When Wilma Anson arrives, the glass shard has been safely tucked inside a Ziploc bag. She studies it through the clear plastic, the tilt of her head signaling either curiosity or exasperation. With her, it’s hard to tell.

“Where’d you get this again?”

“The yard,” I say. “The glass broke when Katherine passed out in the grass while holding it.”

“Because she’d allegedly been drugged?” Wilma says.

“Poisoned,” I say, correcting her.

“The lab results might say otherwise.”

Boone and I agreed it wasn’t a good idea to tell Wilma just how, exactly, I came to suspect Tom of trying to poison his wife. Instead, we told her I had suddenly remembered Katherine mentioning the name Harvey Brewer, which led me to the internet and my theory that Tom might have tried the same thing Brewer had done to his wife. It was enough to get Wilma to come over. Now that she’s here, the big question is if she’ll do anything about it.

“That means you’re going to test it, right?” I say.

“Yes,” Wilma says, the word melting into a sigh. “Although it’ll take a few days to get the results back.”

“But Tom could be gone by then,” I say. “Can’t you at least question him?”

“I plan to.”

“When?”

“When the time is right.”

“Isn’t now the right time?” I start to sway back and forth, put into motion by the impatience fizzing inside me. All the things I want to tell Wilma are the same things I can’t tell her. Revealing that I know Katherine’s phone, clothes, and rings remain in her bedroom would also be admitting that I broke into the Royces’ house. So I keep it in, feeling like a shaken champagne bottle, hoping I don’t explode under the pressure. “Don’t you believe us?”

“I think it’s a valid theory,” Wilma says. “One of several.”

“Then investigate it,” I say. “Go over there and question him.”

“And ask him if he killed his wife?”

“Yes, for starters.”

Wilma moves into the adjoining dining room without invitation. Dressed in a black suit, white shirt, and sensible shoes, she finally resembles the TV detective of my imagination. The only similarity to her outfit from last night is a scrunchie around her wrist. Green instead of yellow and clearly not her daughter’s. Slung over Wilma’s shoulder is a black messenger bag, which she drops onto the table. When she sits, her jacket flares open, offering a glimpse of the gun holstered beneath it.

“This isn’t as simple as you think,” she says. “There might be something else going on here. Something bigger than what happened to Katherine Royce.”

“Bigger how?” Boone says.

“You ever do a trust exercise? You know, one of those things where a person falls backwards, hoping he’ll be caught by the people behind him?” Wilma demonstrates by raising her index finger and slowly tilting it sideways. “What I’m about to tell you is a lot like that. I’m going to trust you with classified information. And you’re going to reward that trust by doing nothing and saying nothing and just letting me do my job. Deal?”

“What kind of information?” I say.

“Details of an active investigation. If you tell anyone I showed them to you, I could get in trouble and you could get your asses put in jail.”

I wait for Wilma to reveal she’s exaggerating with a just-kidding smile. It doesn’t happen. Her expression is as severe as a tombstone as she gives the scrunchie on her wrist a twirl and says, “Swear you will tell no one.”

“You know I’m good,” Boone says.

“It’s not you I’m worried about.”

“I swear,” I say, even though Wilma’s seriousness makes me wonder if I want to hear what she’s about to say. What I’ve discovered already today has me sparking with anxiety.

Wilma hesitates, just for a moment, before grabbing her bag. “When did the Royces buy that house?”

“Last winter,” I say.

“This was their first summer here,” Boone adds.

Wilma unzips the messenger bag. “Did Tom Royce ever mention coming to the area before they bought it?”

“Yeah,” I say. “He told me they spent several summers at different rental properties.”

“He told me the same thing,” Boone says. “Said he was glad to finally find a place of their own.”

Wilma motions for us to sit. After we do, Boone and me sitting side by side, she pulls a file folder out of her bag and places it on the table in front of us.

“Are either of you familiar with the name Megan Keene?”

“She’s that girl who disappeared two years ago, right?” Boone says.

“Correct.”

Wilma opens the folder, pulls out a sheet of paper, and slides it toward us. On the page is a snapshot, a name, and a single word that brings a shiver to my spine.

Missing.

I stare at the photo of Megan Keene. She’s as pretty as a model in a shampoo commercial. All honey-blonde hair and rosy cheeks and blue eyes. The embodiment of Miss American Pie.

“Megan was eighteen when she vanished,” Wilma says. “She was a local. Her family owns the general store in the next town. Two years ago, she told her parents she had a date and left, kissing her mother on the cheek on her way out. It was the last time anyone saw her. Her car was found where she always left it—parked behind her parents’ store. No signs of foul play or struggle. And nothing to suggest she never planned to come back to it.”

Wilma slides another page toward us. It’s the same format as the first.

Picture—a dark beauty with lips painted cherry red and her face framed by black hair.

Name—Toni Burnett.

Also missing.

“Toni disappeared two months after Megan. She was basically a drifter. Born and raised in Maine but kicked out of the house by her very religious parents after one too many arguments about her behavior. Eventually, she ended up in Caledonia County, staying at a motel that rents rooms by the week. When her week was up and she didn’t check out, the manager thought she’d skipped town. But when he entered her room, all her belongings still seemed to be there. Toni Burnett, though, wasn’t. The manager didn’t immediately call the police, thinking she’d return in a day or two.”

