“Is she awake?” Signy stepped forward.

“No. I need you to stand back please. We’re prepping her for surgery so we can safely remove the blade.”

“Tell the surgeon to place it in a sterile container to preserve evidence. It might tell us who did this thing. Did she say anything? Anything at all?”

The nurse herded the three of them back a few feet. “Nothing. She’s been out of it the entire time. Looks like she’s been drugged and held captive somewhere.”

“Who found her?”

“Talk to the paramedics who brought her in.” The nurse tried to push her back again.

Signy disengaged and sidestepped. “Wait. What makes you think she was held captive?”

“She had ligatures around her wrists. Marks around her ankles. Looks like she escaped and passed out in the snow. Frostbite was starting to set in when she was found. She was lucky. Another ten minutes and she could have lost her fingers and toes.”

Not to mention bled to death from the knife wound, but Signy refrained from pointing that out. “Any ID?”

The nurse shook her head, but Allan Robertson spoke up behind her. “I know who she is.” He held up his cell phone and showed her a picture of a pretty blonde woman. “Corinne Brown. Dr. Kim Gleeson’s missing receptionist.”

Signy absorbed the implications. “Gleeson lied about her visiting her boyfriend in Anchorage?” She kept her voice low, aware of listening ears.

“Sure looks that way,” Eban murmured.

“Do we bring him in for questioning?” She was itching to arrest the sonofabitch. The guy had lied to her face and thought he’d gotten away with it.

Eban said quietly, “Get an arrest warrant. Let’s not rush this. We know who he is. We don’t want to spook him anywhere he has the chance to grab hostages. We want to approach him out in the open and away from others. Maybe the university campus parking lot? Do we know if he teaches this morning?”

She and Allan both shook their heads. It was Friday but she didn’t know his schedule.

“Put an experienced undercover officer on him. Get search warrants for his home, his offices, and for all his phone and email records. I want every pair of boots in his house examined to see if they match Darby’s or those other prints we found. I want a sample of his voice collected, analyzed and compared to the 911 recording.”

Signy had the message on her cell phone that they could use.

“Does he have any other property in the area?”

“I don’t know. I’ll check. He told me his previous assistant quit without notice. You don’t think…”

Eban gave her a look.

Duh.

How could she have missed so many red flags?

“You need to assign an officer here and we need to know how and where the paramedics found Brown. It’s possible Gleeson, or whoever this killer is, doesn’t know she’s escaped yet. The killer might assume she’s dead.”

Allan nodded. “I’ll call for an officer to stand guard.”