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