“Carina, look at this,” he said.

She approached. A plastic garbage bag had been tied with white nylon rope around the victim’s neck. Her body had been wrapped with plastic wrap. Her hands were bound together by rope.

“Could it be a copycat?” she asked, her voice unusually quiet.

“One way to know for sure.” The press had gotten wind of the garbage bags, but they’d never released information about the glued-on gag.

Gage carefully removed the rope and bagged it. Next, he gently pulled the bag from her head.

Her mouth was sealed with a black bandanna identical to the one found on Angie.

Carina turned to Nick. “Let’s find out if she had a sex diary and if Bondage or Scout commented on her page. And I’m going to wake Patrick up. We need something more to go on than two unknown profiles in cyberspace.” She motioned for Dillon to approach.

Her brother stared at the body, his face long. “She’s so young.”

“Do you have a description of Becca Harrison?”

“Long dark hair, blue eyes, five-foot-four, one hundred five pounds.”

“It fits. Let’s run her prints before we call the parents, just to be sure.”

Dillon looked at her with compassion. Was he thinking about the day when the police came to the Kincaid house and told them that Justin’s body had been found? Every time she had to talk to her parents, she thought about the anguished cry that came out of her sister’s throat, a sound that could only be described as the voice of pain itself.

“I’m sorry,” Dillon now said.

“I’ll be okay.” She would, that was her job. And doing the job helped make her okay.

“Look at her.” Carina pointed toward the victim’s body, harshly visible in the lights Gage had set up around the perimeter. “The MO changed. Why the plastic wrap?”

“The media has always jumped on the similarities between crimes, the so-called signature of a serial killer,” Dillon said. “But in truth, killers are always trying to perfect their crime. With every kill they lose something, part of the fantasy. This is why they start killing in the first place-the mental fantasy is no longer enough to satisfy them. They escalate. Some might rape first, then rape and kill. But the kill itself, while it’s a momentary high, leads to depression when it’s over. So a killer will change things to keep the excitement high.”

“But why plastic wrap?” Carina pushed. “Is this a way to keep evidence off the body?”

“I think that’s one purpose, yes,” Dillon said.

“And the other?”

This time Nick spoke. “He wanted to feel her die, be closer to her when she died. The plastic wrap is thinner than garbage bags. And look how carefully he wrapped her. Not bulky. He could feel her beneath the plastic while still keeping trace evidence-his hair and skin fibers-off her body.” He looked from Carina to her brother. “I’m not a shrink, but I’d bet my pension that he had sex with her while she was dying.”

Carina paled. “That’s-” she was going to say That’s sick, but the entire case sickened her. She pulled out her cell phone and woke Patrick up at home, told him about the murder. “Two hours, downtown.”

Dawn had just crested by the time Carina and Nick entered police headquarters. The smallest interview room had been converted to the task force headquarters and Chief Causey had come in early so Carina and Nick could brief him privately, then he joined the task force meeting.

After Carina brought everyone up to date on the case, Patrick took the floor.

“I woke up the security chief at MyJournal as soon as Detective Kincaid called about the Harrison homicide. I told him we had enough for a warrant but if he wanted to pull together the information now we would appreciate it.”

The chief interrupted. “I talked to Stanton this morning. He’s getting the warrant as we speak.”

Patrick nodded. “The MyJournal people are pulling every comment both Bondage and Scout posted in the last three months, including the deleted comments that are maintained on the server for three months. Beyond that, everything is wiped unless archived on an individual MyJournal user page. There’s no way to retrieve it, but three months should be enough to establish any pattern.”

“But is one of these people the killer?” one of the cops in the room asked.

“We’re not sure, but it’s all we have to go on right now. One of the deleted comments scared the first victim enough that she believed someone dangerous knew where she worked,” Carina interjected. “We’re not only focusing on the first victim’s online journal. We also have Becca Harrison. The fact that she disappeared from the library Wednesday night and her body was dumped there thirty hours later is significant. We’re looking at any connection between Angie and Becca, but on the surface we haven’t been able to find anything other than they both worked in La Jolla.”

“Becca has no online diary that I could find, but that doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist,” Patrick said. “Her parents have been notified, and I’m sending a team to retrieve her home computer this morning. I’ll also check the library network. When I get the unique user identification code from MyJournal for the two people we’re interested in, I can run it against any network and know whether they used the library to log on to the MyJournal site. I’ll go first to the library, then Angie’s place of employment, since they have a public network for patrons.”

Chief Causey spoke. “I need something for the press. They’ve already sniffed out that these cases are connected.” He looked pointedly at Carina.

“Sir, they showed up only thirty minutes after I did. The police scanner is not as secure as we would like.”

“Point taken.”

Office Diaz spoke up. “What happened with the evidence against Steven Thomas? Or the first vic’s boyfriend, Masterson?”

“The evidence against Thomas was circumstantial at best, and we can’t find anything to link him to the murder. Thomas has been cooperating, turned over all his computer equipment and came down for a formal interview,” Carina said. “Masterson has a solid alibi for Angie’s murder, but we’re going to talk to him again to confirm his whereabouts on Wednesday between seven and nine, when Becca Harrison was kidnapped.”

Chief Causey spoke, walking slowing around the desk to stand in front of his men and women. “Detective Patrick Kincaid is handling all computer-related aspects of the case, and Detective Carina Kincaid is heading the investigation. I’ve approved overtime on this case, so please give them as much time as you can.

“As you may have heard, Detective Hooper was called up to the appeals court to testify again in the Theodore Glenn case. If you haven’t met Sheriff Nick Thomas from Montana, he’s over there”-he pointed to Nick standing in the far corner-“and I’ve brought him in officially as a police consultant. We don’t want the press or the defense attorney to have any reason to slam us when we nail this bastard. Sheriff Thomas has experience with serial killers, and he’s already been an asset to our investigation.”

Causey turned to Dillon and nodded.

Dillon spoke. “I’ve been working on this case with Detectives Kincaid and Hooper almost from the beginning. Angie Vance’s murder was disturbing and showed immediately that we were up against a vicious predator. Now that we have two victims, the evidence is clear: he’s not going to stop until we stop him.

“I’m working up a more formal profile, but Detective Kincaid knows what we’re looking for. Going around now is a sheet of the basic characteristics of our killer, but remember: profiling is not a science. It’s using what we know of human nature and previous crimes to make an educated guess about the individual capable of these atrocities.

“One thing I can guarantee: he will act again, and sooner rather than later. I suspect he already has his next victim in his sights.”