“I thought you were taking the day off.”
Val narrowed her eyes. “You haven’t heard.”
“Heard what?”
“All hell has broken loose.”
Diana
When Diana had awakened that morning and climbed out of bed, the fatigue in her legs had felt delicious. The redness coloring her skin from cheeks to inner thighs caused by the stubble on Bobby’s face made her flush with heat. The spark in his eyes when he turned to look at her in the kitchen was contagious.
She’d never felt so powerful as she had last night. She wanted to hold on to it. She wanted it to never end.
And yet, she could feel it slipping away with every word from Val’s lips.
“Another woman has disappeared.”
Images of Nadine Washburn’s body flashed through Diana’s mind. She felt helpless. Sick.
“When?” Bobby asked, slipping on a shoe.
“Sometime last night. The husband was out of town. When he returned this morning, he found their two-month-old baby in the house alone.”
“The baby?” A baby without a mother. A baby lying alone in her crib for hours. Diana couldn’t breathe.
Bobby motioned Val inside. Once she was inside the door, he closed it behind her. Beyond that, none of them moved.
“How do we know it’s the copycat?” Bobby finally asked.
“Perreth. He went to see Dryden this morning. Early.”
Bobby gave a skeptical growl. “And Dryden talked to him?”
“Only to tell him the copycat took another victim.” Val paused. “And that’s not the kicker.”
There was more? Diana’s legs felt weak. She leaned against the wall.
Bobby pulled on his second shoe. “What else?”
“The husband. He’s the governor’s son. The whole damn world is going crazy.”
“Shit.”
Diana looked from Bobby to Val and back again. She understood their concern. Media attention and pressure from people with power made everything harder. She had only to remember the mess surrounding Dixon Hess a few years back. But while Val and Bobby concentrated on the big picture, Diana could only think about the terror of being kidnapped… and a child who’d lost her mother.
Diana and Bobby got ready and soon the three of them were on the highway to Madison. Bobby automatically climbed behind the wheel, and although Diana would prefer driving, she deferred, offering Val the front passenger seat and climbing into the back.
“I keep going back to Perreth,” Bobby said when they turned onto the highway.
“What about him?” Val asked.
“Since when is he meeting with Ed Dryden?” Bobby glanced at Diana in the rearview mirror. “I’m not saying this just because I hate the piece of shit.”
Diana gave him a nod.
“I just… Dryden has never talked to police before.”
“I didn’t visit,” Diana said. “He had to find some other way to reach me.”
“I suppose that makes sense. But why would Perreth just happen to drive up to the prison this morning? I feel like there’s something I’m missing.”
For a moment, Diana considered telling Bobby what had happened last fall and the way Perreth had been behaving since, then decided against it. Bobby would be furious. There was simply no way he wouldn’t confront Perreth. And what would the detective say? That all he’d done was cover her with his coat. That she was exaggerating to stroke her own ego. That he asked if it was okay, and she said yes.
And what proof could she offer to defend her story?
Nothing.
“Why all this focus on Perreth?” Val asked.
“He didn’t show up when we talked to Tillman yesterday, for one. Not until the whole mess was over. And when Diana’s friend Louis stopped in to tell us about a man he’d seen at Diana’s apartment building at the same time the copycat left that damned music box. Where did Parreth have to duck out to then?”
“You think Perreth might be the copycat?” Diana barely recognized the strangled-sounding voice as her own. She didn’t like Perreth. Every time he gave her one of his creepy smiles, she knew he was imagining her naked and terrified all over again. He was an awful human being. But could he be a serial killer?
“It would explain how the copycat knew where we were going to be yesterday,” Bobby said. “And how he knew where you were staying.”
“Or he could have simply been following you,” Val said. “And don’t forget Curt Tillman.”
Diana didn’t like the idea of her half brother being the copycat either, but she supposed they couldn’t ignore the possibility.
Val continued. “He could be communicating with Dryden through the lawyer they share. He’s Dryden’s son and an ex-con. That still seems more likely than…”
“A cop?” Bobby said.
Val tilted her head in agreement. “That’s my bias showing, I suppose. But it still seems a stretch that Tillman had time to circle through the house, grab a ski mask and overalls, and jump into the cab of that dump truck and run us down. I just don’t see it.”
“Which brings us back to where we started,” Bobby said. “Perreth.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll see if he’s made other visits to the prison and find out what he was up to yesterday. How about that?”
“Thanks, Val.”
“What can I do?” Diana asked. She sure didn’t want to have anything to do with Perreth, but she wasn’t about to sit around twiddling her thumbs either.
“How about those missing persons reports? If we can finally figure out who the second victim was and why he tried to hide her identity…”
“On it.”
The taskforce offices were three times as busy as they’d been the day before, and Bobby and Val were swept into a briefing meeting as soon as they arrived.
Diana hunkered down in her cubicle, watching the flurry around her and scrolling through reports of missing women. She knew the hoopla was only partly because the copycat had abducted a fourth woman. Most of it was centered around the fact that Cerise Copeland was married to the governor’s son.
The family she’d married into shouldn’t make her more important than Nadine Washburn or the two women killed last autumn, but in the real world, Diana knew it did. Just as she knew that missing women who looked like her—blond and Caucasian—were more likely to garner attention from the media than women of other races and ethnicities. The world was not a fair place.
Diana read one report after another.
A wife and mother of three who was traveling four miles to meet her cousin for dinner and never showed. Wearing a tank top, green sweater, and flip flop sandals.
A teenager who skipped school one day and was never seen again. A tattoo of angel wings on one shoulder.
A diabetic woman named Suzanne who never made it to work and left her insulin at home.
Diana read through each listing and noted each detail. She had no idea what she was looking for, but with each tragic story, she imagined the anguish of the family left behind. Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, every state, seemingly every circumstance. And with each story, Diana felt more hopeless. With each, she had to wonder if the woman in question would ever be found.
She clicked on the next report. A resident of a Milwaukee suburb, this woman was really just a girl. Only eighteen, she went to homecoming with a group of friends. But while the friends all returned home from the dance, Krista Hansen never did.
Diana glanced at the boxes detailing the special dress Krista had worn, along with Christian Louboutin shoes borrowed from her mother. Her blond hair had been worn loose. Her makeup had been done just so, and her jewelry… emerald teardrop earrings and a necklace with emeralds and diamond chips.