Page 28 of The Writer

[Cordova] Mine’s in the car. Should I get it?

[Shaw] No. It’s fine. Happens all the time. Looks like Lucero carried his unique decorating style into his bedroom. Crap piled everywhere. More clothes. No furniture. Mattress on the floor. I imagine those sheets were white once. CSU could spend a week in here and… is that rope?

[Cordova] Rope. Handcuffs. Bucket in the corner. I can smell it from here. It’s a makeshift bedpan.

[Shaw] So this is some kind of dungeon?

[Cordova] I saw a sleeping bag in the other room, balled up in the corner. I’m guessing he slept out there when he had someone in here.

[Shaw] Jesus.

[Cordova] Yeah.

[Shaw] Maybe he planned to nab Maggie. Bring her here.

[Cordova] She fought back. Something went wrong. He killed her in the park to cut his losses.

[Forty-three seconds of silence.]

[Shaw] Did you look at these books?

[Cordova] Not yet.

[Shaw] You know any of these? V. C. Andrews,Vampire Academy, John Green, Suzanne Collins, Veronica Roth,Little Women.

[Cordova] They’re all young adult. Skews female.

[Shaw] We’ve got pictures between some of the pages. Cutouts from magazines. Young girls. Barely legal–type stuff.

[Cordova] Not just magazines…

[Shaw] Is that a Polaroid?

[Cordova] Yeah. Not porn, but girls.

[Shaw] For the record, we’ve got a Polaroid image of a girl, maybe thirteen, fourteen, tough to say. It’s taken from a distance. She’s sitting on a bench reading, seems unaware she’s being photographed. What book was it in?

[Cordova]Great Expectations. Looks like a library book. Got a bar code on the spine.

[Shaw] Here’s another.White Oleander. Another Polaroid inside. We need to get CSU in here to process all of them. Run the girls againstthe missing persons database. These books might all be souvenirs.

[Cordova] Do any of them belong to our girl? Maggie Marshall?

[End of recording.]

/MG/GTS

NOW

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CONFERENCE ROOM.

Cordova is standing at the far end, hovering over a woman Declan vaguely recognizes. Thick glasses. Hair cut in a short bob, dyed black from a box, a coppery red visibly growing out at her scalp. Thirties.

“This is Susan Reynolds,” Cordova tells Declan. “She works downstairs in community affairs. She happens to be an avid reader.” His eyebrows shoot up as if to tell Declan there’s more to it than that.

Declan remembers her then. Oh, boy, does he remember her. “Christmas party. You hogged the karaoke machine. Kept singing Taylor Swift.”