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He took a moment to adjust to the abrupt change in subject. “Yeah, but she keeps asking me about the gun. I told her I couldn’t see who was holding it.”

“That’s what I told her, too.” Emmy took a quick breath. “I want you to go with me to interview Carol Walker. We need to see if she’s remembered anything.”

“I’m ready.”

“Hold up. I want you to do something else first.” Emmy nodded toward the monitors.

She didn’t know if she was doing this for Dylan or for herself, but at this point, it didn’t matter.

“Go back to the women’s isolation block and let your aunt Hannah see you at the door.

Stand at the glass, but don’t go inside.

That way your face isn’t on the cameras.

Then you can meet me outside and we’ll go to the Walkers’ house. ”

He looked uncomfortable. “What if she tries to talk to me?”

“Just smile or wave or whatever you feel like. Then walk away. Okay?”

He clearly had questions, but her son had inherited the coward gene, too. “Okay.”

Emmy tracked his progress on the monitors as he secured his Glock in the lockers that lined the hallway, then went inside the jail complex. She started to stand, but someone was blocking the doorway.

Jude said, “He’s a nice-looking kid.”

Emmy felt her teeth grinding together. She wondered if her jawbone stuck out the same way Cole’s did. She said, “I hear you’re taking over my case.”

“I’m only here to consult, and you’re still in charge, sheriff.”

Emmy’s jaw started to ache. “I’m the chief deputy.”

“Which means you’re the acting sheriff now that Gerald is gone. You need to make sure people know that you’re in charge.”

“You need to stick your advice up your ass.” Emmy could tell the punch hadn’t landed. “Does the FBI know you’re an alcoholic?”

“Yes.”

“And a coke head?”

“Coke is fantastic, but alcohol was my problem.” Jude leaned her shoulder against the doorjamb the same way Cole had. “I disclosed everything as part of my background check. I’ve been sober for thirty-nine years and two months.”

“Hurray for you.” Emmy pointed toward the doorway. “Why don’t you stay out of my way, and I’ll stay out of yours.”

“Elijah Walker’s been cheating on his wife.”

Emmy struggled to keep her expression neutral. “He told you that?”

“I told him that.” Jude slid a large envelope from her suede purse. She pulled out two printed photos, held them up for Emmy to see. “These were on his phone.”

To say Emmy was caught off guard would’ve been to say the last twenty-four hours had been taxing.

It wasn’t primarily the photos, but the fact that Emmy was standing inside the jail where her ex-best friend was being held for murder and her dead sister was showing her a dick pic and a split beaver like she was bragging about her European vacation.

Jude asked, “What do you see?”

“Well—” Emmy was still thrown. “I don’t—I mean—that’s not Elijah’s, unless it was back when he was going to the gym every day and spraying himself with bronzer.”

“Good. What else?”

Emmy didn’t want to, but she looked closer. “It’d be easy enough to see if he’s got that mole right below his belly button. It’s possible he’s bisexual, but my guess is he took a screen shot of somebody else’s penis and passed it off as his own.”

“That’s my guess, too. What about this one?” Jude handed her the woman’s photo. “Elijah says he met this woman on a website. He says she gave the name Trixie, and that she charges four-fifty for two hours.”

“Uh—” Emmy blinked her eyes. She felt as if she was being tested.

“Trixie has to be a working name, but it doesn’t jibe with the cost. That’s twelve times what the girls charge at the truck stop.

The butterfly birthmark could help identify her, but the Brazilian is your best lead.

There’s two places in town that do that kind of waxing: Sugar Babies at the outlet mall and Peggy Ingram’s place. ”

“Peggy Ingram,” Jude repeated. “She took over her mother’s business?”

“Yes and no.” Emmy handed back the photo. “She moved the salon out of the basement when Virgil retired. He’s a private investigator. Needs a discreet place to meet with clients. Peggy took over the storefront across from the hardware store.”

“Where the cobbler used to be?”

“Sure, right beside the baker and the candlestick maker.”

Jude’s smile acknowledged the joke. “Text Peggy. See if she remembers a customer with that birthmark.”

Emmy looked at her watch. Then she looked again, because this had been one of the longest days of her life. “It’s almost four-thirty in the morning. The sun’s not even up.”

“Peggy will read it when she wakes up.” Jude turned to look behind her. Cole had stopped in the hallway. “You must be my nephew.”

Cole looked at Emmy, then at Jude. “You must be my dead aunt.”

