After her second day of ride-alongs, Livia made a quick stop home on Tuesday evening. Kent Chapple had so far dubbed Livia’s time on ride-alongs as “rot week” since her third transport was also of a decaying body that had met with death days before. Today, she and the scene investigators had gone to the home of Gertrude Wilkes, a ninety-year-old woman who police found dead under the covers of her bed. Her body sat for nearly two weeks, they guessed, before the mailman reported the address to authorities when he couldn’t stuff the mailbox any longer. With no family to check on her, the house was bubbling with the smell of death when police opened the door early that morning. By the time Livia arrived with Sanj and Kent, the odor had faded slightly, aided by the cops who had coffee fiercely boiling on the stove and every door and window open wide. Despite their efforts, when Livia entered the elderly woman’s house, she had immediately reached for the VapoRub. Kent simply inhaled deeply as he walked past her.

The autopsy would later prove Mrs. Wilkes had died peacefully in her sleep of congestive heart failure, and though no family members were still living to hear this, it comforted Livia that death had come so gently. It was also satisfying that no one besides the morgue crew and police would know this poor woman’s body sat rotting for two weeks simply because no one was left in this world who loved her.

As Livia entered the foyer of her home on Tuesday evening, she unclipped the bobby pin that held her hair in a tight bun and let it fall to her shoulders. She reached for a strand and smelled it.

“Damn,” she said.

Death had a way of permeating things—clothes and shoes were most common. But hair was the worst. Despite the tight bun Maggie Larson had taught her, some part of poor Mrs. Wilkes had come home with Livia. She checked her watch. There was time for a quick shower. As she turned on the water, she hoped Kent Chapple was wrong about the rest of the week. Death rot was getting old in a hurry.

Under the shower, Livia mentally reviewed what she had learned from her search the night before after returning home with Casey Delevan’s files. She read every article he had collected on Nancy Dee, who disappeared from a small Virginia town without a trace and turned up dead six months later. Unlike Gertrude Wilkes, Nancy Dee had not died peacefully in her sleep. And sadly, she had plenty of family around to hear the morbid details. Her body was buried in a shallow grave in the woods and discovered by a roaming dog and its owner.

Livia also read about Paula D’Amato, a Georgia Tech freshman who went missing eight months before Nancy Dee, and whose whereabouts were still a mystery. Diana Wells, the third girl profiled in Casey Delevan’s drawer, was harder to figure. Some quick Google stalking Monday night told Livia that Diana Wells was a student at Elizabeth City State University. Livia had managed to track down a phone number and, earlier in the day while she was on the way to Gertrude Wilkes’s house, had reached Diana Wells.

Out of the shower and with the smell of death gone from her hair, Livia made the long drive back to Emerson Bay and entered the Starbucks in East Bay. For a place that sold coffee and pastries, it was packed at eight p.m. with kids on laptops plugged into tabletop outlets, students in various modes of study, and couples talking over cappuccinos.

Taking a seat at the bar, Livia gave three women expectant looks when they entered, offering eye contact and a small smile. They each ignored her. A fourth woman walked in with similar searching eyes, scanning the café until her gaze fell on Livia, who held up her hand in a gentle wave. The woman came over as Livia stood up.

“Diana?”

“Yeah. Are you Dr. Cutty?”

“Yes, thanks for meeting me.”

Diana Wells held a confused look on her face, a deep crease forming between her eyebrows. “I guess I was expecting someone older.”

“I just finished my residency. Can I get you a coffee?”

“Yeah, I’ll have a vanilla latte.”

Seated across from each other a few minutes later, Livia pulled out a yellow legal pad. She observed Diana Wells. An overweight girl, one side of her head was shaved nearly bald, with a sudden part that gave way to a wave of purple hair combed to the side. A nose ring and a lip ring and too much makeup begged for discovery and attention.

“I don’t want to waste your time, Diana, so I’ll get right to the point. How did you know Casey Delevan?”

