But if they could find the Bronco itself—and it had the water-drop stain on the side—the jury might buy the argument that the surveillance camera had caught a picture of Gavin Spencer on his way to abduct Sadie Vauk.

Unfortunately, the second search wasn’t going any better than the first.

Niki and Matty spent the morning digging through the stacks of old bills and papers that Spencer kept under his staircase. They were hoping to find evidence of a storage unit or any place where Gavin might be able to hide a vehicle, but after three hours they’d found nothing: no receipts, no notes, not even a picture of the Bronco in the possession of a man who took pictures for a living.

A crime scene technician examined the floor of the garage and driveway for tread prints or dirt that might tie the vehicle to the soil of Nicollet Island, but found nothing.

They assigned two patrol officers to traipse up and down the surrounding streets, double-checking for surveillance footage from doorbell cameras. They all came back empty-handed. By noon, Niki had sent the tech and the patrol officers away.

Matty went for sandwiches while Niki paced through the house, trying to figure out what they had missed. How could there be no hair or DNA anywhere? The complete lack of forensic evidence would give Gavin a powerful defense argument.

When Matty pulled up, Niki joined him in his car to eat.

“When’s the omnibus hearing?” Matty asked.

“In three days, and we got nothing more than Sadie’s faulty memory and a couple grainy shots of what could be a Bronco.”

Hearing the defeat in her voice, Matty worked through it again. “Sadie puts Gavin in the salon—so we have that. That’s where she was when the amnesia kicked in. She didn’t knowingly consume the GHB, which means that someone had to slip it to her. We have a man with a lisp telling Sadie that all she had to do was ‘be nice’—and that was right before she ended up in the river. We have Sadie’s testimony, and it’s like you always say, a woman’s word should be enough.”

“Should be, but you know how this works. The defense attorney’s going to spend an entire day asking me about all the things we didn’t find. ‘Did you find any of Ms. Vauk’s hair in my client’s house? Did you find any of Ms. Vauk’s DNA in my client’s house? Did you find any computer forensics, any GPS, any texts, any skin cells?’ And I’ll have to say no to all of it. All we’ll have is Sadie.”

Niki finished her egg salad sandwich and was taking the first bite of a cookie when a postal worker rounded the corner pulling a cart. She walked up to the mailbox on the porch, inserted some mail, and walked away.

Niki and Matty looked at each other. “Did you look in the mailbox?” Niki asked.

“Not today. Did you?”

“No.”

They exited Matty’s car and walked to the porch, Niki pulling letters out of the overstuffed box and flipping through them. Near the end of the stack, Niki came upon a notice that a certified letter was being held at the post office for Gavin.