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He would have staked his career on it that Ellen Harris was in the back of that van.

Thirty-seven

10:12 p.m.

Downstairs, while rookie police officer Doug Olsen took off for town with Sam, who had slipped into unconsciousness and might even be dead, Mike further questioned Carl and Myra Thompson. He wasn’t getting anywhere. Myra was too upset to be of much help, and he wasn’t even sure what questions to ask.

As he slipped the envelope the photograph had come in into a larger one, it occurred to Mike that the FBI would have to be brought in. That they had a serial killer on the loose was no longer in question, if it ever was. Except now they had a clear DNA match from semen taken from three of the victims, which also matched up with blood and skin found under Gail Morgan’s fingernails. He’d gotten the call as he was leaving the house.

"Maybe you should take your wife home, now," he said quietly to Carl Thompson, who was trying unsuccessfully to comfort his wife, while looking none too
stable
himself. "There’s nothing more you can do right now. I’ll come by when we’re finished up here." To Myra, he said, "We’ll find her. I promise you. I know it’s hard but try not to worry." His words sounded hollow in his own ears.

Nodding gratefully, Carl led the sobbing woman away from the scene that spoke louder than any words ever could of the horror that had befallen their friend.

They had just pulled away when half a dozen squad cars came screaming up to the front of the house, lights whirling, casting the entire area in hellish light.

Within minutes, flashlights were darting like giant fireflies through the woods.
Men shouting to one another—joining Mike’s own anxious voice in calling out Ellen’s name.

Forty-five minutes later far more subdued and silent men came traipsing back across the field. Though they had found the spot where they figured the van had been parked, evidenced by broken branches, flattened brush, a fresh tire track in a patch of snow the rain hadn’t washed away, they had not found Ellen.

The fragile thread of hope Mike had clung to
was
broken. She had not escaped her attacker.

The train of squad cars long gone, Mike and Gabe were rechecking the house, taking notes, bagging evidence. "Why do you think he took her?" Gabe said, returning from upstairs and coming into the kitchen. "Why didn’t he just rape and strangle her like he did the others?"

"Because he’s got something special in mind for her," Mike said quietly, looking around almost numbly for that important piece of evidence he’d missed—something that would tell him where he took her. "She publicly challenged him." He sagged into a kitchen chair. "He’ll make her pay for that."

Gabe cleared his throat. "Well, at least we know she’s not dead. There would be no reason to—" The phone rang. Gabe snapped up the receiver. "Yeah, this is Levine." He listened.

Mike knew by his expression it was not good news. He was right. No van with an abducted woman inside was found. They were in the process of taking down the roadblocks.

Mike glanced at his watch. 12:10 a.m.

After a moment’s pause, Levine said wearily, "We were too late. He had too good a head start."

Mike thought: they were too late getting an unmarked vehicle out here; I was too late getting out here.

"There were a few specks of mud on the bottom of the tub, Lieutenant. He was probably standing behind the shower curtain when she came into the bathroom. And I plucked out a cigarette butt floating in the toilet," Levine added, as if this would surely cheer Mike up. "Not her brand."

"Pall Mall, right?"
Mike said dully.

Levine shrugged, gave him a funny look. "That’d be my bet. He came in through the bedroom window—climbed the tree. There’s a fresh gouge in the wood where he shoved something under the frame to break the lock."

Mike laughed.

Levine looked startled.

"Sorry, Gabe.
You did a great job. We’ve got more solid clues here than you’d need to get through three mystery weekends. And we’ve got nothing."

Gabe took a step toward him, hawk-eyes studying him from beneath bushy eyebrows. "Hey, Lieutenant, if you don’t mind my saying so, you don’t look too good. You can tell me to mind my own business, but this wouldn’t by any chance be something more than just a case for you, would it?"

Mike nodded. "Yes, Gabe," he said, his voice carrying all the weight he was feeling. "I guess you could say that. She set herself up as bait to draw him out," he went on quietly, staring down at his hands. "We should have given her better protection. If she’d been a cop, we would have stuck to her like Velcro."

"Jeez, I’m real sorry, Lieutenant. You know, you’re right about that. But we’ll find her. We will," he said, repeating Mike’s own promise to Myra. A promise that sounded just as hollow as when Mike had made it.

Both men fell into an uneasy silence.

Thirty-eight

"Do either of you recall seeing a strange van in the area, lately?" Mike asked. He was sitting at the Thompson’s kitchen table, sipping tea Carl had made. Myra sat across from him beside Carl, clutching her cup with both hands. She had calmed down considerably. Now she just looked numb.

"No," she said in a small voice. "Carl drives a company van when he’s working, but other than that... why, do you think he took her away in a van?"

"We’re pretty certain of it. This is a dead end road, and one of our officers remembered passing a van headed into town on their way out there—passed it right where the main road begins."

"And he didn’t get a license number?" Carl asked incredulously.

"Unfortunately, no.
There was no reason to. We weren’t on the lookout for a van, then. We didn’t know Ellen had been taken." He turned his attention to Myra.

"What about the note, Mrs. Thompson? Was there anything about the note that rang any bells for you—the printing, the choice of words?" He was grasping at straws, but he never knew when something would click—something that could break a case wide open. Glancing at the colorful drawings pinned with magnetic daisies to the front of the fridge door, Mike found himself wondering what sort of pictures a child who would grow up to be a psychopathic killer would draw.

