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Faith switched the phone to speaker and said, “Go ahead, Detective.”
“I’m sorry to say it’s not good news. The powders are both generic pigmented mica powder. The kind you can get anywhere: craft stores, beauty shops, online art websites, you name it.”
Michael sighed. Faith frowned. “It took six days to figure out this is the stuff that sells for ninety-nine cents a jar at Hobby Lobby?”
“I’m no happier than you are,” Hilary said. “But I don’t control how fast the lab moves. Sometimes they’ll have results in a day, sometimes it takes a month.”
Faith sighed. Her fear had come true. The powder was nothing special, and it wouldn’t help them find their killer any more than learning that the killer wore cotton clothing.
“Sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” Hilary said when she didn’t reply after a moment.
“It’s not your fault,” Faith said.
“Well, I’m still sorry.”
The two agents chuckled bitterly at that. “Us too,” Michael said. “Any news on the contacts?”
“Nobody associated with both of them,” he replied. “Except for Oliver, and he’s got an alibi. My officers are checking on some of the others associated with one or the other, but so far, they all have alibis too. We’ll keep looking, but at this point, I’m thinking it’s a dead end as well.”
Faith rubbed her eyes. “All right. Thank you, Detective.”
“Yep.”
He hung up, and Michael said, “At the risk of sounding like a hypocrite, this really sucks.”
Faith continued to rub her eyes. “Yep. Very much.”
“Phooey. So what’s our next step?”
Faith shook her head. “I guess start looking for crackpots talking about the Magnum Opus online and see if any of them are in the area. Maybe one of those crackpots will be willing to kill to achieve eternal life.”
Michael nodded. “Yeah. We can do that. Damn it, though, we’re just going to end up with a lot of nerds.”
“Only one of those nerds has to be the killer. Let’s avoid pessimism and do our best.”
Michael chuckled. “That’s fair. All right. I’ll start—”
Faith’s phone buzzed again. Hilary. Maybe he’d found something else in the report that would help.
“Go ahead, Detective.”
“Damn it all to Hell.”
Faith frowned. “What is it? What’s going on?”
“What do you think?” he said. “I hung up with you, and two damned minutes later, dispatch called me. They got a call for anaked woman murdered on the banks of the Chicago out by the Willis Branch of the library. Caller was out walking his dog, and the dog started barking like crazy and led him to the body. It’s covered in yellow powder, so there’s no mistaking that it’s our killer. God damn it.”
Michael slumped further upon hearing this. Faith’s head began to ache. She took a moment to compose herself before saying, “All right. Thank you for letting us know. Send us the coordinates, and we’ll meet you out there.”
“Okay. Maybe your dog will find something. If the little lap mutt picked up on the scent, maybe there’s something there Turk can use to find our guy.”
Faith tried to allow this to encourage her, but she was too upset to feel anything positive at the moment. “We’ll see you there.”
She hung up and placed her head in her palms. Michael stood and squeezed her shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “We have a job to do.”
She allowed the flash of irritation his words brought up to pass, then stood. “Yep. Let’s go catch a bad guy.”
Turk perked up at those words. He lifted his head and barked firmly. Faith smiled slightly. “What would I do without you, boy?”
