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Well, shit, that sounded familiar
. Ellie met Jason’s eyes. “Greendale? Interesting.”

He said, “I agree.”

“It might be, but I can’t say. When you are involved in social work, you do get a sense of which of the children are just surly and rebellious so they cause trouble, and which ones might be actually dangerous. It seems that you don’t ever forget them entirely.”

“Maybe you should have been a detective.”

“I think I was much better at my calling than I would be at yours.” Ms. Hamilton stood, holding her purse primly in front of her. “I can’t decide if I hope I am right or wrong. And there is actually one more thing that might or might not be related.”

“We are all ears.”

“When Randy was in high school, a girl in his class disappeared. She never has been found to my knowledge. At the time, when I realized…” She stopped and then shrugged her thin shoulders. “I don’t know what I thought, but I think you can probably guess. I wasn’t the only one either. One of his teachers called me and asked if I thought it was possible Randy had anything to do with her being missing. There had been some sort of incident in class. I remember how much it bothered me then and it still does or I would not be here.”

“Was he questioned by the police?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. He was actually a charming boy in many ways, so I somehow felt guilty that his name even occurred to me.”

And yet it did.

“By any chance do you ever remember him being placed with a family named Cameron?”

“I don’t know.” Mrs. Hamilton frowned. “Perhaps. Was he a minister?”

Jason felt a small thrill shoot through him.
Bingo
.

Ellie stood and had her phone out of her pocket, her features set into determined lines. “I assume Detective Santiago has your number if we think of anything else, but before you go … do you have a friend or a relative you could spend the night with this evening?”

*   *   *

The street was
lamp lit by mercury lights that went on automatically after dark. It smelled of hot asphalt, and every house in the neighborhood had windows open or air-conditioning units humming. Heat lightning flared out over the lake, but for the past week, any distant flash had been a false promise, so she ignored it.

Ellie said as they sped along, “You need a less conspicuous car.”

“What do you prefer? Should we send a patrol car? That would make him nervous. This way, McNeely, if it is him, if he really might hit his old social worker, will just think I am a guy taking a cruise with a pretty blonde. Besides, I was just working late. I didn’t expect a stakeout.”

She ignored the compliment. Santiago was rarely diplomatic, so she had to wonder just what he was up to. “Doing what?”

“The Cameron case.”

“We should have asked Hamilton if she was Lisa Martin’s social worker—”

“She wasn’t.” He took a corner too fast but then slowed down. “I was reading it again when Hamilton called me. It’s not in Grasso’s case file.”

“Grasso, yes, let’s talk about him. Did he ever make the foster child connection?”

“There was no other murder he knew of at the time. And he’s meeting us there, so you can ask him what connections he made.”

Fair enough. They wouldn’t have any more evidence either without the helpful Mrs. Hamilton. Grasso already had said he didn’t think it was necessarily Lisa Martin in the Cameron murder.

“To not have another homicide this evening, the tooth fairy could be part of the stakeout. I’ll take all the help we can get,” she muttered. “Not that I doubt he’s good, but I don’t know him and therefore I don’t trust him.”

Santiago drove in a careless macho way with one wrist propped on the steering wheel and it would have made her crazy, but she actually thought it wasn’t an affectation. “I’m fairly sure he feels the same way about you. And look at it this way: All three of us have something to prove here.”

“How so?” Lightning flashed again over the black ripples of the water, but at least the streets were fairly quiet now that it was dark.

“You’re new, the hotshot. Maybe you can kick ass in a county of twenty-some thousand people, but how will you do as a detective in a city of over a million? As for me, I’ve been around awhile, made some mistakes, and obviously Metzger is testing me. Grasso wants back on homicide. If we break this one, everyone wins.”

“We’ve no idea if this lead means anything.”

“Sheer luck. The media can be useful now and again, though they usually just annoy the shit out of me.”

