“You didn’t make this,” he said after the first bite.

“Why do you say that with such conviction?”

With food in his stomach he found half a smile. “I’m glad you got to eat with your kids tonight. Who cares where the food came from?”

Nikki took her seat beside him and warmed her hands with her coffee mug. “Any news on our news girl?”

He shook his head. “I’ve got a call in to my serial killer. Just waiting for him to call me back and confess.”

“Do you really think it’s Fitzgerald?” she asked. “If that turns out to be true, we’re going to look like a bunch of assholes. We could have had him a year ago. He’s killed how many girls since then? How could we have missed that, Sam?”

“He’s damn good at what he does. He’s got it down to a fine science. We already knew that,” he said. “I’m trying to find out what I can about Frank Fitzgerald, but I’ve got nothing to go on. All I know right now is he has no police record and he gets his mail at a storefront in a strip mall in Des Moines. That’s probably not even his real name.”

“He’s been so careful,” Nikki said. “We’ve gone over all of the Doc Holiday cases ten times. He hasn’t made a mistake. I just can’t buy that he screwed up so badly with Penny Gray. Quinn said these guys make their mistakes when they change their MO. If he snatched the Gray girl, she fit his pattern. Dana Nolan doesn’t fit his old pattern, but I believe that’s him.”

“And I’m waiting for the mistake,” Kovac said. “I hope to God he makes it soon. Anything new on your side?”

She filled him in on the situation with the Fogelman boy.

Kovac gave her a careful look, like he thought she might punch him and he had better keep his distance. “You’re sure you’re being objective about this kid, Tinks? You’re not just being a momma tiger?”

“No,” she said. “It’s two separate things. Do I want to kick his ass for giving Kyle a hard time? Yes. Do I put my detective cap on and look at him and see a narcissistic sociopath with violent and misogynistic tendencies? Yes. You interviewed him. What did you think?”

“That he’s a narcissistic sociopath with violent tendencies. And he’s a liar. And he needs his ass kicked.”

Nikki lifted her hands. “See? Nobody wants to believe kids could do what was done to Penny Gray, but you and I both know they can and do. And we can’t rule out Michael Warner yet either. The sex abuse angle is too strong. I’m hoping maybe we get some kind of tip out of the assembly at the school today. Tippen’s niece connected well with the kids. I’m hoping she’ll hear something through one of the social media outlets.

“I keep coming back to Julia Gray,” she went on. “What does she know that she’s not telling us, or that she’s not admitting to herself? Does she just not want to see it?”

“She’s lost her daughter,” Kovac said. “Maybe she just wants to hang on to what she has left.”

“Even if what she has left is a man who, at best, had sex with her child, or, at worst, killed her? That’s insane.”

He raised his eyebrows and pointed to the tiny caterpillar line of stitches above her left eyebrow where Julia Gray had struck her.

“Yeah,” she conceded, reaching across the island to grab a file folder off the stack. “She’s walking a mental tightrope, praying her fiancé isn’t a pedophile and hoping her daughter was taken by a serial killer.”

Kovac slid his dinner plate aside. “Yeah. I nominate that one for Mother of the Year.”

“If we could get our hands on the girl’s phone or her computer, I know we’d get some answers,” Nikki said. “Kyle says Gray made a lot of videos on her phone. She posted some of herself reciting her poetry to her YouTube account, but it’s safe to assume there are a lot more. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had a video diary.”

“Her mother told us she kept her laptop with her at all times,” Kovac said. “It could still be in her car, wherever that is. More likely it’s with her killer. If that was someone in her circle, they would have to know it might contain evidence. They would have to get rid of it. If Doc Holiday killed her, he would probably keep it for a souvenir.”

“We know someone still has her phone,” Nikki said.

“And they were nearby when they sent texts to Julia Gray.”

“Michael Warner and Aaron Fogelman both live within a mile or so of the Gray house as the crow flies. And we have no way of knowing where Doc is. He could live nearby or he could be watching Julia Gray’s house for all we know.”

“There’s a grim notion,” Kovac said.

Liska arched a brow. “Do we get to have any other kind?”

43

can’t blieve u btrayed me like that Britt. So hurt!

Brittany stared at the text and sighed. There were a dozen like that, at least. She had answered none of them.

It made her angry to read them. Christina made out like she was the wounded party. She hadn’t asked for Brittany’s side of the story. She hadn’t asked why Brittany had left the assembly the way she had, or how she had come to be walking down the street with Kyle Hatcher. Christina was only about Christina. The universe revolved around her, and everything that happened, happened to her or because of her.

She was so selfish. Even when it appeared she was being generous, she was being selfish. Brittany looked now on the reasons she had liked Christina in the first place and saw them in a completely different light. What she had seen as strength, she now saw as arrogance. What she had seen as generosity, she now saw as manipulation. She saw that Christina did nothing without expecting something in return. She was like a fairy-tale queen who pretended to love her subjects but only wanted what they could give her or do for her. And when they didn’t meet her expectations, they were punished.

Brittany knew she was being punished even as she sat alone in her bedroom. She had gone on Facebook and Twitter to see what was being said about her and about Kyle by Christina and her minions. Lies, accusations, name-calling.

The flip side of friendship with Christina Warner.

Her phone pinged again.

I wish I understood. Can we meet and talk?

Brittany didn’t answer. Christina didn’t want to understand. She wanted to ambush her—just like she had Gray that night at the Rock & Bowl.

Gray might have been strange and out there and difficult, but she had always been honest. She called a spade a spade, as Brittany’s father liked to say—which was why she had so few friends.

That was the catch, Brittany realized. Now that Gray was gone, she was finally seeing the truth: that Gray would have been a better friend to her than Christina ever could have been.

It was the same with Kyle. Kyle had no time for the bullshit games of Christina’s crowd. He said what he meant and meant what he said. And for a while, Brittany hadn’t wanted to hear it. His truth had made her angry and resentful. But he only wanted her to see what was real and be the best person she could be, and wasn’t that a better friend than the kind of friend Christina was?

She walked around her happy yellow bedroom with her arms wrapped around herself as if she were freezing, wishing life didn’t have to be so hard, wondering what she should do next. Something strong, she thought. Something positive.

She thought about the poem Sonya Porter had read at the assembly that morning—Gray’s poem about acceptance. And she thought about what Sonya had said after, that they should all be angry someone had taken Gray and her talent and everything she had been and could have become away from them.

I am angry, Brittany thought.

She was angry with Christina; she was angry with the killer; she was angry with herself. The question was: What was she going to do about it? Wallow and cry and pout and wish the world was a different place? Or stand up and make the world a different place by being who she needed to be?