“I guess that never happened,” Boone says.

“No,” Wilma says. “It definitely did not.”

She pulls a third page from the folder.

Sue Ellen Stryker.

Shy, as evidenced by the startled smile on her face, as if she’d just realized someone was taking her picture.

Missing, just like the others.

And the same girl Katherine had mentioned while we sat around the fire the other night.

“Sue Ellen was nineteen,” Wilma says. “She went missing last summer. She was a college student spending the season working at a lakeside resort in Fairlee. Left work one night and never came back. Like the others, there was nothing to suggest she packed up and ran away. She was simply . . . gone.”

“I thought she drowned,” Boone says.

“That was one theory, although there’s nothing concrete to suggest that’s what really happened.”

“But you do think she’s dead,” Boone says. “The others, too.”

“Honestly? Yes.”

“And that their deaths are related?”

“I do,” Wilma says. “Recently, we’ve come to believe they’re all victims of the same person. Someone who’s been in the area on a regular basis for at least two years.”

Boone sucks in a breath. “A serial killer.”

The words hang in the stuffy air of the dining room, lingering like a foul stench. I stare at the pictures spread across the table, my gut clenched with both sadness and anger.

Three women.

Girls, really.

Still young, still innocent.

Taken in their prime.

Now lost.

Studying each photograph, I’m struck by how their personalities leap off the page. Megan Keene’s effervescence. Toni Burnett’s mystery. Sue Ellen Stryker’s innocence.

I think of their families and friends and how much they must miss them.

I think of their goals, their dreams, their disappointments and hopes and sorrows.

I think of how they must have felt right before they were killed. Scared and alone, probably. Two of the worst feelings in the world.

A sob rises in my chest, and for a stricken moment, I fear it’s going to burst out of me. But I swallow it down, keep it together, ask the question that needs to be asked.

“What does this have to do with Katherine Royce?”

Wilma removes one more item from the folder. It’s a color photocopy of a postcard. An aerial view of a jagged lake surrounded by forests and mountains. I’ve seen the image a hundred times on racks in local stores and know what it is without needing to read the name printed at the bottom of the card.

Lake Greene.

“Last month, someone sent this postcard to the local police department.” Wilma looks to Boone. “Your old stomping grounds. They passed it on to us. Because of this.”

She flips the page, revealing the photocopied back of the postcard. On the left side, written in all-caps handwriting so shaky it looks like the work of a child, is the address of Boone’s former workplace, located about fifteen minutes from here. On the right side, in that same childlike scrawl, are three names.

Megan Keene.

Toni Burnett.

Sue Ellen Stryker.

Beneath the names are four words.

I think they’re here.

“Holy shit,” Boone says.

I say nothing, too stunned to speak.

“There’s no way to trace who sent it,” Wilma says. “This exact postcard has been sold all over the county for years. As you can see, there’s no return address.”

“Fingerprints?” Boone says.

“Plenty. That card passed through more than a dozen hands before coming to the state police. The stamp was self-stick, so there’s no DNA on the back. A handwriting analysis concluded it was written by someone right-handed using their left hand. That’s why it’s barely legible. Whoever sent it did a very good job of covering their tracks. The only clue we have, really, is the postmark, which tells us it had been dropped into a mailbox on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. That, incidentally, is where Tom and Katherine Royce’s apartment is located. It could be a coincidence, but I doubt it.”

Boone rubs a hand through his stubble, contemplating all this information. “You think one of them sent that postcard?”

“Yes,” Wilma says. “Katherine, in particular. The handwriting analysis suggests it was written by a female.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Why do you think?”

It takes less than a second for it to sink in, with Boone’s expression shifting as he moves from thought to theory to realization. “You really think Tom killed those girls?” he says. “And that Katherine knew about it? Or at least suspected it?”

“That’s one theory,” Wilma says. “That’s why we’re being very careful here. If Katherine sent that postcard as a way to tip off the police about her husband, then it’s also possible she ran away and is in hiding somewhere.”

“Or that Tom found out and silenced her,” Boone says.

“That’s also a possibility, yes. But if she has gone into hiding as a way to protect herself, we want to find her before her husband does. Either way, both of you deserve some credit for this. If you hadn’t called me about Katherine, we never would have thought to tie her and Tom to this postcard. So thank you.”

“What’s the next step?” Boone asks, beaming with pride. Once a cop, always a cop, I guess.

Wilma gathers up the pages and stuffs them back into the folder. As she does, I get one last glimpse at the faces of those missing girls. Megan and Toni and Sue Ellen. Each one squeezes my heart so tight that I almost wince. Then Wilma closes the folder and the three of them vanish all over again.

“Right now, we’re looking into all the places Tom rented in Vermont in the past two years. Where he stayed. How long he was there. If Katherine was with him.” Wilma drops the folder into her messenger bag and looks my way. “If the dates match up to these disappearances, then that will be the right time to talk to Tom Royce.”

Another shiver hits me. One of those full-body ones that rattle you like a cocktail shaker.

The police think Tom is a serial killer.

Although Wilma didn’t say it outright, the implication is clear.

They think he did it.

And the situation is all so much worse than I first thought.