Page 95 of Trap ’N’ Trace

Fitzgerald didn’t look anything like the subject in Becca’s photo or Kat’s sketch. This guy was about five-four, blond hair, clean shaven, and with gray eyes. The suspect Kat described was five-ten, with a mustache and beard, and brown hair and eyes.

“Can you account for where you were on Tuesday, March twenty-seventh between four p.m. and midnight?” he asked.

Fitzgerald thought for a moment, then his eyes rounded. “Yes! I was in Baltimore for work. I haven’t submitted my voucher yet, so I still have all my receipts.”

Dayne tipped his head to the condo. “Get them.”

They followed Fitzgerald inside. Minutes later, he supplied a short stack of receipts with time and date stamps that further solidified his alibi. Fitzgerald hadn’t been anywhere near Becca’s office or the Haven on the days in question.

Dayne dragged a hand down his face. He wanted this guy, and he wanted him bad. But Fitzgerald wasn’t their man. He gave Paulson a quick shake of his head.

Back outside, he pulled out the list of sedans he’d left on the dashboard. Check marks accompanied every vehicle on the list but one. All the other registered owners had been interviewed and discarded as suspects. They were either too old, too young, didn’t fit the description, had alibis, or any combination thereof. One vehicle remained, although it was registered to a woman.

Paulson stood by his unmarked unit. “Who’s next?”

“Carolyn Mauser. Nine eighty-five Oak Court, Edison, New Jersey.” The address was about twenty minutes away. They’d already run all the registrants for the vehicles on the list and knew Carolyn Mauser had no criminal history. Being a woman, she couldn’t have been the one to attack Kat, but they couldn’t be certain Becca’s killer and Kat’s attacker were one and the same. It also didn’t mean someone else hadn’t used Carolyn Mauser’s vehicle.

“Meet you there.” Paulson got into his car.

Dayne was certain the memory card photos were the key to the investigation. The only other thing he could do was sit outside the building in Englewood tomorrow morning and see if the same gray sedan showed up.

He sat behind the wheel and started the engine when Paulson ran over.

“Wait!” the detective shouted. Dayne lowered his window. “We’ve got something.” Paulson enlarged whatever he’d pulled up on his cell. “Verizon came through with their subpoena production.”

“On a Sunday?” He couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice.

“No.” Paulson shook his head. “The original email was dated Friday, but the departmental email server kicked it back as being suspicious. Eventually, it got through.”

“And?”

“The subscriber for the last call on Rebecca Garman’s phone.” Paulson paused. “It’s Carolyn Mauser.”

They stared at each other, processing the ramifications.

Carolyn Mauser owned a gray Nissan, similar to the one Kat saw parked outside Becca’s, and with five of the six license plate digits on Becca’s photo. Carolyn Mauser was also the last person to talk with Becca right before she was murdered.

Or someone else using the same phone.

“Did that name pop up in any of Rebecca’s case files?” Paulson shook his head. “But remember, one of the case files is missing. Stand by.” Dayne tugged his own cell from his belt. “I want to check something.”

First, he ran Carolyn Mauser through DMV. He didn’t recognize her from her DL photo. Next, he ran her address through TLO—a widely used commercial database—and found three other people associated with the same address. From their DOBs, two were teenagers, a girl and a boy. The third was an adult. Christian Mauser.

He went back into DMV and ran Christian Mauser. When he pulled up the man’s DL photo, his blood ran cold. He held his phone out to Paulson.

“Oh fuck.”

Yeah. Oh fuck.

Christian Mauser was five-ten, brown hair, mustache and beard, and with brown eyes. The face staring back at them looked a helluva lot like the man in Kat’s sketch and could very well be the subject in Becca’s photo. The critical word in that sentence being could.

Kat had described her attacker’s eyes as being cloudy, but Dayne couldn’t enlarge Mauser’s image enough to verify that.

“One last thing before we head down there.” He took his phone back from the detective then ran Mauser for a criminal history. “Negative. The guy’s squeaky clean.” Yet something had the hackles on the back of his neck waving back and forth in warning. “Let’s get down there. Fast.”

…

Kat yawned. Her abdominal muscles ached from crying hours on end. She pulled the gauzy taupe curtain aside. It was only eight p.m., but the sky over the river was as black as ink. Like her mood.