The cold, clammy perspiration returned to her forehead and the back of her neck. The tremor in her hand, though not as pronounced, slowed her quick grab of the handle. And Harvey's side-step dance made her nervous.
She yanked open the cabinet door to find a roll-out trash bin under the sink. The smell of rotting garbage pushed her back so that it took some effort to see the apple peel and coffee grounds on top.
"Harvey, next time I need to feed you first."
She smiled down at him and patted his head, but he was still nervous, pacing, pulling against his leash. And this time she realized he no longer wanted to get at the trash bin. This time he wrenched and jerked at the leash, trying to get away from it. He twisted against his collar and his panic quickly spread to Gwen. Then there came that horrible low-pitched whine coming from the back of his throat, barely audible but hard to listen to, an uncontrollable moan that sounded as if he was in pain.
This time when she looked, Gwen saw the plastic bag. It was buried underneath the rotting fragments of vegetable peels, coffee grounds, empty boxes and cellophane _ the bits and pieces of ordinary household garbage. She had been right about Harvey. He sensed blood and wanted to be as far away from it as possible. Underneath all the garbage, Gwen could see through the plastic. She could see Dena's brown eyes looking up at her.
CHAPTER 41
Downtown Omaha Police Station
Omaha, Nebraska
Maggie dreaded these introduction sessions. Usually they turned into tugs-of-war with local law enforcement officers strutting their stuff and reinforcing their jurisdiction. Other times there was blame to be ducked or screwups to be excused. But she had to admit she was impressed with Detective Tommy Pakula, mostly because he wasn't the least bit interested in impressing her or marking his territory or looking to place blame. Even when he discovered he had been waiting for a female FBI agent instead of a man, it didn't seem to faze him. In a quiet sort of way, Detective Pakula seemed only determined to do his job.
He had a group assembled and ready when they arrived at the downtown Omaha police station. Well, almost ready. There were a few in and outs to the small conference room for coffee and one last phone call before they sat down. Pakula offered to get Maggie coffee, but she declined, asking if there was a vending machine nearby. He nodded, but instead of pointing her in the direction of the machine, he asked what her "poison" was. Yet he never left the conference room. Just as Maggie decided he had forgotten about her a uniformed officer came in with two ice-cold cans of Diet Pepsi and placed them beside her.
The long table filled one side of the room. The other side had an easel-back chalkboard already filled with three columns, three lists of evidence, one list for each of the cases. A large bulletin board took up the wall. On one half were photos of the three victims along with crime scene photos. On the other half was a map of the Midwest, colored pushpins marking Omaha, Columbia and Minneapolis.
Around the table Pakula introduced his group. Maggie couldn't help thinking they looked as though they had been taken directly out of a diversity training video: Terese Medina, a black woman from the Douglas County crime lab who looked as if she belonged on the cover of Vogue; Detective Carmichael, a short, stocky Asian woman; Chief Donald Ramsey, a middle-aged guy in wrinkled khakis who was a contrast to his counterpart, young Detective Pete Kasab in a suit and tie. At the head of the table, looking like the matriarch of this eclectic family, sat Martha Stofko, the Douglas County medical examiner who managed to make a well-pressed white lab coat look chic with a royal-blue dress and pearls.
Terese Medina passed out copies of her detailed reports along with Stofko's autopsy report, a set for each. In the middle of the table she left what appeared to be evidence samples and also an assortment of digital photographs.
Detective Carmichael _ whose first name Maggie noticed Pakula had never mentioned __ had a pile of information stacked in front of her that, when she sat, almost towered over her. Without breaking her constant frown, she teasingly announced that somewhere in "this pile of crap" were answers that would solve the "whole damn thing."
Chief Donald Ramsey shook Maggie's hand, thanked her for coming at such short notice, then propped himself in a chair and let Pakula run the show. He looked tired, the creases in his forehead permanent worry lines. Sitting next to Kasab, the earlier contrast Maggie had noticed was even more pronounced. Chief Ramsey wore khakis and a knit polo shirt with an embroidered Omaha Police Department patch on the pocket. Detective Pete Kasab wore what looked like a tailored suit, creased trousers and starched shirt collar, perfectly knotted silk tie and salon-styled hair. Unlike Ramsey, who brought only a mug of coffee, Kasab had a bottle of water and granola bar. His small spiral notebook was open, his gold pen ready in hand.
"I've filled in Agent O'Dell and brought her up to speed," Pakula said. He remained standing. "I'm hoping there's new stuff. Anything from toxicology?" And he looked to Terese Medina.
"O'Sullivan's blood alcohol content was at point zero five, so he had a couple of drinks in the hours before. Nothing to impair him. No traces of any other chemicals in the blood. The wound, however, showed residue of ammonia and an aliphatic petroleum distillate."
"And in English that would be… " Pakula prodded her.
"Aliphatic petroleum distillate is like a Stoddard solvent found in a lot of household cleaning products. The combination with the ammonia would most likely make it a common metal polish of some sort."
"So our killer has a fetish for cleaning his knives," Carmichael said. "No wonder he didn't just toss it afterward."
"Or if the weapon is, indeed, a dagger or letter opener as I suspect," Stofko offered, "it may be valuable to him. Perhaps sentimentally, if not financially."
"Anything else new?" Pakula asked Medina.
"The canine hairs found on the back of his shirt were from a Pekingese."
"Holy crap!" Pakula said. "You can tell that?"
"In this particular case I can." Medina smiled at him.
"I already checked," Carmichael offered. "O'Sullivan didn't have a dog."
"Any chance the dog hairs were already on the floor?" Pakula asked.
"Anything's possible," Medina said. "But there weren't any on the floor around him. Just his shirt. And just the back of his shirt."
"That makes sense. Martha thinks the killer came up from behind," Pakula said, waiting for her to nod in agreement. "The dog hairs could have been on the killer's shirt and transferred to the victim. Locard's Principle," Pakula continued, leaving it for everyone to fill in the blank. Maggie looked around the table as each of them seemed to agree in some way with a nod of the head or a wave of the hand. They all knew and expected that there would definitely be some transfer of debris, just as Locard had predicted.
"So we just need to look for a guy who has a fascination with knives and Pekingese dogs," Carmichael said, picking up her own profile. "Should be a piece of cake. What the hell does a Pekingese look like?"
"Small, long-haired, no nose," Medina offered.
"You looked at the other two cases," Pakula addressed Medina. "Either mention dog hair?"
"No, but they could have easily missed it, especially since both were outdoors. Minneapolis's M.E. notes some ammonia residue in the wound. Could be the metal polish." Medina flipped the pages in front of her. "Columbia guys told me they found bread crusts, not crumbs, in Kincaid's shirt pocket."
"You're kidding," Pakula said.
"What's with the bread crumbs?" Maggie asked, speaking for the first time since the meeting started.
"Crusts," Medina corrected her. "It might not mean anything. He was at an outdoor picnic. He may have put some bread or something in his own pocket. It's just that I found bread crumbs all over the front of O'Sullivan's shirt, too."