"What note?" He turned to see Myra looking blankly at him.

"The one that maniac slipped under her windshield wiper."

"Ellen didn’t tell me about any note. Oh, my God..." She lowered her head into her hands. Carl smoothed her hair, his face anxious.

It seemed odd to Mike that Ellen hadn’t confided something like that to her friend. Wouldn’t it be natural to expect—?

"My wife hasn’t been feeling too well, lately," Carl said, picking up on Mike’s thoughts. "Ellen probably didn’t tell her about the note because she didn’t want to upset her further."

"Oh, Carl," Myra said, looking up at him almost sympathetically. "That might be part of the reason, but the truth is, though Ellen was a wonderful friend to me, she never really let me in. Well—maybe she was starting to. It was like she couldn’t trust the whole way. Other than Ed, the only other person she was really close to was her sister, Gail."

Ed was her late husband. He had bought her the gun, Mike thought, taught her how to use it. It was gone from her bag. Somehow, Mike didn’t think it was in Ellen’s possession. What Myra said fit in with the little he really knew about
Ellen.
He wanted more than anything the chance to know her better. And he would. He damned well would! He held to the belief, which was really a prayer.

"I’m not going to keep you folks much longer," he said. "I know how hard this is—how exhausted you both are.
Just a couple of more questions."

"Ask as many as you need to," Myra said, "if it will help you to find her."

"Thanks." Mike smiled wearily. "Right now we’re going at this from several angles. Trying to trace the van is one. We’re following up on every phone lead. We’re also attempting to establish a link between the victims, and, subsequently, their killer. Clearly, time is not on our side." Repressing a sigh, Mike glanced down at his notes. "I don’t suppose either of you were acquainted with Cindy Miller?"

Carl looked surprised at the question. He glanced at Myra. To Mike he said, "No, I did meet her, though. I told Myra about it. I was installing a couple of phones in Anderson’s Insurance over at the McLeod Building. She showed me where they wanted them, and then she seemed anxious to get back to the guy who was in there selling paintings. If I’m not mistaken, I think she bought one."

Mike stroked his jaw, for a moment saying nothing, just staring off into space. "No," he said finally. "You’re not mistaken. She bought the painting for her mother’s birthday. Mrs. Miller never got it. In fact, no one’s seen it since the night Cindy went missing. You didn’t happen to notice a scratch on this guy’s face?"

"Sure. You couldn’t miss it. It was real nasty—looked infected.
Said a cat scratched him."

Maybe not a cat, Mike thought, maybe not a cat at all. "Did you happen to see the police composite on TV?
Or in the paper, Mr. Thompson?"

"It’s Carl, Lieutenant. Sure I saw it. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the same guy, though. Why? Did anyone at Anderson’s Insurance think it was?"

"No. No, they didn’t, actually." Odd, Mike thought.
Very odd.
His brow furrowed in concentration as a new path began to present itself to him.
Vaguely at first, then with definite clarity.
He would see where it led. "I don’t suppose," he said, looking from one to the other, "you hung onto that particular newspaper?"

A few minutes later, Myra was moving cups and teapot to one side and spreading the paper out on the kitchen table. All three stared down at the artist’s sketch of the man A.J. Booker had identified as the one who was in the
Shelton Room
just a couple of hours before Ellen’s sister was murdered.

Mike was watching Carl intently.

"Doesn’t look anymore like him than it did the first time I saw it," Carl said flatly.

"Take your time, Carl. Look closer." Mike’s voice was quiet, weighted with urgency, hope. "What if he didn’t have the dark glasses on? And what if he had shorter hair, thinning?" Mike asked, recalling Gabe’s written description. "Not curly."

Thirty-nine

3:05 a.m.

"C’mon to bed, honey," Carl said, laying a hand on Myra’s shoulder. "Try to get a little rest. They’ll call if they can find out anything."

"I can’t. You go ahead if you want to. I’ll just sit here on the sofa—I’ll lie down if I get sleepy." She knew she wouldn’t. She couldn’t close her eyes without seeing that bloody handprint sliding down the cupboard door, without imagining...

Even now she could hear Ellen’s voice on the phone telling her about the skin and blood they found under Gail’s fingernails. And now the same monster that murdered Gail had Ellen. Oh, please, God, help her! Maybe it was too late. Maybe she was already dead.

Her thoughts raced.

Why didn’t she ever see Jeannie Perry again? Why had she not once thought of her in all this time until she spelled out her name on the Scrabble board? It didn’t make any sense. She offered to be her friend. God knows, she could have used one back then. She was so pretty. She got her to stop crying. She was grateful to her. She clearly remembered feeling grateful. And why in hell was she mixing up thoughts of Ellen with Jeannie Perry, as though they were somehow connected?

What could they possibly have to do with one another?

A "Suffer the Little Children" picture slid up on the screen of her mind.
A lamb in the picture.
Silence of the Lambs
was playing at the paramount.
She and Ellen feeding the pigeons, laughing.
A brown van circling the square.
A man looking out at them.

Did I really see that? Or did Lieutenant Oldfield plant the suggestion in my head. What did it all mean?
Nothing, Myra.
Absolutely nothing.
Except that maybe you’re finally losing what’s left of your little mind.