RATH STOOD BEFORE his living-room wall. He’d taken down his two Proseck prints and two deer mounts to tack up all the information he had about the missing girls. He’d tried to lay it out on his PC, but the computer’s screen was too small, the windows overlapped, and his mind ended up a tangled confusion of barbed wire. He needed to see the information laid out before him, big and bold and sprawling.
He’d taken a copy of the good photo of Mandy from Grout and tacked it to the wall, around which he’d pinned the photos and info of the other missing girls. He studied the photos of the girls up close, then backed away and took them all in at once. Look.
He’d been looking for five hours now. It was one in the afternoon. He had been at it since four in the morning. Look.
The girls looked back. Silent.
Nothing in common besides sex and age.
No one close to the girls proved suspicious under interrogation. If even one girl had a relative or friend as a genuine suspect, it would put a hole in the theory that they were linked. But not one of the disappearances could be even remotely tied to someone they knew. Each of them had to have known someone, the same person. Or one person had known them. Fiona Lemieux had been seen by the owner of the corner store, getting into a nondescript car. Why? Had she and the other girls had their instincts to help others used against them? Maybe. Maybe.
But. How did one person, or even two people, choose these girls? And why?
He looked at the photos of Julia’s corpse. They were hard to stomach. He focused on the close-up shots of the carving. What sort of evil were they dealing with? Someone who wanted to leave such a mark on a girl, to show just how depraved, how evil, they were, while the girl was still alive. He poured over the biographies as he glanced at the photos.
Sally Lawrence: Lived with a single mom. Poor, obese but confident, honor roll.
Rebecca Thompson: Working-class, loving parents, well liked, ordinary looks, extraordinary athlete.
Fiona Lemieux: Wealthy, influential family, petite, pretty, gifted musician, golden voice.
Julia Pearl: White-collar parents, teacher mother, CPA father, only child. Pregnant.
Mandy: Average grades. Emancipated. Asshole father. Private. Gorgeous.
The girls shared nothing except dissimilarity.
He let his mind wander. Fishing. At times, you hunted with focus. Other times, you fished, let your thoughts cast about and see what your unconscious mind hooked.
He considered the good photo of Mandy. It was much better than his first photo.
Her warm, caramel eyes were flaked with gold, inviting and intimate; they suggested secrecy, a promise, a sense that she had a confession to whisper in your ear, to you and you alone. It was a look that could confuse the wrong person into believing he was exceptional. Chosen. And anger in him when he found he wasn’t either.
Rath stared at the photos and his notes, feeling a thought begin to rise to the surface, like a trout about to sip down a mayfly. He closed his eyes and waited. The connection was just about there, a fine, clear theory, when his phone buzzed on his desk. He let it go to voice mail, but the thought had been submerged. He kept his eyes closed, trying to find a tranquil state and let ephemeral thought materialize into a concrete image he could use.
The phone buzzed.
He ignored it, breathed.
The phone buzzed again. A bee in his ear.
The thought was gone.
He grabbed the phone: PRIVATE.
He answered.
“Yeah?” he said, distracted, his voice the snap of a branch.
“Mr. Rath?”
“Yes.”
“Dr. Snell. I remembered where I saw the girl.”
Rath caught his breath and felt his legs go weak.
“I don’t know if it will be of any help or not,” Snell was saying.
“Where are you?” Rath reached for his jacket.
“My office.”
“I’d like to speak in person as soon as possible.”
“I’m straight out all day. My last appointment is at five. I have some paperwork, but should be done by seven. Just let yourself in.”