended for evening wear: the powder contained miniscule sprinkles of glitter unnoticed except by the closest inspection. I stared at the sparkles, fascinated, imagining them as the tears of her tears, the tiniest traces of her sorrow worn as a sign that she remained uninvaded by evil.

I felt another presence. Peggy had come out the front door, cigarette in hand, intending to take a quick break. But she changed course and headed for Maggie’s car when she saw it. She knocked loudly at the window and Maggie rolled it down, perplexed.

“Give me your keys,” Peggy said, cigarette dangling from her orange mouth. She held out a hand. “I’ll get the food. Gonzales has been looking for you. He wants you in his office now. He’s been calling all over and he sent someone up to the lab looking for you. By the way, your cell phone’s off. Again.”

Maggie scrambled from the car and handed Peggy her keys. “What does he want?”

Peggy shrugged. “Beats me. The real question is, what do you want? Better eat while you can.”

Maggie glanced at the station house. “I’m not really hungry anymore.”

“I’ll get you what I get,” Peggy decided in her raspy voice. “And I’m going to make sure you eat it, too.”

As Maggie strode back toward the front door of the station house, I followed—but stepped unexpectedly into a pocket of darkness so profound it almost brought me to my knees. I stopped, overcome with fear, unable to follow Maggie into the building.

Hayes had been there. I was sure of it. And though he’d left before I spotted him, I knew he had seen Maggie get into her car and that he may well have seen her crying and reveled in her despair.

If so, he’d know that Maggie had weakened. He’d know that no progress had been made on his case. He’d know he remained unstoppable.

It shook me to my core.

Chapter 33