two of them had slept together the night before Alissa’s death. What other evidence was there? I tried to remember more.
Maybe a look at the evidence from the new murder would help. I moved closer to the box and Peggy looked up abruptly, as if sensing me there. I froze, but she returned to her microscope. That was when I saw it. A plastic bag of sandy granules collected from underneath the dead girl’s foot, a glittering mixture of fine grains that did not belong at the scene. Maggie had discovered the substance and directed the techs to bring the grains back to the lab.
Similar granules had been on the few items of clothing found at the Alissa Hayes crime scene. I knew it with certainty. I just needed Peggy to realize it.
“Detective Gunn,” Peggy said, looking up at the doorway.
Maggie Gunn? Her name was Maggie Gunn. It was so perfect for her.
She entered the lab with a smile. “Hey, Peggy. How’s Mr. Whiskers?”
“Better. Antibiotics helped.”
“How does one give a mouse antibiotics anyway?”
“Very, very carefully.”
As the two women laughed, I joined in their delight. Of course—Peggy raised mice, not cats. Cats would be too big. Mice would be just right for her, with the perfection of their precise whiskers and tiny paws.
People, too, were fascinating, I realized, so perfect in their own way.
“How’s your dad doing?” Peggy asked.
Already they had exchanged more personal information than Peggy and I had exchanged in twenty years of working together.
“Okay. It’s hard on him,” Maggie said. “They were married a long time.”
“I know. Did you know I was sitting at a table next to them the night they had their first date?”
Maggie seemed surprised. “You’re kidding!”
Peggy’s eye twinkled. “Sal’s. Far right corner. Your mother ordered linguine with clam sauce. Your father had veal chops. Neither one of them saw anyone else in the restaurant but each other. I knew your father from his beat, and I knew your mother from the beauty shop. But most of all—I knew they’d be together from that night on. You could just see it.”
Maggie pulled up a stool and sat. “You never told me that.”
“It was one of the most romantic moments of my life,” Peggy admitted, and then, she had the great, good grace to laugh at herself.
As the women laughed together, I was filled with the knowledge that all people were connected by a great web of comings and goings, moments of passing through each other’s life, moments of touching one person, who then touched another, and on and on through the years, an ongoing, never-ending river. I could have been a part of it, if only I had been able to see beyond my own miserable shell. My ripples could have mattered. I could have been a part.
“Find anything good?” Maggie asked.
Peggy shook her head. “Got a name for the victim?”
“Not yet. Danny’s with Missing Persons. Maybe he’ll get a hit.”
Peggy glanced at her, not saying anything.
“He can’t do any harm down there,” Maggie said in his defense. “After that, he’s heading over to the college to see if anyone’s been reported missing.”
They were silent until Maggie asked, quietly, “Was he always like that? So . . . disheveled and sad?”
“Oh, no,” Peggy said. “Not always. He and Kevin were a real pair when they came out of the academy. Full of themselves. Cocky like every single other person who came through there back then. And they were something else to look at. Good-looking. Smart. Both of them. They were quite the pair. The women clerks would fight to be the one to help them.” She looked around for a moment, then focused her attention on a small shelf tucked in the darkness underneath her computer keyboard. “Let me show you something.” She rummaged behind some stacks of phone books and technical manuals, then produced an old framed photograph of Danny and me, before the bottle got us both. Dust covered its surface. She used a chamois cloth to wipe the photo clean. “Take a look. You’ll see what I mean.”
Maggie took the photo from her and brought it into the light. It was like being scalded, knowing that her incredible scrutiny was now focused on me. “God, Danny is like, what, half his size? And he has all of his hair.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“What’s with the rifles and hunting vests?”
“They helped track down a triple-homicide suspect who got loose in Ronkonkoma State Park and was terrifying the local campers.”