He was right, that was true, but the exposure could be helpful at times. She settled back as they turned a corner. The Mustang actually had comfortable seats for a sports car, and an old one at that. “I feel like we need to connect the dots somehow. Every case is that way, but we should be able to get ahold on this one better. We have an eyewitness, a description of his car, a profile, and we might even know his name now. That’s one hell of a lot of opportunity to make progress.”

“He’s moving fast on purpose,” her partner observed in a contemplative drawl. “He’s pushing it, knowing we’ve got all these reports to file and lab results to wait on. The medical examiner’s office is backed up, and Reubens is a stickler for not giving an opinion off the cuff. So we wait. This guy isn’t just a step ahead; he’s a mile ahead of us. He understands how to destroy evidence by letting the fire department handle that for him, and unless you are on our side of the equation, it’s actually pretty brilliant.”

It was. Unfortunately.

Grasso? It still could be him, but she wasn’t about to disregard Metzger’s advice for several reasons. There was a flat-out chance she was wrong, for one, and Santiago was way too outspoken.

But she sensed it was unraveling, and all they needed was a stray bit of yarn to tug on to pull it apart. They might already have it if they could get their hands on the right information. “What do you think about Montoya’s suggestion he could be law enforcement?”

“I think that would really piss me off and that nothing scares me more. It could be just someone associated with the police, someone who can get information on the side because they are good friends with an officer with a big mouth.” He added, “Or live with one maybe.”

She caught the inference.

Ellie turned her head and stared at him. “I hope to hell you are not talking about Bryce. Not only was he cleared when we caught the Northwoods Killer, but the crimes are entirely different. I already told you, he wasn’t even ever arrested.”

“Yeah, but you shot the suspect before all the crimes could be directly linked to him. Wasn’t the first one different? I remember reading that.”

“You’re joking, right?” Ellie muttered, but to her dismay, a small flicker of suspicion caught flame, and then she quickly put it out. Bryce was intelligent enough to change the MO, but she
knew
him. Of course, it seemed like the wives and girlfriends were always the most shocked, and yes, the first disappearance in that former case could have been unrelated to the rest. Besides, they’d never recovered that first body …

Still, no way
. It made her feel guilty she’d considered it even for a second.

Would she always be a cop? Probably. Always be this way? Maybe. But first she was a woman and the insinuation really ticked her off. “Look, Detective Santiago,” she said with heavy sarcastic emphasis, “Bryce was only a suspect because of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And for your information, he helped us immeasurably in solving the case, not to mention saved the life of the last intended victim. Besides, he was never in foster care. I’ve met his parents many times.”

“We haven’t established yet if that slant is relevant or not.”

And she had no idea what to say in rebuttal because that was absolutely true. Instead she said coldly in an echo of Metzger’s admonition, “If there is so much as a mention of his name in connection with the cases we are working now, you’d better be able to produce irrefutable proof to go along with it. This isn’t a witch hunt, it’s an investigation. He’s been through it once before and I can tell you unequivocally that not only did he not enjoy the experience, but I’ll go straight to Metzger and lodge a complaint.”

“Oh Jesus, MacIntosh, relax. I was just jerking you around.” He laughed.

She muttered, “Jerk being the operative word in that sentence.”

Grasso had arranged to meet them in the parking lot of a small convenience store several blocks from Lucy Hamilton’s house for the impromptu stakeout. When they pulled in, he was out of his sleek, dark car, leaning on the fender and drinking a fountain soda, wearing jeans and a polo shirt, both worn but probably expensive, his hair damp at the temples.

Would the woman be safe with him as surveillance? Probably, because he would have mud all over his face if anything happened to her. She would be safer than if he wasn’t assigned. Ellie was sure enough of that to allow him the detail because he would be called out on it if something went wrong. She was sure he was smart enough to know when he could touch someone and when it would be the worst idea on the face of the earth.

Ellie waved like he was someone she knew but didn’t expect to see, and turned to Santiago. “Go on into the store and get us both something with caffeine. I’ll walk over like we are old friends who just ran into each other, and fill Grasso in as fast as possible. Then we can figure out how we want to handle watching the house.”

