“A team of photo experts in Bombay are working on it for me. I’ve got TV dinners in my freezer that are older than them, and I don’t understand a damn thing they do, but they’re good. I passed along what you said about wanting to see the pores on his face.”

They fell into a thoughtful silence, then Gif said, “We know your impressions of the couple next door. What do you think their impressions are of you?”

“While they were cleaning up the kitchen, he commented on my attire.”

“Your attire?”

“That’s the word he used. He said I dressed like a frat boy on his way to a keg bust.”

They chuckled. Gif asked, “What did she say?”

“That they were almost out of dishwashing soap.”

“Nothing more about you?”

“That was it. They finished up, turned out the downstairs lights. I think they’ve called it a night.” He didn’t want to think about them in bed together doing anything except sleeping. Or even that.

The optimistic Gif said, “Well, you’ve made some progress.”

Mike, ever Eeyore, said, “You’ve only got ten more days to determine whether or not it’s him.”

“It’s him.”

“You want—”

“It’s him, Gif. He smiles, he’s pleasant, but open a vein and ice water would pour out of it. He’s abnormally vigilant. Like last night. It was like he was waiting and watching to see if I would venture onto his property. Who notices when a UPS truck is on the block and where it stops?”

“I do,” said Gif.

Mike snorted with disdain.

Drex continued. “He doesn’t give me access to anything he’s touched.”

“Like what?”

Only now did he share with them the business about the beer bottle. “It was a neighborly gesture, but why would he take back the beer when I hadn’t drunk but half of it? He didn’t want me to have that bottle with his prints on it.”

“But our unsub is a ghost. Nobody has his prints. Nobody even knows who he is. These women up and disappeared, but there’s never been a crime scene.”

“Until Marian Harris’s body was found,” Drex said. “Less than one hundred days ago. That’s bound to have fueled his innate paranoia and put him on edge.”

“But forensics didn’t yield anything.”

“We know that, Gif, but he doesn’t.”

Mike made a grunting sound acknowledging Drex’s point. “That niggling doubt would make him wary of anyone moving in next door.”

“Exactly.”

Gif wasn’t convinced. “I don’t know. That’s all conjecture. We’ve gotta get something solid.”

“I’m aware of that,” Drex said. “Mike, in any of the disappearance cases, was there any evidence with handwriting on it? Not the victim’s. Not a named someone’s. Handwriting that investigators never attached to a specific person. Could be anything. A note, shopping list, receipt. Anything.”

“I’ll have to check it out.”

“Do. I asked Jasper for a list of recommended restaurants. He told me he’d jot some down. He—Hold on. What the hell’s this?”

“What?” Gif had needlessly lowered his voice to a whisper.

“While we’ve been talking, I’ve been trying out my new binoculars. Jasper just walked into their kitchen.”

“A midnight snack,” Mike said.

“In the dark?” Drex said. “He hasn’t turned on any lights. He’s using his phone’s flashlight.”

“That’s weird.”

“Maybe not,” Drex said.

“Why? What’s he doing?”

Drex blew out his breath. “He went straight to the spot where he caught me crouching down.”

“Oh, shit,” Gif groaned.

Mike muttered something more profane.

Drex watched Jasper go down on one knee and bend toward the floor until his head almost touched it. He shone the light along the baseboard and underneath the cabinet. “He’s looking for it. Feeling around.”

“He didn’t buy your lost skewer excuse.”

“We are royally screwed,” Mike said.

Drex lowered the binoculars and grinned into the darkness. “We would be if that’s where I had planted the bug.”

Chapter 9

Talia?”

She raised her head from reading off her tablet and looked across the breakfast table at Jasper. “Sorry. I was catching up on the news.”

He was staring thoughtfully into his coffee cup. “When I got back from the store last night, you and Drex were so engrossed in your conversation, neither of you realized I was there until I spoke. What were you talking about?”

“His boyhood in Alaska.”

Jasper looked at her and sputtered a laugh. “Alaska?”

“Of all places.”

“Anchorage?”

She shook her head. “Remote, off-the-map spots. Another cup of coffee?”

“No thank you.”

She left the table to make herself a refill using the fancy machine she’d given Jasper for Christmas. It had taken her weeks to learn how to operate it, and she was still intimidated by the technology. While she waited for it to go through the brewing process, she filled Jasper in on what Drex had told her about his upbringing.

He said, “Sounds very rugged and romantic.”

“Or bleak.”

“It strikes me as a woeful tale spun by an aspiring novelist who’s creating a rakish persona for himself, fashioning himself after Jack London or Ernest Hemingway.”

She returned to the table and curled a leg beneath her as she sat down. “You think he made it up?”

“Talia, it reeks of hogwash.”

She laughed, sipped her coffee, picked up the one remaining bite of cupcake on her plate, and held it out for Jasper. “Last chance, or it’s all mine.”

“I wouldn’t dream of depriving you.”

She popped the bite into her mouth. “Ummm. Chocolate cupcake. The breakfast of champions.” She washed down the cake with another sip of coffee. As she returned her cup to the saucer, she said, “If Drex is lying to impress, why hasn’t he regaled us with stories of derring-do in the wilds of Alaska? He does the opposite. When it comes to talking about himself, he artfully changes topics.”

Jasper said, “One wonders why.”

“Apparently you wonder why.”

“You don’t? You’ve been taken in by the dimple?”

She frowned with exasperation. “Please. Give me some credit. I see through his practiced charm, and I’ve told him so.” She moistened the tip of her finger and used it to collect the remaining crumbs on her plate, then licked them off, the action giving her time to formulate an opinion.

As she moved aside the empty plate, she said, “I think the basics of the childhood he described are probably true, but he might have embellished them for dramatic effect.”

“That’s what bothers me. Why would he want to create an effect?”

“For his own amusement?” she said, raising a shoulder. “Or, as you said, to make his biography more colorful and adventuresome, a marketable background a publisher would jump at.”