“You’re positive she told no one else? What about one of her ex-boyfriends?”

“Oh no, especially not them,” Jodi said. “They would have been pissed off. She detailed some of their, um, sexual failings.” The three girls giggled, then abruptly stopped as the magnitude of the situation hit them.

Carina lost it. Even after being a cop for eleven years, she’d never be so cavalier about murder.

“Give me the Web page. And I’m putting you all on notice, right now. If my partner or I have any other questions, you will answer them. Got it?”

They sobered completely during Carina’s lecture, and Jodi and Abby in particular looked guilty over their behavior. As Abby scribbled something on notebook paper, Jodi said, “I didn’t mean to be disrespectful. I loved Angie, like a sister. I guess…I can’t believe she’s gone.”

Carina forgave the girls their behavior. They were eighteen and facing the brutal death of a friend. It was going to hit them hard over the next day or two, and grief would set in.

Abby handed Carina the paper: Journalme. iloverealmen.com.

“Two more questions. Do you know Steve Thomas?”

They all nodded.

“Why did Angie get a restraining order against him?”

It was Kayla who spoke up. “He threatened her.”

“How?”

“He told her she’d be killed.”

“He threatened to kill her?”

Pause. “Not exactly.”

“What exactly?”

“He said she was being stupid and would get herself killed if she didn’t watch her back. But he was so mean about it, and Steve isn’t normally a mean guy, so we all figured he was jealous about Doug, and when guys get jealous they do stupid things. So Angie got scared and got the restraining order.”

Stupid things? Carina had a few stupid things she’d like to point out to the girls, but she refrained. “Tell me about Doug Masterson.”

Abby said, “He’s hot. And he treats Angie like a princess. At least he used to.” She glanced at Jodi.

“Were they still seeing each other?” Carina asked.

“Angie thought he had another girlfriend and planned to confront him, but I don’t know if she talked to him or not,” Jodi said.

“I don’t think she cared all that much, though,” Abby said. “I think she was looking seriously at someone else.”

“Someone else? Who?”

“I don’t know, she never told me. It was just a feeling I had. I mean, I’ve known her forever. I just sensed it.”

Over twelve hours on-duty had taken its toll. Carina was exhausted. But they had one more stop to make: the patrol watching Thomas’s apartment radioed that he’d just arrived home.

Will drove and she called the e-crimes unit. Patrick, her little brother, was on-call. Though he was only eleven months younger than Carina, she’d always thought of him as her “little” brother. He was a late bloomer, and her five-foot-eight-inch frame had towered over him until he turned eighteen. In three years he’d grown seven inches and now topped six feet.

He’d always be her little brother, though.

“Hey, Patrick, can you check out an online journaling website for me?”

“Shoot.” She gave him the information. He whistled softly. “Haven for perverts.”

“Sex offenders?”

“I’d bet half the people who hit the MyJournal pages are sex offenders or would-be sex offenders. The other half are naive teenagers and college kids who have no idea who’s watching them.”

Carina quickly filled him in on her case. “I’ll call the mother and tell her someone will be by to pick up the vic’s computer.”

“I’ll send someone out,” Patrick said.

“While you’re at it, put Steven Thomas on your list, too.” She gave him Thomas’s address. “I’m going to ask nicely that he hand over his computer. Otherwise, we’ll get a warrant. Between the restraining order and not coming clean about his whereabouts Friday night, I think we can get it tonight.”

“I’ll be waiting for your call. In the meantime, I’ll check out-holy shit.”

“What?”

“You haven’t checked out the victim’s journal yet, have you?”

“No.”

“Anonymous, sure. But I’d bet my pension that every perv out there was trying to discover her identity. And believe me, it’s not as hard as people think.”

SIX

STEVEN THOMAS DIDN’T LOOK like a killer, but most criminals didn’t have “murderer” tattooed across their forehead.

Carina and Will wanted to postpone bringing Thomas formally to the station. Right now, he appeared willing to cooperate. With an easy rapport, they might just give him enough rope to hang himself.

The three of them sat in Thomas’s tidy apartment. Had he glued Angie’s mouth shut to prevent her from making noise? Kept her here in his bedroom? Hoped to make her see the error of her ways in dating the drug dealer Doug Masterson? Maybe things got out of hand. Maybe she said something that made him angry and that’s when he glued her mouth and gagged her. Raped her out of anger and frustration. Rage. Maybe he didn’t mean to. Then afterward, he knew he had to kill her.

Murder by suffocation was a step removed, almost impersonal. Most crimes of passion were violent, hands-on affairs done in the heat of the moment. Lots of evidence, blood. Strangulation, stabbings, shootings. Quick and effective. But Angie’s killer had imprisoned and tortured her, then put her in a garbage bag and let her die on her own. Watched her die as opposed to actively participating in it. If Carina was correct, he’d laid on top of her while she died in the garbage bag. Just one more strange detail in a long list of oddities surrounding this case.

Why hadn’t Dillon returned her call yet? Carina was confident he’d have additional insight. Getting into the mind of a killer was his specialty.

“Why did you lie to us about what time you were at the Sand Shack?” she asked Thomas.

“I didn’t really lie,” he said. “I really did go there at ten when she got off to talk to her.” He paused. “I just didn’t mention that I came back.”

“Why?”

“It didn’t seem important.”

“The manager says that he had to escort you from the premises because of the restraining order.”

“I told you I followed Angie.” He ran a hand through his short-cropped dark blond hair. “I was worried about her. I told you that,” he repeated.

“You followed her when she left the club,” Will said.

“Yes, yes, I told you that!” Thomas jumped off the couch and both Carina and Will had their hands on the butts of their firearms. She didn’t need to draw, Thomas simply paced. Agitated. Out of guilt? Remorse? Fear?

“Where?”

“I told you. I followed her home. I wanted to make sure she was safe.”

A tiny tickle about Angie’s mother hearing her late Friday night disturbed Carina. She asked, “Okay, so she got home safe. What time?”

“Nearly one in the morning.”

“Then what happened?”

“I left.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s what I said.”

“You left, but no one has seen Angie alive since.”

“That’s why I went to the police on Saturday. But the cop wouldn’t do anything about it!”

“We still don’t understand why you came in on Saturday-less than twenty-four hours after you allegedly watched Angie walk safely into her house when you weren’t supposed to be anywhere near her.”

“Because Angie posts to her journal every single day. Two, three times. She never went online Saturday. I was worried, so I went by her house. Her grandmother said she wasn’t there.”

“You knew about her online journal.”

Thomas had no comment.

“Mr. Thomas, we can get a warrant to seize your computer and ISP records. It would benefit you to tell us the truth.”

He leaned against the counter that separated the living area from the kitchen. “Yes, I knew about her journal. That’s the real reason she got the restraining order,” he admitted.