“I blame the media and I blame Annie Garnett, police chief, for the fact that my daughter has vanished,” said Brianna’s father, Brian Connors, a Seattle attorney. “This has been totally mishandled from the start.”

Brian Connors was not only a braggart, a spotlight-seeker, and an egomaniac.

He was also right.

Chapter 15

HAYLEY AND TAYLOR WERE CLEARING the dishes after dinner when another message from Text Creeper arrived on their phones like electronic slime:

CASE FILE #613-7H: SHE DESERVED WHAT SHE GOT.

If Text Creeper’s first text had spooked Hayley and Taylor on Monday, this second message had them jumping out of their skin. Both girls knew they had to ignore it, but that was going to be far from easy.

“Nobody deserves to die like that! What does it mean?” Taylor asked as she turned off the stream of hot water that ran over the dishes in the sink.

Hayley shook her head. She didn’t know. Who could?

Taylor reached for a paper towel. “Should we tell Mom and Dad?”

“Tell me what?” Kevin Ryan asked, popping his head into the kitchen. The call of the coffee pot had brought him back to the kitchen. It was a much-needed break from writing his latest book, Killer Smile, about a handsome serial killer from Iowa who charmed women into posing for a “classy” nude calendar before bludgeoning them to death. The real killer was neither charming nor handsome, but his publisher insisted that’s what readers wanted to read.

“The tip-off, girls,” he had told Hayley and Taylor when he had started the project that summer, “is that there is no such thing as a ‘classy nude’ calendar. If a photographer suggests that you or your friends should pose for one, report him to the police pronto. Don’t even think about it. You’ll save a life, for sure.”

“It’s about Olivia’s murder,” Hayley said, pouring soap into the sink.

“People are . . . saying stuff about what happened. We’re all freaking out big-time,” Taylor said. “Have you heard anything?”

Kevin dropped into a seat at the kitchen table. “I don’t really have any inside info,” he said. “You’ll probably find out more on Twitter or Facebook.”

The sisters knew that their father was probably spot-on in some ways, but they weren’t really seeking specifics about the case. They were looking for reassurance.

“Do you think whoever killed Olivia might kill someone else?” Taylor asked. “Maybe another student at the high school?”

“Maybe that’s what’s happened to Brianna and Drew. Maybe they’ve been murdered?” Hayley added.

Kevin understood how fear enveloped people whenever a terrible crime occurred. A crime like what happened to Olivia was the scariest, most paranoia-inducing of all. At the moment, there was no telling if anyone else was in danger or not. Olivia’s murder might have been random, which was potentially more terrifying than thinking that it had been premeditated.

The idea of a serial killer lurking around Kingston and Port Gamble hadn’t really occurred to any of the Ryans until that moment. Kevin’s first thought had been that some kid had gotten high and went berserk—a drug-addled killing. If not that, then maybe it was one of Brianna’s father’s clients? Someone who wasn’t happy with his defense and sought revenge? Both scenarios had been in the news in the past couple of days. Kevin looked at his watch. It was 12:45 p.m.

“Let me see what I can find out,” he said. He knew that Annie Garnett would be in line at the Gamble Bay Coffee stand in exactly four minutes. Annie, who’d grown up with nothing that even closely resembled the consistency of a normal life, had forged her own with the regularity of a church chime. She ate lunch by the park, walked to the coffee place, and later strolled around the entire perimeter of the business district. She did that every single day, including weekends, at exactly the same time.

“Thanks, Dad,” Hayley said.

STILL JOGGING EACH DAY—and still unable to shake off those last ten pounds—Kevin “ran into” Annie at the coffee stand that filled the spaces by the pumps of Port Gamble’s defunct gas station.

She was there, getting her coffee, as he predicted.

The police chief smiled wearily when she saw him.

“Hey, Annie,” he said, fishing for change in his jacket. “Surprised to see you here.”

“I’m here every day at this time,” she said. “Like you didn’t know that.”

Kevin shrugged and placed his order—a triple tall one Splenda latte.

“I guess I did. Anyway, I wanted to get your take on the Grant case,” he said.

She sipped her coffee. “Open investigation, Kev. You know I can’t talk about it.”

“My girls are scared. All the girls in town are. They think there’s a crazed serial killer out there. I just wanted to, you know, put them at ease.”

The police chief narrowed her gaze. “This isn’t for a book, is it?”

Kevin shook his head, a little too vigorously. “No. I’m not that kind of crime writer. You know that.”

She took off the annoying plastic lid and drank some more. “Right. Off the record?” she asked.

“You know you don’t have to ask that,” Kevin said.

“I was just burned by Inside Edition.”

“I won’t lie to you, Annie. I saw it. Just so you know, everyone gets burned by Inside Edition. But, yeah, this is only for me. I’m not working on anything. Besides if I ever betrayed your trust, Annie, you’d find ways to ticket me every single day for the rest of my life.”

“You know me too well.” Annie took a breath. The November air had chilled, and a white puff of vapor came from her bright red lips. “It’s interesting you mention that people are scared there’s a serial killer on the loose. My best guess is that this killer is not a stranger but someone much closer to the situation.”

“Closer? Like Brianna? Drew?” he asked.

Annie looked around, surveying the town she loved so much. “I can say I’ve never seen anyone more disinterested in a slaying that happened in her very bedroom than this Brianna. She is unbelievable. It was almost as though she were mad at Olivia for getting slaughtered in her room. If you asked Brianna, it would have been much more convenient if Olivia had died downstairs, in say, the workout room, where she didn’t need to go and could have someone hose out the place.”

Kevin’s interest piqued, thinking for a moment that if Olivia had been killed by her best friend, maybe there was a book in it after all.

“Maybe the kid was in shock?” he suggested.

Annie pulled Kevin away from the barista, who seemed to have pretty good hearing over the cloud of steam from the espresso machine.

“Possibly.” She lowered her voice. “Hell, probably. I don’t know. She was strange, and Drew wasn’t much better. I don’t want to put it lightly, because I’m not like that, but, honestly, someone made cold cuts out of a party guest and neither of them seemed to care much. Not about the girl or her parents or her friends. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”

She stopped, realizing she’d probably said too much.

Kevin drank his latte. “I read somewhere that kids who play violent video games become desensitized and don’t have a clue about the real thing or its impact on people.”

“I don’t buy that,” Annie said. “I think a sociopath is a sociopath and no video game in the world can turn a normal person into a killer.”

Annie’s logic was reasonable. Kevin felt his theory was one he’d keep to himself from now on. His editor had suggested it once as a way to make a true crime story more “topical,” and it was a flop back then too.

“What was Brianna like at the scene?” he asked.

Annie snapped her lid back on the paper cup. “Walk with me,” she said. The pair started toward the big green water towers that welcomed people to the small business district. “That was even better. After she practically made out with her dumb-as-a-bag-of-rocks boyfriend on the front lawn, she proceeded to—and I’m not exaggerating— over-the-top whine about Olivia’s murder.”