Dresden Home
December 4, 10.20 a.m.
At Nick Dresden’s suburban home, Dee was taken into one of the small back bedrooms and interviewed. There was no time for taking people down to the precinct; they needed information now. The two children were taken by social services and the house was pulled to pieces by a team of forty officers from the CSU, Blue Team and the Bureau.
The Feds had their control truck out on the lawn and had everything on Nick Dresden in an instant. He was a nobody from nowhere. His record was clean.
Harper worked on the lair. He knew a thing or two about a man’s lair. It had to be close enough to dispose of the trophies and return to the wife. He looked at the blue Merc in the driveway. ‘A blue car,’ said Harper. Denise’s profile had brought them to this address. It was her profile that Dee had read and recognized. Denise’s profile had worked.
‘If he’s been anywhere recently, then this car is going to tell the story,’ said Harper. He called in the CSU. ‘Give us anything you can on the car.’ There would be forensic evidence, but Harper knew it would take time. Too much time.
The Crime Scene detective looked at the car. ‘We’ll need to do a chemical spectroscopy analysis on the material. We need the lab.’
‘Fuck the lab,’ said Harper. ‘What can you tell me in the next ten minutes?’
‘Okay, but it won’t be much.’
‘I want a grain of sand. Anything.’
Harper watched as a team got the car lifted and slid underneath it, scraping the tyres and the undercarriage. He looked into each little clear Petri dish. They looked full of plain old dirt.
‘Can you tell anything?’
‘We’ve got four minutes left, give us a break.’
A microscope was brought from the van and the samples were quickly put on slides. Each slide was then passed through the microscope.
‘Okay,’ said Harper. ‘Ten minutes is up. This could save someone’s life. Where’s this car been?’
‘Well, it’s been somewhere with sand. Probably coastal. There looks like there’s faecal bacteria here too. Algae too from the footwell. Possibly somewhere damp, somewhere underground. Sewers?’
‘Yeah, well, that narrows it!’ said Harper. ‘Anything else?’
‘Just one more thing. Don’t know what it is, but there are chemical traces here too. We’ll have to check, but these are refined chemicals. Medical or industrial supplies, possibly.’
Harper chewed over the information. There weren’t many places in New York City that stored chemicals. He was near water. Sewers possibly. Industrial zone. It was something. Better than nothing.
Harper crossed to the Feds’ operations truck. ‘Give me his employment history in New York.’
‘Okay. Most recently, he’s working in marketing and sales. He supplied beautician salons with nail polish remover.’
‘That’s how he came across the girls,’ said Harper. ‘What else?’
‘He’s got a long history of short-term employment. We’ve got a two-year stint as a salesman selling art materials to schools; another two years working at MoMA in the acquisitions department. He’s worked many places as a salesman — he worked a year at Senderos, Mace Crindle, KCs, Andersons. Take a look.’
‘I don’t know the names. What are they?’
‘Senderos sells paper. Mace Crindle is the old chemical plant. KCs is food, Andersons is art supplies again.’
‘Show me more about Mace Crindle. Can you get it on a city map?’
‘No problem.’
‘Quick as you can. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover. He can’t go home any more, so he knows this is it. And that’s going to make him very dangerous.’