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CHAPTER 34

IT WAS STILL dark when my eyes flew open the next morning. I slipped out of bed and looked in on our kiddo in the room next to ours. She was sleeping on her side, hugging a pillow, and she didn’t stir when I opened her door. I dressed quickly and quietly, left Joe a sticky note on the bathroom mirror, and stuck another note on Gloria Rose’s door across the hall.

It was half past dawn’s early light when I strapped into my Explorer and headed out to meet Cindy, a.k.a. Girl Reporter, at Grumpy Lynn’s. What did she have that she couldn’t tell me about over the phone or via email? I wanted to hear and see it all, fast, then go to work. I needed the “I said. You dead” clues to pay off—preferably with the name and location of the psycho killer who’d brutally murdered Jacobi.

Cindy and I arrived at Lynn’s at the same time. We parked our vehicles nose to rear on the south side of Geary Street. When we were both standing on the pavement, we hugged awkwardly because Cindy’s computer bag got between us. Still, it was so good to see her. I took Cindy’s computer bag and we crossed the street to the humble 1950s-style diner, where we always enjoyed indulging in freshly brewed coffee and homemade pastries.

When Cindy pulled open Lynn’s door, the bell over it jangled, and I followed her in. Lynn was in the kitchen, but she waved, saying, “Morning, girlies. Sit anywhere you like.”

Cindy and I were the only customers so far that morning, so we had the place to ourselves. We took a booth beside the front window, then Lynn came out of the kitchen with a pad in hand. It took less than thirty seconds to order coffee and choose between the chocolate and the caramel-glazed donuts. We ordered one of each.

After Lynn brought us our orders, Cindy unpacked and opened her laptop.

“Another front-page update in the New York tabloid, the City News Flash ,” she said, reading from a story on-screen. “And I quote: ‘Sadie Witt, a twenty-year-old college student and the victim of parental abuse, was found shot to death at her home in Nevada. Her father, Herman Witt, is a twice convicted child abuser who was in jail pending a third trial over the latest incident in a pattern of family violence when his daughter was killed. He is not a suspect in Sadie Witt’s murder.’”

Cindy went on.

“‘Homicide detective Steven Wilson, of Verne PD, told this paper that a typed note was found in Sadie Witt’s pants pocket—’”

I interrupted to say, “Oh my God, oh my God, not ‘I said. You dead’?”

“Bingo.”

Cindy shoved her laptop to the side of the table and pushed my coffee mug toward me.

“Have some more java, Lindsay. Finish that donut. I’m just asking myself and you: What did these three people have in common besides the notes and being murdered?”

Coffee sloshed over the lip of my mug. Cindy and I mopped it up. We were both thinking about the Witts.

“How much time do we have left?” Cindy asked.

I looked at my phone. “About five minutes, or however long it takes to make the last of these donuts disappear. Cin. Question. Do you think these three murders are the work of one person? Or a gang? Is ‘I said. You dead’ a thing about to go viral? Does that make sense?”

“I think I’m supposed to say, ‘Off the record.’”

I laughed. The other members of the Women’s Murder Club—me, Claire, and Yuki—have said “Off the record” to Cindy so many times, it’s automatic even if she just asks, “Will you pass the salt?” And she always keeps our secrets. Never spills our beans.

“Do psychotic killers ever make sense?” she asked me.

I said, “Not to normies. Psychotics have their own rules.”

Cindy nodded as she thought about this. “I’m catching the commuter flight from San Francisco to Reno in a few hours. I’ve booked a car to Verne, and I have a meeting with Detective Wilson at the VPD later today. Want to come?”