“Let me guess,” Cope said. “You think that this Reba Cordova is somehow connected to your Jane Doe.”

“Yes.”

“Are you thinking, what, a serial killer?”

“It could be, though serial killers normally work alone. There was a woman involved in this one.”

“Okay, let’s hear why you think they’re linked.”

“First the MO.”

“Two white women about the same age,” Cope said. “One is found dressed like a hooker in Newark. The other, well, we don’t know where she is.”

“That’s part of it, but here is the big thing that drew my eye. The use of deception and diversion.”

“I’m not following.”

“We have two well-to-do white women in their forties vanishing within, what, twenty-four hours of each other. That’s a strange similarity right there. But more than that, in the first case, with our Jane Doe, we know the killer went through elaborate staging to fool us, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, he did the same with Reba Cordova.”

“By parking the car at a motel?”

She nodded. “In both cases, he worked hard to throw us off the track with false clues. In the case of Jane Doe, he set it up so we would think she was a hooker. In the case of Reba Cordova, he made it look like she was a woman cheating on her husband who ran off with her lover.”

“Eh.” Cope made a face. “That’s pretty weak.”

“Yes. But it is something. Not to be racist, but how often does a nice-looking family woman from a suburb like Livingston just run off with a lover?”

“It happens.”

“Maybe, but she would plan better, wouldn’t she? She wouldn’t drive up to a shopping mall near where her daughter takes ice-skating lessons and buy some kid underwear and then, what, throw them away and run to her lover? And then we have the witness, a guy named Stephen Errico, who saw her go into a van at the Target. And he saw another woman drive away.”

“If that’s what really happened.”

“It did.”

“Okay, but even so. How else are you tying Reba Cordova with our Jane Doe?”

Muse arched an eyebrow. “I’m saving the best for last.”

“Thank God.”

“Let’s go back to Stephen Errico.”

“The witness at the mall?”

“Right. Errico makes his report. On its own, sure, I don’t blame the security guys at the Palisades. It sounds like nothing. But I looked him up on the Web. He’s got his own blog page with his photo- graph-a big, heavy guy with a bushy beard and Grateful Dead shirt- and when I talked to him, he is clearly something of a conspiracy nut. Errico also likes to insinuate himself into the story. You know, the kind of guy who goes to the mall and hopes to see a shoplifter?”

“Right.”

“But that also makes him damn specific. Errico said he saw a woman matching Reba Cordova’s description get into a white Chevy van. But more than that, he actually took down the van’s license plate.”

“And?”

“I ran the plate. It belongs to a woman named Helen Kasner of Scarsdale, New York.”

“Does she own a white van?”

“She does, and she was at the Palisades Mall yesterday.”

Cope nodded, seeing where she was going. “So you figure someone switched plates on Ms. Kasner?”

“Exactly. Oldest trick in the book but still effective-you steal a car to commit a crime, then you switch plates in case someone sees it. More deception. But a lot of criminals don’t realize that the most effective method is to switch plates with a vehicle that’s the same make as yours. It confuses even more.”

“So you’re figuring the van in the Target lot was stolen.”

“You don’t agree?”

“I guess I do,” Cope said. “It certainly adds weight to Mr. Errico’s story. I get why we should worry about Reba Cordova. But I still don’t see how she ties in with our Jane Doe.”

“Take a look at this.”

She swiveled her computer monitor in his direction. Cope turned his attention to the screen.

“What is this?”

“A security tape from a building near the Jane Doe murder scene. I was watching it this morning, thinking it was total waste of time. But now…” Muse had the tape all lined up. She pressed the PLAY button. A white van appeared. She hit PAUSE and the image froze.

Cope moved closer. “A white van.”

“A white Chevy van, yup.”

“Must be a zillion white Chevy vans registered in New York and New Jersey,” Cope said. “Could you get the license plate?”

“Yes.”

“And can I assume it’s a match with the one that belongs to the Kasner woman?”

“No.”

Cope’s eyes narrowed. “No?”

“No. Totally different number.”

“Then what’s the big deal?”

She pointed at the screen. “This license plate-JYL-419-belongs to a Mr. David Pulkingham of Armonk, New York.”

“Does Mr. Pulkingham own a white van too?”

“Yes.”

“Could he be our guy?”

“He’s seventy-three and has no record.”

“So you figure another plate switch?”

“Yep.”

Clarence Morrow leaned his head in the office. “Chief?”

“Yes.”

He saw Paul Copeland and straightened as though ready to salute. “Good morning, Mr. Prosecutor.”

“Hey, Clarence.”

Clarence waited.

“It’s okay,” Muse said. “What have you got?”

“I just got off the phone with Helen Kasner.”

“And?”

“I had her check her van’s plate. You were right. The license plate was switched and she never noticed.”

“Anything else?”

“Yep, the kicker. The license plate on the car now?” Clarence pointed to the white van on the computer screen. “It belongs to Mr. David Pulkingham.”

Muse looked at Cope, smiled, raised her palms to the sky. “That enough of a link?”

“Yeah,” Cope said. “That’ll do.”

19

YASMIN whispered, “Let’s go.”

Jill looked at her friend. The little mustache on her face, the one that had caused all the trouble, was gone, but for some reason Jill could still see it. Yasmin’s mother had visited from wherever she lived now-somewhere down south, Florida maybe-and had taken her to some fancy doctor’s office and gotten her electrolysis. It helped her appearance but it hadn’t helped make school one bit less horrible.

They were sitting at the kitchen table. Beth, the “girlfriend du week” as Yasmin called her, had tried to impress them with a fancy omelette breakfast complete with sausage links and Beth’s “legend- ary hotcakes,” but the girls had passed, to Beth’s crestfallen disappointment, in favor of frozen Eggos with chocolate chips.

“Okay, girls, you enjoy,” Beth said through clenched teeth. “I’m going to sit in the yard and get some sun.”

As soon as Beth was out the door, Yasmin got up from the table and sneaked over to the bay window. Beth was not in view. Yasmin looked left, then right, then she smiled.

“What is it?” Jill asked.

“Check this out,” Yasmin said.

Jill rose and joined her friend.

“Look. In the corner behind the big tree.”

“I don’t see anything.”

“Look closer,” Yasmin said.

It took a moment or two and then Jill saw something gray and wispy and she realized what Yasmin meant. “Beth’s smoking?”

“Yup. She’s hiding behind a tree and lighting up.”

“Why hide?”

“Maybe she’s worried about smoking in front of impressionable youth,” Yasmin said with a wry grin. “Or maybe Beth doesn’t want my dad to know. He hates smokers.”

“Are you going to rat her out?”

Yasmin smiled, shrugged. “Who knows? We rat out everybody else, don’t we?” She started rifling through a purse. Jill gave a little gasp.

“Is that Beth’s?”

“Yes.”

“We shouldn’t do that.”

Yasmin just made a face and continued her rummaging.

Jill moved closer and peered in. “Anything interesting?”

“No.” Yasmin put it down. “Come on, I want to show you something.”

She dropped the purse on the counter and headed up the stairs. Jill followed. There was a window in the bathroom at the landing. Yasmin took a quick peak. So did Jill. Beth was indeed behind the tree-they could see her clearly now-and she was puffing on that cigarette as if she were underwater and had finally found a lifeline. She took deep hard puffs and closed her eyes and the lines on her face smoothed out.