“I didn’t really know him. I mean, I didn’t even know his last name until I saw him on the news as the guy who jumped from Points Bridge. I just met him once.” There was a short pause. “You really pulled him out of the bay?”

“Not exactly. I did the autopsy on him. How did you meet him?” Livia asked, trying to find a way to elicit information from this girl without mentioning that Diana was profiled in Casey Delevan’s drawer along with two other girls—one dead, the other missing—and not daring to discuss her suspicion that Diana Wells was next on his list.

“At a bar,” Diana said.

Livia waited.

“Look, I talked to the police about this already.”

“About Casey Delevan?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“That summer,” Diana said. “The summer I tried to join the club.”

Livia cocked her head to the side. “What club?”

Diana looked at Livia with another puzzled expression. “The Capture Club. I thought that’s what you were calling about.”

Livia contemplated the best approach to handle Diana Wells and decided honesty was easiest.

“There were some confusing findings in the postmortem exam. I’m trying to get some more information about Casey Delevan from people who knew him.”

“Confusing, like, he didn’t jump from the bridge?”

Livia opened her palms and shook her head. “We’re not sure. Tell me about this club.”

“He called it the Capture Club.”

“Casey?”

“Yeah. It was a bunch of people who talked about missing persons cases.”

“Talked about them, how?”

“I don’t know, just, discussed them. All the details, what the cops knew, and their own theories.”

“Cases from around here?”

“From everywhere. Around the country. Around the world, really. I found out about it after I started talking with Casey in online chat rooms.”

“So you met him online?”

“Yeah. No, not really. I mean, I didn’t know his name when I was talking to him online. In the chat rooms he just told me about the club and that he was into missing persons cases just like I was, and that if I was interested in joining the club I could become a member.”

“And were you interested?”

“Yeah,” Diana said, shrugging as if others’ judgment meant nothing to her. “I was into that stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“Kidnappings.”

“In what way?”

“Curious about them. I wanted to know what happened to the people who were taken. I wanted to follow their stories and see what became of them.” Diana shrugged again. “Same as anyone else who reads Events magazine when a missing girl is plastered on its cover.”

“Okay,” Livia said. “Did you join this club?”

“I wanted to but . . .”

Livia waited.

“To become a member you have to go through an abduction. A fake one.”

“You have to agree to be kidnapped?”

“All I said,” Diana continued in a defensive tone, “was that I was interested in the club. I never agreed to the abduction, just said that it sounded cool. Then they surprised me and made me believe it was real. I was drunk the night I met Casey. I had no idea he was the guy from the chat rooms. He made me think he was interested in me. He flirted with me. And at the end of the night, I went with him, got into his car thinking we were going to a late-night party. That’s when it happened.”

“When what happened?”

“They put a bag over my head, tied me up, and brought me to some abandoned building.”

“Christ,” Livia said.

“But I was so hysterical—I think I went into shock or something—they ended up driving me back to the bar and leaving me in the parking lot.”

“He didn’t hurt you?”

“No. Not physically.”

“Did you ever see Casey again?”

“Never. Until he was on the news a few weeks ago.”

“And you went to the police about this? Afterward?”

“My parents made me.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. They said they never found anything about the club, and that I was a willing participant.”

Livia looked down at the notes she had scribbled. “You said Casey was with a friend. Did you know him?”

“Two friends. A guy and a girl. I didn’t know them. The girl was the one who put the bag over my head after I got in his car.”

“How many were there?”

“In the car? Just Casey and his friends. But after they brought me to that abandoned building, there were lots. Like, twenty or more. The whole club, I guess. But before I saw everyone in the club, it was just Casey and the girl. They tied me to a chair and whispered all these horrible things in my ear. The girl was telling me the things they were going to do to me. All these nasty, disgusting things.

“You ever see this girl?”

“No. She was at the bar with Casey, but I never paid attention to her. And when we were in the car, she was in the backseat and it was too dark to see her. Then she put the bag over my head.”

Livia put her pen to the page. “You know this girl’s name. The one who put the bag over your head?”

“Yeah,” Diana said. “He called her Nicole.”

CHAPTER 21