“Jude Archer.” She slid the photos back into the envelope before he could see them. “Cole, why don’t you ride with us to Carol Walker’s house?”

Cole looked at Emmy again. He was waiting for her answer.

So was Jude. There were a lot of things Emmy could’ve said in this moment, but none of them would help bring Paisley Walker home.

Jude had been in town for an hour and she’d already gotten more out of Elijah Walker than Emmy had.

This wasn’t the time to open up new wounds.

If Paisley had been abducted by one of her parents, she could still be alive.

Emmy said, “Let’s go.”

They walked single file out to the parking lot.

The moon was waning in the sky. The parking lot lights felt angry as they held back the dark dome of black.

Emmy started the text to Peggy Ingram. She nearly broke her brain trying to figure out how to phrase the question.

Peggy was a soft, grandmotherly type. Then again, she waxed genitals in the back room of her salon.

There probably wasn’t much that would shock her.

Sorry to bother you, but I have a weird question about a possible waxing client of yours who has a butterfly-shaped birthmark on the inside of her left thigh. Brazilian. Bleached strip of hair. Probably Caucasian. Can you help? I have a photo but not sure you want to see it?

Jude asked, “Which ride is yours?”

Emmy gave her a giant clue by getting into the cruiser parked in the spot marked Chief Deputy Clifton. She cranked the engine. Jude climbed into the passenger’s seat. Cole slipped into the back. The bright light of his phone illuminated his face as he typed on the screen.

Jude flipped down the visor so she could look at him in the mirror. “Sweetheart, are you googling me?”

Emmy caught Cole’s flash of guilt in the rear-view.

“Mom,” he said. “It says she captured Freddy Henley.”

Emmy had watched the Pinnacles Killer docuseries with Dylan last year. “There were no women on that case.”

Jude said, “Not every cop wants to be interviewed.”

Emmy turned onto Main Street. “Especially if they’re supposed to be dead.”

“True, but he would’ve stopped talking to me if I’d become more famous than he was.

” Jude looked back at Cole in the mirror.

“Maps and mistakes. That’s what caught Freddy Henley.

That’s what catches a lot of these guys.

Ted Bundy was stopped on a moving violation.

Son of Sam got a parking ticket. BTK used the wrong computer.

It’s not that investigators are particularly clever.

It’s that the bad guys panic and make stupid mistakes. ”

Emmy could tell she had Cole’s interest. He asked, “What about the map part?”

“Freddy’s third victim was abducted inside Pinnacles National Park.

The rest were abducted from areas around UC Santa Barbara, which has one of the top geology departments in the country.

Pinnacles is a remarkable geological site.

The park is split in two by rock formations.

There’s a west gate and east gate, but the roads don’t connect.

The caves on the east side are closed to protect the bat population, but the ones on the west side are open. You following?”

“Yes.” Cole wasn’t just following. He was hanging on her every word. “The west side is more isolated.”

“Right, so if you want to hide a body, you choose the west entrance. The parking area leads to flat hiking trails. Easier to get in and out, lots of cover, less effort on your part. From mid June to early September, it’s too hot to climb, which means the west area is sparsely populated, but you don’t want to be the only person there, right? ”

“Right,” Cole agreed.

“I checked the weather patterns, figured out the best months and times to visit, cross-referenced those times to the abductions, then talked to every person who had a connection to both the university and the park who’d visited during the optimal time periods going back to the late eighties.”

Cole looked astonished. He’d done his share of door knocking on patrol. “How many people was that?”

“Nine hundred and twenty-eight.”

“You talked to all of them?”

“I got lucky at 649.” Jude’s smile said there was a hell of a lot more to the story. “One day, I knocked on Freddy’s door and he confessed.”

“Just like that?”

“A little like that.” Jude hedged. “It’s lonely being a serial killer. There’s not a lot of people they can talk to about their hobbies.”

Emmy saw the corner of Cole’s mouth lift in a smile.

He asked, “Are you a profiler?”

“The Behavioral Sciences Unit already had its token number of women when I joined. I’m a criminal psychologist. My focus is on missing and kidnapped children. It’s your turn, sweetheart. Paisley Walker. I’ve already got the timeline. What do we think we know?”

Emmy felt gut-punched by the question, which she’d only ever heard from her father.

Cole didn’t skip a beat. “Paisley’s kidnapping is similar to the kidnapping of Cheyenne Baker, which is linked to the kidnapping of Madison Dalrymple. Abandoned bike on the backroads. Damaged rear tire. Blood at the scene.”