ANNALISA READ THE JOURNAL UNTIL HER NECK ACHED AND HER EYES DRIED FROM STARING TOO LONG AT THE SCREEN. Grace Harper was by turns insightful, petty, generous, funny, and pedantic. Plenty fearless, Annalisa noticed. No wonder Barnes had fixated on her. He’d seen himself as important and powerful. She saw him as impotent and afraid. Still, she’d been romantically interested in the man he’d presented himself to be, the mask hiding the monster within. Grace had included a bit of a chat transcript she had with Barnes, which Annalisa thought might be the closest they’d ever get to a look inside the killer’s head.
Grace: I can’t imagine what it must be like for him to walk around among people and act like he’s normal.
Barnes: Part of him is normal. He just puts that face out front. Like dressing up for work.
Grace: He’s not normal. This isn’t like putting on a suit to work an office job. He ties up women and tortures them to death.
Barnes: We all do things in private we won’t admit to others. This is just more extreme. He knows he’s different. He’s probably known it from childhood.
Grace: So you think he was born this way?
Barnes: Born with the devil inside, yes. The devil is patient. He can wait a long time to come out and play, but after a time, he will not be denied.
The whole journal made for fascinating reading, but the part that caught Annalisa’s attention concerned a second case Grace was working on at the time of her death: the disappearance of a young woman named Janeesa Bryant. Janeesa had been working alone at a gas station convenience store one Tuesday night and had apparently closed up as usual but never made it to her car in the parking lot. Her volatile relationship with a reprobate named Hector Sanchez made him the prime suspect. Annalisa looked up the case in the record books and found it was open but inactive. The detectives had interviewed Sanchez multiple times, but he had consistently denied harming Janeesa, and they could not shake his alibi. One note she found in the file, which Grace Harper could not have known, was a detail deliberately held back from the public: Janeesa’s rear left tire had been slashed at some point while she was working in the store that day. Her abductor had grabbed her before she’d reached the parking lot, but he’d planned ahead and disabled her vehicle so she couldn’t have escaped him.
Annalisa returned with interest to Grace’s notes, especially the part about the closed-circuit security footage. A search of Grace’s computer turned up the video in question. Annalisa’s hair stood on end when she saw what Grace had seen: the heavyset man with a bomber jacket looking right into the convenience store camera.
She closed up the laptop, locked it in her desk, and then took out a faded Chicago Cubs cap from her drawer. She kept it in hand as she walked casually past Zimmer’s office toward the back doors, at which point she put the cap on and prepared to dodge the press. She borrowed an unmarked department vehicle rather than take her own car, which helped her to make an escape.
At the gas station, she stopped her car where Janeesa had once parked and surveyed the scene. Grace had planned on checking the pawnshop across the street to see if they’d had cameras up six years ago when Janeesa had disappeared. Annalisa took up the trail and jaywalked across the busy street to inspect the pawnshop. It had an outside camera now, just above the door, but she didn’t know how long it had been there. A bell tinkled her entrance, and a slim Korean man, perhaps sixty years old, emerged from the back with a remote-controlled Ferrari in his hands. “Yes, hello,” he said with a smile. “May I help you?”
“I hope so.” She showed him her badge, and his smile faded.
“Is there a problem?”
“No, nothing like that. I just had some questions about your security cameras. How long have you had them?”
“I have been the owner just one year.” He held up an index finger to illustrate. “But the cameras were already here when I came.”
“I see. Do you know the owners before you?”
“Kathleen and Ronald Dunlop, yes. They were here many years. Retired now.”
“Do you have contact information for them?”
He brightened. “Yes. They sometimes still get mail here, and I send it to them. Would you like the address?”
“Yes, please.” She eyed a toy rocking chair, currently occupied by a floppy-eared stuffed rabbit wearing a tiara. Her niece Carla would love it, and Sassy and Alex sure needed a reason to smile. “I’d like the rocking chair too, please.”
“With rabbit?”
“Sure, why not. Throw in the rabbit.”
“Tiara is perfect for the rabbit. Very sparkly.”
She hid a smile as he showed off the snazzy rabbit. “The tiara too, of course.” She managed to get out of the store before she agreed to buy the whole place. The address he’d given her was way out in Campton Hills. She bought an apple, a chocolate bar, and a water from the gas station convenience store before making the trip. The camera in the corner that had captured the guy in the bomber jacket still watched over all the patrons from its spot on high.
