Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [270]
“That seems odd. Has she done this sort of thing before?”
“I have no clue. But doesn’t it seem odder that the husband wouldn’t want the dog?”
“Not if he thinks she ran off with someone. It’s one of the few ways he has left to punish her.”
“It doesn’t explain why we found the dog in the condition we did. There was a lot of blood, and I’m still not convinced it was all Harvey’s.” Maggie noticed Gwen stroking Harvey’s head as though administering therapy. “Who names a dog Harvey?”
He looked up at Maggie’s mention of his name, but didn’t budge.
“It’s a perfectly good name,” Gwen declared as she continued her generous strokes.
“It was the name of the black Lab that David Berkowitz believed was possessed.”
Gwen rolled her eyes. “Now, why is it that you think of that immediately? Maybe Rachel is a Jimmy Stewart fan or a classic-movie buff, and named him after Harvey the six-foot invisible rabbit.”
“Oh, right. Why didn’t I think of that?” It was Maggie’s turn for sarcasm. The truth was, she didn’t want to think of Harvey’s owner and what she believed may have happened to her, or was still happening to her. She returned her attention to the folders. She wished she could remember exactly what it was that Agent Tully had said. There was something nagging at her. Something that connected Rachel’s disappearance to Jessica’s murder. Not just the mud. Yet she couldn’t remember what it was that made her think that. She was hoping one of the police reports would trigger her memory.
“Why the hell isn’t the husband the prime suspect?” Gwen suddenly sounded irritated. “That would be a logical explanation to me.”
“You’d need to meet Detective Manx to understand. He doesn’t seem to be approaching any of this logically.”
“I’m not so sure he’s the only one. The husband does seem to be the logical suspect, and yet here you are jumping to the conclusion that Stucky kidnapped her because…let me get this straight. You think Stucky kidnapped Rachel Endicott because you’re sure he killed this pizza delivery girl and you found candy bar wrappers at both scenes.”
“And mud. Don’t forget the mud.” Maggie checked the lab’s report on Jessica’s car. The mud recovered from the accelerator contained some sort of metallic residue that Keith was now going to break down. Again she remembered the mud with sparkling flecks on Rachel Endicott’s stairs. But what if Manx hadn’t bothered to collect it? And even if he had, how would she be able to compare the two? It wasn’t like Manx would easily hand over a sample.
“Okay,” Gwen said. “The mud I can understand, if you can make a match. But finding candy bar wrappers at both houses? I’m sorry, Maggie, that’s a bit of a stretch.”
“Stucky leaves body parts in take-out containers just for fun, to toy with people. Why wouldn’t he leave candy bar wrappers, sort of his way of thumbing his nose at us? Like he was able to commit this inconceivably horrible murder and then have a snack afterward.”
“So the wrappers are part of the game?”
“Yes.” She glanced up. Gwen didn’t buy it. “Why is that so hard to believe?”
“Did you ever consider they could be a necessity? Maybe the killer or even the victims have an insulin deficiency. Sometimes people with diabetes keep candy bars to prevent fluctuations in their insulin intake. Fluctuations possibly caused by stress or an injection of too much insulin.”
“Stucky’s not diabetic.”
“You know that for sure?”
“Yes,” Maggie said, quite certain, then realized their lab analysis of Stucky’s blood and DNA had never been tested for the disease.
“How can you be so certain?” Gwen persisted. “About a third of people with Type 2 diabetes don’t even know they have it. It’s not something that’s routinely checked unless there are symptoms or some family history. And I have to tell you, the symptoms, especially the early ones, are very subtle.”
She knew Gwen was right. But she would