He turned and faced them, looking grim.

“Some of these guys implode at the end of their careers,” he explained. “They start doing things they don’t normally do, varying from the pattern they’ve perfected.

“The classic example of this was Bundy. After years of following the same pattern, being careful enough to elude capture, to hide his victims’ remains, he went to Florida and went on a spree. In one night he attacked multiple victims in a sorority house, left them to be found instead of getting rid of their bodies, left potential witnesses behind, then went into another house and attacked another woman. A couple of days later he snatched a girl much younger than his usual victim. He was like a shark on a feeding frenzy.”

“Why do you think that happened?” Elwood asked.

“We don’t really know why some of these guys self-destruct like that,” Quinn said. “One theory is they build up a sense of invincibility that grows and grows until it crosses a line into mania. Another theory is they start feeling less and less control over their aberrant desires, that this scares them and they want someone to stop them.”

“Doc seems to enjoy the game too much for a conscience to stop him,” Kovac said.

“I would agree,” Quinn said. “But you never know. We can never truly get inside the heads of these guys. There were people in my field who believed Bundy took his act to Florida at the end because he knew he stood the greatest chance of being executed if he was caught there. Yet once he was convicted, he did everything in his power to stall and appeal and prevent the state from putting him in the electric chair. He played mind games with law enforcement right up to the end and enjoyed every minute of it.”

“Doc Holiday could be one of those guys, spiraling out of control,” Elwood said.

Quinn nodded. “He could be. There are definitely deviations from his usual pattern if this girl is one of his. The acid is something new. The nature of the stab wounds is different. The knife was different, less efficient.”

“Tippen suggested he could have been playing with the victim, creating more terror over a prolonged time period by using a smaller knife,” Kovac said.

Quinn considered the idea, raising his brows and tipping his head. “That’s possible. Or it’s not Doc at all, and we’re looking at an inexperienced killer who grabbed a weapon of opportunity, not realizing it wasn’t enough to get the job done easily.

“It’s just as easy to look at this and say it’s a mess created by an amateur. The knife didn’t get the job done, so your unsub tried to bludgeon her; thought she was dead and poured the acid on her face to obscure her identity, but she was still alive.”

“Great,” Kovac said. “So it could be Doc, or it could be anybody. Thanks for narrowing that down for us, John.”

Quinn shrugged. “It’s an inexact science.”

“Let’s say it is Doc Holiday,” Elwood said. “What would you suggest? Do we press that angle and try to draw him out?”

“The fact that he leaves his victims to be found says he clearly wants credit for his work,” Quinn said. “I would expect him to keep a scrapbook with a collection of articles about his murders. But he hasn’t tried to contact the authorities or the media up until now, right?”

“Nothing,” Kovac said.

“You’d probably get a rise out of him if you didn’t talk about him, if nobody mentioned him on the news or in the paper, but it’s too late for that.”

“I had to play that card to get manpower,” Kovac said.

“Everything’s a trade-off,” Quinn conceded. “You could push the idea that he’s getting sloppy, that you’re closing in on him, that it’s only a matter of time—”

“But I can’t back it up.”

“And you might push him into making a grand gesture,” Quinn warned. “You piss this guy off and he could make you pay—by making an innocent victim pay.”

Kovac picked up the remote and turned Dana Nolan the perky news girl off midsentence.

“That’s not a risk I’m willing to take.”

He grabbed a VHS tape cassette off the stand beside the TV and put it in the VCR.

“This is the last known sighting of Penelope Gray,” he said, hitting the Play button. “She left the Rock and Bowl at nine twenty-seven P.M. after having words with Christina Warner—the shrink’s daughter—and this is her at the convenience store that’s down the block from the Rock and Bowl a few minutes later. She comes into the store, buys a six-pack of beer with what we can assume is a fake ID.”

The girl walked toward the door, toward the camera, then stopped and spoke to someone who had to be standing outside the door—and outside the camera range. There was no audio. There was no way of knowing what she was saying or what her tone of voice might have been. There was no way of knowing what the other person was saying to her.

The girl took a couple of steps backward into the store, turning her head and looking in the direction of the counter, where several people waited in line to pay for purchases. One of the other customers glanced in her direction, disinterested, and turned back. Then Penelope Gray walked out of the store into the night.

Kovac froze the frame.

“Is there a camera outside the store?” Quinn asked.

“On the gas pumps, not pointed at the building.”

He rewound the tape and played the last bit again, feeling haunted by the image of Penny Gray walking out of sight. Walking toward a friend? A stranger? A killer?

Tippen came into the room holding up a sheaf of papers. “The Gray family cell phone records.”

Kovac snatched them with one hand and pulled his reading glasses out of his shirt pocket with the other. “Have you looked this over?”

“No. Hot off the press,” Tippen said. “I just got back from seeing Dr. Timothy Gray, root canal specialist to the beautiful, well-off mouths of Edina.”

“His daughter is missing, probably dead, and he’s at work?” Elwood said.

“The odontology show must go on.”

“We can assume dad and daughter aren’t close?” Quinn said.

“Dr. Gray says he used to be close to his daughter but that the girl just couldn’t understand the complex malfunctions of his marriage to her mother,” Tippen explained. “Like his need to do the nasty with the twentysomething receptionist named Brandi-with-an-i, for instance.”

“Poor kid,” Kovac muttered. “Dad betrays her and her mom for a piece of ass. She blames Mom for not being enough of a hot dish to hang on to her father. Mom resents the girl for reacting badly to having her family torn apart. The girl is collateral damage from both sides.”

“It’s the American way,” Tippen declared. “Destructive entitlement family-style. Dad wants what he wants. Screw everybody else. His involvement with his daughter is reduced to writing tuition checks and being annoyed by the fact that she won’t leave him to enjoy his shiny new family in peace. He seems more irritated than worried that she’s missing.”

“A recurring theme among the Gray parents,” Elwood commented.

“He said Penny has disappeared before. She’s headstrong and belligerent and is probably somewhere relishing the grief she’s causing.”

“Yeah, like the morgue,” Kovac said. “When did he last hear from her?”

“Christmas Day while he was enjoying a Rocky Mountain High holiday at his second home in Aspen. She sent him a text, a poem.”

“Did he still have it in his phone?”

“Yes. He says he keeps them all ‘just in case.’”

Quinn frowned. “In case of what?”

“The young Mrs. Dr. Gray is afraid of Penelope,” Tippen explained. “According to Dr. Gray, his wife is afraid Penny might try to do something to hurt her or their three-year-old daughter.”

“Does the girl have a history of violence?” Quinn asked.

“Apparently there was a drunken altercation at the grand opening of Dr. Gray’s new office eight or nine months ago,” Tippen said. “The spewing of obscenities, a slap, a little hair pulling. Nothing much as catfights go, but it frightened the wife and embarrassed the good doctor. He’s still pissed off.”