When she reached Campton, she located the cottage marked 212 Rose Hill Way and stopped her car in front of it. She tossed her apple core in the nearest garbage and wiped her hands on her jeans before ringing the doorbell. She heard uneven footsteps on the other side, and a woman with a shock of white hair opened. “Yes?” she said, her voice hard with suspicion.
“Kathleen Dunlop?”
“Yes, that’s me. What do you want?”
Annalisa showed off her shield and introduced herself. “I’m looking into an old case in Chicago,” she explained. “A young woman was abducted from the gas station across the street from your pawnshop six years ago. Her name is Janeesa Bryant.”
The woman’s expression softened, her liver-spotted hand curling around the door. “Ah, that poor girl. I remember when it happened, her family hanging up those posters around the neighborhood. We put one in our window, of course.”
“Do you mind if I come inside to ask you a few questions?”
“No, yeah. I don’t see how I can help you,” Mrs. Dunlop said, but she widened the door to admit Annalisa, who readied her speech about the security cameras. She followed Mrs. Dunlop to a small, sunny kitchen, where she drew up short because there he was—the heavyset man from the gas station security camera. He sat with the local paper, drinking coffee at the table.
Surprised, she blinked at him. “Ronald Dunlop?”
“Depends on who’s asking.”
“This young lady is a Chicago detective,” his wife explained. “She’s here about that poor girl who disappeared from the gas station downtown. Remember?”
“’Course I do,” he said, narrowing his eyes at Annalisa. “Terrible thing to happen.”
“Did you know Janeesa?” Annalisa asked, sliding closer to him.
“No. Saw her working from time to time, but it’s not like we were friendly.”
“I noticed your shop has security cameras set up, and one had a view of the gas station.”
“We wouldn’t have any of that footage now,” Mrs. Dunlop said. “It’s been years.”
“The cops came looking for it back then,” he told her. “Didn’t matter. The cameras were on the fritz that week.”
“Is that so?” Her heart rate picked up as she closed in on her new suspect. Ronald Dunlop, the man who could watch Janeesa every day as she came and went from her job at the gas station. The man who would know the location of every camera on the block. The man who could be sure that the pawnshop’s unblinking eye would record nothing of consequence the night she disappeared. “Were you working that day, either of you?”
“I was home with a bum ankle,” Mrs. Dunlop said.
“I was there,” Mr. Dunlop allowed. “Working behind the counter, though, you don’t see much outside.”
“Maybe you went outside … perhaps to get a snack from the convenience store across the street?”
“I mighta. Don’t recall. I did go in there sometimes for a bag of chips and a soda or what have you.”
“Then you might have seen Janeesa the day she disappeared.”
“I told you I don’t remember. You know who I did see a bunch of times—that no-good boyfriend of hers. The detective from six years ago asked me lots of questions about him.” He wagged a finger at her for going off script.
“You saw Hector Sanchez? What did you see?”
He licked his lips and leaned back in his chair, considering his answer. “Well now, seems to me I saw him and his buddy hanging around the parking lot. That’s where she kept her little car when she was in the store, you know.”
“Hmm,” Annalisa said, taking notes. “What kind of car did she drive … if you remember?”
“A blue Kia,” he answered without hesitation. He grinned to himself. “Piece of shit, if you ask me. I always buy American.”
“You say you saw Hector and a friend in the parking lot. Are you sure it was the day she disappeared?”
“Pretty sure. Can’t swear to it. He had a knife, you know. Like a switchblade? I saw him with it once, slicing up a piece of fruit while he was waiting for Janeesa to get off work.”
“Seems like you saw a lot.” Annalisa made sure to inject a note of admiration into her voice. “Who needs surveillance cameras when we have you, right?”
“Right, right.” He leaned forward, warming to her. He cupped his hands around the coffee. “What I’m trying to say is, that boyfriend could’ve used his knife to slash her tire. You should ask him about that.”
Annalisa froze with her pen on the pad. In that moment, she understood the Grave Diggers and their obsessive quest to hunt down cold cases. This guy had no idea what was about to hit him. “Her tire,” she repeated, looking up at Ronald Dunlop.
“He punctured it, right? So, she couldn’t run off on him. I remember reading about that in the papers.”
Dunlop didn’t realize he’d been made. He wore the self-satisfied grin of a man who’d gotten away with it. “Is that any help to you?” Mrs. Dunlop asked as she poured herself another mug.
Annalisa would need to return with a warrant. At that moment, she said a silent thank-you to Grace Harper and her eagle eyes. After six years, Janeesa Bryant might finally be coming home. “Yes,” she said to the Dunlops, a slow smile spreading over her face as she closed up her notebook. “Yes, I believe you’ve helped me a lot.”