Draper shook his head. “You’re not seeing any files.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re too worked up about this as it is. You need to calm down and get some perspective.”

“I have perspective.”

“What you have are some similar names.” His fingers drummed the desk. “Very common names, as the sergeant said. If you go through enough crimes, you’ll find all sorts of apparent patterns that don’t mean anything.”

“You don’t get it. You’re not listening. He was on a Ripper site because he’s obsessed with Jack the Ripper. He wrote, Call me Jack. He quoted from the Ripper’s letters. Said he was ‘down on whores’ and wouldn’t stop killing them.”

Draper frowned. “None of the local women you mentioned was a prostitute.”

“He told me all women are whores.”

“Do you have a record of this conversation?”

“No, I was texting. My phone doesn’t store the messages. You think I’m making it up?” She could hear the thin leading edge of hysteria in her voice.

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Draper soothed. “It would be useful to read the transcript, that’s all. You’re a document analyst. You know that.”

“Sorry. You’re right. It’s just—there’s not a lot of time. The intervals between the attacks have been getting shorter. Six months between Mary Ann Ellison and Ann Powell. Five months between Powell and Elizabeth Custer. Three months between Custer and Chatty Cathy. And three months have passed since then. He’s due—he’s overdue—to strike. He nearly killed me. And now he’s run off somewhere in an acute phase of his illness. He’s preparing to kill again.”

“You’re getting ahead of yourself,” Draper said. “You’re adding two plus two and getting five.”

“You mean you don’t believe me?”

“I believe you about what happened in the library. Your brother is dangerous. He has to be picked up. Whether or not he’s connected with any of these other cases remains to be seen.”

She almost argued the point, then realized it didn’t matter. The only priority was to get Richard off the street. The details would come out later.

“All right,” she said. “As long as you’re going after him.”

“Naturally we’re going after him. He held you at knifepoint. That’s enough for now.”

“He have a car?” Casey asked.

“Not unless he’s stolen one. Otherwise he walks or takes the bus.”

“Since he was at the library, it’s a safe bet he’s still local. You think he’ll stay close to home even now that he knows you’re on to him?”

“The library is as far as he’ll go, I think. Mostly he’ll stay in Venice. It’s his home turf. “

“Have you got a photo of him?”

Her hand was trembling as she removed the picture from her wallet. “This is the most recent one.”

Draper studied it, then passed it to Casey. “I’ll make copies,” Casey said, “and have them circulated at roll call. We can put out a BOLO for units in the field right now.”

“I don’t want him hurt,” she whispered. “I mean—even with everything that’s happened, and everything I suspect, I still...”

Casey understood. “I’ll tell all units that if anyone spots him, they’re to contact me immediately before taking any action. I’ll personally supervise, all right? I’ll make sure things don’t get out of hand.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

Draper was staring out the window into the squad room, the neat maze of cubicles with waist-high partitions. “How much of this did you tell Sandra Price?”

The question surprised her. “None of it, really. I just said I had concerns about someone close to me.”

“Good. We don’t need any vigilantes looking for your brother.”

“She’s not a vigilante.”

“She’s not a cop, either. This is a job for law enforcement, not community activists.”

She wanted to say that maybe if they chose to work with Sandra Price instead of against her... But now was the wrong time.

“Anyone else know about this?” Casey asked.

“Well, there’s a friend of mine, Maura Lowell. She dated Richard for a while, before he started showing symptoms. She’s worried about him, too.”

“We’ll need contact information for her, as well as your brother’s address. For the time being, you shouldn’t go home. You can stay with a friend or—”

“I’m not going anywhere. I’m waiting right here until you find him.”

“That could be hours. Or days.”

“Then I’ll wait hours. Or days. Casey, he’s my brother.” She nearly lost her composure as she said it.

Casey looked away too quickly, and she knew he had read the expression on her face.

“Okay, Silence,” he said, his voice low. “Okay.”

thirty

Jennifer sat in the detectives’ squad room amid the ringing telephones and the clatter of footsteps. Casey and Draper had left on separate missions more than an hour ago. She had no one to talk to, no one to share her fears with. Fears of what Richard might be planning to do when the sun went down. Or sooner.

She remembered missing Maura’s call. There were no messages on her voicemail. She tried Maura’s cell, then her home phone. No answer. Probably showing a house, not taking calls.

It seemed unfair. The one time when she needed companionship and reassurance, and she was alone.

She felt a presence beside her and looked up. Draper was there.

“News?” she asked, rising.

“I went to the library. Richard’s card was used on one of the computers during the appropriate time frame. And a patron found a cell phone in the stacks, turned it in to lost-and-found.”

“Richard’s phone?”

“Probably, but don’t get too excited. It’s one of those cheap throwaways with prepaid minutes that you can buy in any drugstore. No calling plan, no way to trace the owner.”

“Why would he leave it behind?”

“He was probably afraid we could identify the phone from your cell records and then zero in on his GPS signal.”

“Yes, he’s smart enough to think of that. How about the patrol units?”

“No sightings yet. Like Casey said, it could take days. Your brother could be anywhere. Living in an alley or on the beach—”

She remembered. “The beach.”

“What about it?”

“This morning I ran into a homeless man in a tent city on the beach. He claimed he’d seen Richard around, but he wouldn’t tell me where. Of course, he could’ve been shining me on.”

“Can you describe him?”

“Even better—I can point him out to you, if he’s still there.”

“I don’t normally bring along a civilian when I’m questioning a witness.”

“I’m not exactly a civilian, Roy. I’m a police consultant. I’ve been to crime scenes. I know how to keep out of your way.”

“You’ll just ID him, then stand back and let me handle it?”

She raised her hand as if swearing an oath. “Promise.”

He gave her a sour look. “How come I don’t believe you?”

***

“You’re very quiet,” Draper said.

She turned to him. He was driving south along the beach, the westering sun shooting orange spears through the passenger window. “Just thinking.”

“About Richard? The two of you must have been pretty close.”

“We were. Before...” She didn’t have to say more.

“You’re sure you can’t provide a better description of what he was wearing?”

“I didn’t pay much attention to his clothes. Loose shirt, faded color. Casual pants. They could have been jeans.”

“Okay.”

“You still think I’m wrong about the murders, don’t you?”

“Probably. It’s easy to get carried away when you’re under strain.”

“I haven’t been—” She stopped. Of course she had been under strain. The earthquake, the skeletons, the diary, Richard’s disappearance, Sirk’s revelation about her father... “I’m not imagining things,” she said.

“We’ll see.”

He parked within a short walk of Venice Pier. They trekked onto the sand, toward the sad scatter of trash-bag tents. The tent city was smaller than it had been this morning. Many of the inhabitants must be on the streets or the boardwalk, cadging spare change, and they’d taken their possessions—even the makeshift tents—with them.