Clark let Mary’s block fall out of his hand. “When you find this man, will you charge him with murder? Will he have to pay for what he did to Mary?”

Maggie hesitated. “That’s not my decision. The county attorney will make that call, based on the evidence we gather. I assure you, I will do everything possible to make a case that we can bring to trial. I want to see justice for Mary.”

Donna shook her head sadly. “If you can’t find corroborating evidence, then it’s just my word, isn’t it? I work in a law office, Ms. Bei. I know that’s a problem.”

“Why is that a problem?” Clark asked. “If Donna says she saw him, then she saw him.”

“But I didn’t see him,” Donna said. “I saw a car and a man I can’t identify. I know how defense lawyers work. They’ll say it could have been anybody. Or they’ll say I made it up.”

“Made it up?” Clark asked. “What the hell does that mean?”

“I was the only one who saw the RAV on the highway, Clark. They’ll say I felt guilty because I left Mary alone, and I was just trying to protect myself by blaming someone else. They’ll say I knew about the peeping, so I used it as a convenient excuse.”

“That’s bullshit,” Clark said.

“It’s way too early to be thinking about any of this,” Maggie said. “Once we identify this man, we’re likely to find much more evidence in his house and car. If we can find something that ties him to Mary, then your testimony will carry a lot of weight with a jury, no matter how much smoke a defense lawyer tries to blow at them.”

She tried to sound convincing, but she knew Donna was right. Stride was right, too. The most they were ever likely to do was convict the man of interference with privacy. A two-year felony for peeping on minors. Two years was a lousy trade for losing a daughter.

“The first thing we have to do is find him,” she added. “This man stalked Mary. Somewhere, somehow, their lives intersected.”

“You said it could be as simple as Mary saying hello to someone on the street,” Donna said. “If that’s true, how will we ever narrow it down?”

“Well, we have to hope it wasn’t quite that simple,” Maggie told her. “Mary wasn’t the first girl he peeped, but something about Mary was special. He hooked onto something about her that made him come back to Mary. The question is what. Her physical appearance isn’t really distinctive compared to the other girls. If you lined them all up, you wouldn’t pick out Mary as being different.”

“She was mentally handicapped,” Donna said.

Maggie nodded. “Yes, but you wouldn’t necessarily know that just by looking at her. I think there had to be some kind of interaction between Mary and this man, however minor. I’ll talk to the people at Mary’s school again, but if the connection didn’t happen there, then the chances are that you were with Mary when it did happen. Because she was hardly ever alone, am I right?”