“You do what you have to do,” Mr. Reilly said. “I still think you’re going to be wasting Earl’s time, but I won’t chase him off. How’s that sound?”

Once that was settled, we were able to move on to the subject of Elizabeth herself.

“I know you’ve probably been asked before,” Sampson said, “but is there anyone we should be talking to in Washington? Any friends, or boyfriends Elizabeth ever mentioned? Or for that matter, anyone who might have had some kind of grudge against her?”

Mr. Reilly shook his head and went to put Rebecca down in the raised bassinet by the window.

“I’m not sure Lizzie had a whole lot of friends up there,” he said. “We kind of thought Washington was going to be a chance for her to spread her wings, and whatnot, but she never really did cotton to it. Or to the people, for that matter.”

“There was one boy,” Mrs. Reilly said. “I suspect he’s the daddy, and maybe even—” She stopped, at a loss. “Maybe the one you’re looking for. But honestly, I have no idea.”

Sampson took out his pad and a pen. “Do you have a name?” he asked.

“Russell,” she said, while John scribbled it down.

“Russell? Is that a first or last?”

“First,” Mrs. Reilly said. “At least, I assume so. Lizzie only mentioned him in a few of her letters. Then he just kind of fell off the radar—last fall, I guess it was.”

“I don’t suppose you still have any of those letters?” I asked.

The smile I’d seen before came back onto Mrs. Reilly’s face. “Oh, honey, I have all of them,” she said. “Nobody writes real letters anymore, but Lizzie did. I figured those were worth saving. You just sit tight. I’ll go get my Lizzie box.”

CHAPTER

25

FOR THE NEXT HOUR, SAMPSON AND I SAT ON THE REILLYS’ BACK DECK GOING through an old rosewood box, full of cards and letters Elizabeth had sent her grandparents during her two years in Washington. We put them all in order by postmark, and then started reading.

Most of the letters were on the same pink-and-gray stationery with Elizabeth’s monogram at the top. They were usually decorated with funny little doodles and cartoons in the margins, and she always signed off with a heart dotting the i in her name.

At the same time, several of the letters were poignantly honest, about how lonely Elizabeth felt and how hard it was to meet people in the city. What I started to piece together here was a picture of a girl who had been a little naive about the world, a little young for her age, and probably all too vulnerable to a predator.

As for this Russell person, the first mention of him that we found was buried in the middle of a long letter from April of the previous year.

Want to hear something funny? I met a nice man the other day—at the Laundromat, of all places!! You never know, right? He talked to me the whole time I was there, and even offered to pay for my dryer. I thought that was cute, but I told him no thank you, maybe the next time.

And I’ll tell you two a secret—I hope there IS a next time. Gentlemen aren’t exactly easy to find in our nation’s capital!!! Something tells me I’m going to have some extra-extra clean clothes over the next few weeks, ha-ha-ha.

The next mention came a month later, when she wrote to her grandparents that she’d run into “Laundromat guy (whose name is Russell, btw)” and that she’d accepted a dinner invitation this time. A subsequent letter described how Russell had driven her around to see the monuments at night. It was all very chatty, and never offered any other details about where this guy was from, what he did for a living, or who he actually was. Whether Russell had been keeping that information from Elizabeth, or if she was keeping it from her grandparents, I couldn’t tell.

What I did know was that by early December, she was lying to them outright.

Dear Granny and Dodo,

I’m writing to tell you something that I’m too chicken to call and say. It looks like I won’t be home for Christmas, after all. We’ve got exams coming up after the break, and I promised my study group I’d meet three times a week in the meantime.

PLEASE DON’T HATE ME!! And don’t even think about coming up here. Xmas wouldn’t be the same in DC, and hotels are crazy expensive anyway. Just know that I love you, and I’ll be down to visit when I can.

Sending buckets of love,

Lizzie

That letter was dated December 11, which was a full eight days after Elizabeth had already dropped out of nursing school. She also would have been five months pregnant by then—too far along to hide.

And she never did make it home again, either. The last letter she ever sent was a birthday card for Tommy, in late March, where she wrote about classes I knew she wasn’t taking, and mentioned several times how much she was looking forward to seeing both of them that summer—presumably after the baby was born.

By the time John and I had read through Elizabeth’s correspondence, it was time to go. We didn’t have all the answers I might have liked, but what we did have was a new person of interest in this case. As soon as we were in the car and headed back to Savannah, I put out a call to Bree.

I didn’t want to wait on this. I didn’t want to wait on anything right now. Also, we’d already had one leak in the press about Elizabeth’s pregnancy. There weren’t a whole lot of people I trusted with these questions anymore.

“I’ve got a name I want to run through NCIC,” I told Bree, while Sampson drove. NCIC is the National Crime Information Center, a database operated by the FBI. Anyone who’s ever been arrested, convicted, or detained in the US is in there. It wasn’t exhaustive for our purposes, but it was a good place to start. I’d also be going back through Elizabeth’s phone records, looking at her mail, and reinterviewing her nursing school faculty—anything I could think of to get a line on this supposed boyfriend of hers.

“What’s the name?” Bree said.

“Russell.”

“Russell? Is that a first or a last name?”

I smiled in spite of myself. “First, I think, but we should try it both ways.”

“You’re joking, right?” Bree said. “Do you know how many records that’s going to turn up?”

“I wish I was joking,” I said. “For whatever it’s worth, there’s probably going to be a Washington area address sometime in the last two years. This guy may be the father of Elizabeth Reilly’s baby. Maybe the guy who killed her, too.”

“That’s a lot of maybe,” she said.

“I know, I know,” I said.

But at this point, maybe was better than nothing.

CHAPTER

26

ELIJAH CREEM PICKED UP A SMALL HORSEHAIR BRUSH FROM HIS DESK AND added several dots of liver-colored pigment to his newest mask. The masks themselves came fully finished from the fabricator in Arkansas, but there was something to be said for putting on his own touches. Not a bad way to spend a Friday night, really, considering the pleasure it would get him in the long run. The older and uglier he could make these faces—which was to say, the more invisible on the street—the better.

When the phone rang in his pocket, Creem ignored it. There were very few people he was interested in speaking with these days, much less the variety of scum who bothered to call anymore—lawyers, creditors, and the occasional reporter looking for a new angle on his now fast-fading scandal.

Instead, he applied a thin layer of spirit gum to the mask’s upper lip, and spread a mesh-backed mustache carefully into place. Later, when it was fully dry, he’d thread it with silvery gray to go with the wig he’d picked out.

It was only when the phone stopped ringing, then started right back up again that Creem even thought about checking the caller ID, which he did.