Besides, though nearly everything Carina knew about the case pointed to Steve Thomas, Masterson and his disappearing act definitely cast doubt on her initial suspicion that Thomas was guilty. But Thomas had repeatedly lied, not only about what time he went to the Shack, but about how much time he’d spent reading Angie’s not-so-anonymous online journal.

The cursory examination from Patrick the day before showed that Thomas had spent forty-one hours on the MyJournal website in the last month, averaging more than an hour a day, but Patrick needed more time to extract exactly what he’d been reading. As he pointed out, a good defense attorney could argue that while the window browser may have been up, there’s no proof Thomas was sitting at the computer. They needed to make a correlation between the time his browser was open to a MyJournal page and any e-mails or interaction between Thomas and other MyJournal members.

In addition, Patrick was investigating every individual who commented on Angie’s journal, which amounted to hundreds of online identities to match with real people, determine who was a potential threat, and uncover their physical location. Thomas’s online identity was SThomasSgt, which was his name and rank in the military. But if he had been harassing Angie, he may have used another login, so Patrick had to verify every one.

And if Thomas really was innocent, Angie’s killer might be one of the other MyJournal members.

Already, Carina was developing a headache.

Will came over and rubbed her shoulders. “Not enough coffee or too much?” he asked.

“Ugh,” she answered and held out her mug. He grinned and poured her more inky-black coffee from the pot against the wall of the bullpen.

“Did Dillon ever call back?”

“Yes. Finally. You’d think he was this hotshot or something.” Which he was, and Carina was proud of him. Though he didn’t work directly for the San Diego Police Department, he was often retained on criminal cases to interview suspects in custody and present a psychiatric report to the court. She didn’t always agree with his assessments-the cop in her said killers should go to prison for hard time, not to a padded jail cell in the desert-but Dillon backed up his recommendations with facts and solid analysis.

“And?” Will asked.

“He’s meeting us for lunch at Bob’s.” Bob’s Burgers was across from the police station and a regular hangout for Homicide. If Carina didn’t get a Bob’s Ultimate Cheeseburger at least once a week, she became irritable. Will insisted the fries there cured any foul mood.

“So we have a couple hours. Any word on Masterson?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“By the way, I did a little research last night on Sheriff Nick Thomas.”

She raised an eyebrow. “And?”

“Do you remember hearing about the Bozeman Butcher?”

“Who hasn’t? The sick bastard was responsible for more than a dozen murders up in Montana.” Her eyes widened. “And Bozeman is in Gallatin County.” She hit her head. “Why didn’t I make the connection last night?”

“We were preoccupied. It’s been a couple long days.”

“So Nick Thomas was responsible for taking the killer down?”

“In part. But what wasn’t widely reported was that Thomas was held captive by the Butcher, and afterward was hospitalized for more than a week.”

Carina nodded. “I thought he was walking a little stiffly yesterday when he followed his brother down to the beach.”

“If anyone knows about serial killers, it would be Sheriff Thomas. He’d been building the case against the Butcher for years. Maybe we should talk to him and get his perspective, see if he thinks we have a serial killer here.”

“You’re right, he has the experience, but he’s the brother of our primary suspect. And besides,” argued Carina, “the definition of a serial killer is three or more like crimes with an established MO and-”

Will interrupted. “Don’t tell me you haven’t seen signs in Angie’s murder that point to something more than a crime of passion.”

She couldn’t argue with him. She’d been wrestling with it all night. “Point taken. But what if it is Steve Thomas? What if he’s the killer?”

“Then having Nick Thomas on our side might help stop another murder.”

“Has anything come back from the feds’ database on like crimes?”

Will shook his head. “The system is haphazard at best. And I read an article last year that serial killers often change and refine their method of killing. So our killer might have started with a different MO. In another state, maybe he strangled previous victims, or stabbed them-”

“Or maybe Angie is the first. Something about her set him off.”

“Like her sex diary.”

Carina’s phone rang. “Kincaid,” she answered.

“It’s Jim. I’ve typed the glue.”

“And?”

“Commonly used industrial-strength adhesive, available at most major hardware stores.”

“Match anything we found at Thomas’s apartment?”

“Sorry.”

“Thanks.”

Will was on the phone when she got off, so Carina cleared paperwork from her desk, her least favorite part of the job, until he hung up.

“Patrick has a printout of all of Thomas’s e-mails, Internet travels, and chat room logs for us,” Will told her. “He skimmed them, didn’t find anything big, but they’re worth a closer look. He has to run some computer program,” he waved his hand in the air, “to decipher exactly how many times Thomas went to the site and get an approximate amount of time he spent there. Since we haven’t arrested the guy yet, and Patrick’s preparing for a trial next week, he doesn’t have the time to thoroughly go through the reports, but he thinks by early next week he’ll have answers.”

“Such is our lives.” Carina frowned. “Will, why do I feel like this isn’t a priority to the department?”

“I don’t understand.”

“We have a dead girl. Eighteen years old. We have a suspect. True, only circumstantial evidence, but damn good circumstantial evidence. But Jim has priorities, Patrick has priorities, and this case isn’t it. I don’t like it. It makes me feel like Angie’s death has been relegated to the bottom of the list. That because she was a promiscuous young woman who posed in pornographic positions on her Web page, no one cares what happened to her.”

“That’s not true, Carina. You know that.”

But she was fired up. “Really? I know what? You heard the guys around the bullpen when they saw her MyJournal page. Reading her descriptions of having sex and masturbating. And the pictures! I have four brothers. I know what guys think about nudie shots.

“She’s dead. Just because a woman has sex with a lot of guys doesn’t mean she deserves to be raped and murdered. Suffocated. She was terrified when she died. She was tortured. It’s not fair that no one cares!”

Will pushed Carina back down in her chair and leaned over her. “Listen here, Detective Kincaid. Don’t ever imply that I don’t care about a victim, or that I think anyone deserves to be raped and murdered. You’re walking a thin line here. Angie Vance deserves justice as much as any other victim in the city, and I’ll do everything I can to bring her some. So get off your high horse and let’s do the job right. Get some evidence against Thomas-or anyone else who might want her dead. Hell, we have at least nine other men she kissed and blabbed about on the Internet who could have been embarrassed enough to kill.”

Carina took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t aiming that at you, Will. I guess…I don’t know. I’m just frustrated.”

He gave her a curt nod and leaned back against her desk, arms crossed. “We thought we had an easy case, open and shut, and it’s turned out to be anything but.”

Carina felt sheepish. Will cared as much about the victims as she did. She had to remember that he was not only her partner but her best friend. “Did Patrick say he had anything from Angie’s computer?” she asked, changing the subject.