“Yes, boss,” he said with his usual flippant intonation and slid out of the car.

Chapter 25

When I realized where she was going, my heart had frozen somewhere in my chest. Locked in ice, the moment blending into a long, oblique ellipse in time where the world ceased to move around me and everything went very still.

She went into the police station.

Why?

That evoked images of two detectives I know very well are both clever and diligent, catching wind of a possible suspect.

They wouldn’t know it was me, of course, unless they started digging, which they would, so it was still possible they would find it—find me. I am a student of research, a taker of information, and I understood how important it is to study.

To plan.

Catch the creature. Capture it. Put it away. I’d been trying for years and hadn’t quite succeeded, but ironically, they wanted what I wanted.

We had different methods, of course. I preferred mine.

It could become arcane at any moment, dated, obsolete. But all along I knew that being able to think on your feet was the key to success. That was how I made it through high school despite a slip here and there, and on to college. I was the monster, but it wasn’t entirely me either.

At the moment, I needed to make some very intense decisions.

Life-altering.

Death-altering.

I had to wonder, if asked, which most people would consider was the most important. Admittedly little intellectual puzzles interest me.

I wonder what my quarry would say, if I asked her.

Maybe I would.

But not tonight.

JULY 12

By 10
A.M.
the next day there were no results.

Carl was hardly new to the process.

They hadn’t made any friends by taking the initiative on Lucy Hamilton, and though they had called and eventually informed everyone else on the team what might happen, nothing did.

A good and a bad thing.

The bad part was he spent part of his night in his car, hunkered down in the seat, no light, and no entertainment besides his cell phone, which he barely switched on. A guy from DCI relieved him at dawn, good-natured and bringing coffee, which was probably the last thing he needed since he was going home to sleep for a few hours before the briefing at eleven.

The good part was he was on the job. Just being on the task force would look good.

Even if they never caught The Burner, Metzger was easing him back in the direction he wanted to go.

He went home, managed to grab an hour or two of sleep before he jumped into the shower and headed back to the precinct.

The conference room always smelled like stale coffee and sweat, some of it his. He’d been called in there when internal affairs had investigated the shootings and he wasn’t ashamed to admit he had been nervous. He had never admitted he was wrong, but yes, he’d been on edge. Not the most pleasant memory. The collar of his white shirt had felt like a noose around his neck.

Still, he voted it worth it.

“No approach to the house,” he said succinctly as his contribution to the conversation. “And no activity in the neighborhood.”

“No fire,” MacIntosh added. “Which might mean he made us, but it also might have saved Mrs. Hamilton’s life.”

“Social services is overloaded in the first place, it was a holiday weekend when this started and a lot of employees took this as a good vacation week, and what you want is from a long time ago.” Metzger sounded as frustrated as they were and his ruddy face was tired. “Look, we were able to dig up a high school photo of McNeely thanks to a cooperative secretary and a diligent librarian. I had an officer drive it down to Greendale to the deputy who saw him point blank and the guy couldn’t say anything conclusive.”

“You still look the same as you did in high school, Chief?” Santiago asked, this time not being a smartass in Carl’s opinion, but making a point. Metzger had started losing his hair sometime in his thirties probably, and when he’d first met him he’d been a big guy but fit, all muscle, but now he’d gone to fat a little, probably from sitting behind a desk so much.

Carl smothered a laugh and drank some more bad coffee.

Santiago went on, “I’ve never thought this eyewitness thing was gold. I know, I know, he saw the guy.” He spread his hands. “But hell, through a screen and he wasn’t really paying attention the minute he thought he was just talking to a frustrated father. That deputy had only answered about five calls just on his own before that one. No aspersions cast on anyone, but I doubt that is a high-volume department down there. He wasn’t expecting to come face-to-face with a murderer and the general description he gave us could fit a lot of people. Hell, it could be me.”