The Night Killer

something to do, even if it had to be watching Andie suffer over and over.
    She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down at their conference table to calm down. The refreshed feeling she felt from sleeping in was gone. She was exhausted and puke sick with fear. Her gaze rested on her sleeve again. In the light where she was, the small spread of glitter had a gold-orange glow. Geez, it’s everywhere, she thought.
    Then why was it on only one sleeve?
    For some reason, she thought about Izzy touching her shoulder not thirty minutes ago. Diane had on the same sweater yesterday, and she remembered Maud grabbing her arm, and the oddly sparkly makeup she had on for a very straitlaced woman. And she thought about Vitruvian Man .

Chapter 55
    “Maud and Earl? From the church? I didn’t see that coming,” said Izzy.
    They all stared at Diane. Frank and Izzy because they had met Maud and Earl. David and Liam because the others were.
    “I’m thinking secondary transfer,” said Diane. “We need to find out who Maud came in contact with yesterday. She won’t respond to me. Any of you charming enough to get the information?”
    “What is it you’re saying?” said Liam. “That glitter is from Andie’s shirt?”
    “The Vitruvian Man T-shirts have a pale burnt-orange glitter that is meant to mimic the color of aged parchment—like Leonardo da Vinci’s journal,” said Diane. “And as everyone in the museum knows by now, the glitter we got for the T-shirts transfers quite readily. Maud grasped my arm when she came by—”
    “Why did she come by?” asked Izzy.
    “I’m not completely sure. They wanted me to confess to lying about Leland Conrad—that he hadn’t put me in a jail cell with a bunch of drunks—because he was too good a man to do something like that.”
    Diane heard Liam snort.
    “I think they were feeling a little guilty,” she continued, “because they had told Conrad I was at their church, and they wanted me to alleviate that guilt for them. Anyway, I noticed that her makeup had a golden reddish sheen to it, as did her blouse. And frankly, she isn’t the type to be wearing that look. Andie’s abductor will have burnt-orange glitter all over him. And it will transfer readily. If it isn’t Maud, she came in contact with whoever it is.”
    “There’s a lot of glitter around,” said Liam. “I mean a lot . Young people wear it on their clothing, on their faces, their purses. You’re likely to find any number of people with glitter on them or their clothing.”
    “We can tell if it’s our glitter,” said David.
    “I take it all glitter is not created equal,” said Liam.
    “Indeed not,” said David. “Glitter is actually small to almost microscopic pieces of either plastic with an aluminum layer, or just plain old aluminum foil. It varies in size, shape, thickness, color, specific gravity, chemistry—to name a few of its characteristics. Every company has its own way of making it, uses its own shapes—like carpet manufacturers do—and each company’s cutting machines have their own specific tool markings left on the tiny pieces. Different companies have their own distinctive color varieties. And different companies make glitter for different products—like clothing, makeup, crafts, confetti, and on and on. I can tell you right away if this is our glitter. And the best part—you can never get rid of all of it. There are always little bits of it stuck somewhere.”
    David took a piece of tape and pressed it against the glitter on the arm of Diane’s sweater. He lifted the tape and put the sample under the microscope.
    “He has a database of glitter, doesn’t he?” said Izzy.
    “Of course,” said Diane. “Have you ever known David without a database? He’s even working on a database of acoustic sound qualities in different environments—caves, houses, warehouses, outdoors in summer and winter, types of vehicles, and whatever else he has thought of recently.”
    Izzy shook his head. Liam smiled. The first time all day she’d seen him smile.
    “It’s ours. I can tell you that,” said David, looking up from the microscope. “I can put it under the mass spec and have a detailed description, but it’s ours.”
    “So,” said Liam, “we are making progress. We have a lead.”
    “We do,” said David.
    “Don’t Maud and Earl have a no-account son who’s been in jail?” said Izzy. “Isn’t that what the Watson daughters said? I believe Keith is his name.” Izzy