Livia stared at the book in his hands. Her face stayed stoic but her mind was frantic. Nicole had disappeared on Saturday, August twentieth, from a beach party that most of Emerson Bay High seniors had attended. Livia remembered Art Munson, the landlord who reported Casey missing in November. With three months of rent prepaid, it’s possible Casey disappeared in August along with Nicole. And it was possible that the time of death, determined by the anthropology department at the OCME to be twelve to eighteen months, was that same weekend.

Her thoughts veered in unorganized directions and for a moment Dr. Cutty, who was trained to take random discoveries and make sense of them, stood with no tools to collect the information she was gathering, no ability to put the pieces together into anything cohesive. The random bits of knowledge popped into her mind—about the weekend Nicole went missing and that it might have coincided with Casey’s disappearance. About the two of them dating. About the perverse group called the Capture Club. About Casey Delevan’s body turning up on her autopsy table. Her mind flashed back to Dr. Larson and the skewers she had used to probe the mysterious piercings in Casey’s skull. The “shovel” contusions on his upper arms. His shirt caked in clay from the ground in which he was originally buried. The ropes and the cinder blocks and the fisherman who had pulled him from the bottom of the bay.

Livia’s thoughts congealed into a single question. She asked it before she knew it was on her tongue. “Were you part of the Capture Club?”

“Shit,” Nate said with a smile. He blew diluted smoke from the corner of his mouth. “How do you know about the club?”

“We’re finding all sorts of things out about your pal Casey. I talked to a girl named Diana Wells. Know her?”

“Yeah, I know her,” Nate said without hesitation.

“She doesn’t have flattering things to say about your little club.”

“That’s ’cause she couldn’t deal with it. Little psycho went ballistic during her initiation. Couldn’t handle the take, so we had to cut her loose. First time we ever did that—stopped in the middle of an initiation. But we had no choice. She was throwing a fit. Thought she might have a seizure.” Nate laughed as he reminisced. “Holy shit, it was a mess. We nailed her ass good.”

“Sounds like it,” Livia said. “Tell me about the Capture Club.”

“Just a bunch of stoner kids out for a thrill. We were into that sort of thing back then. A fetish, I guess some people would say. Couldn’t get enough of kidnappings and missing people. Used to talk about all the interesting ones. We dissected that shit. Like that girl who went missing in the Bahamas. ’Member her? Still, like six years later, everyone’s trying to figure out what happened to her. Everyone’s got a theory. There was an HBO special on her. Casey got a copy and we watched it at one of the meetings. The club, we made our own guesses and talked about all that stuff.”

Livia nodded, trying to hide the ugly look her face wanted to make.

“I still read about that stuff all the time,” Nate said. “It’s just insane, you know, that somebody like, steals somebody else. Not their car, not their money. Actually steals the person! Yeah, the club was dark but so’s the whole country. When someone important goes missing, or the case is interesting enough, everybody has the same fetish. Whole world, really. No one admits it, but it’s true. In the club, nobody judged. We all understood.” Another drag of his smoke and an amused look. “Everyone hides under the cover of news watching and sadness for the victim and their family. Fine. Be sad. That’s normal. But don’t pretend you’re not curious.”

“Tell me about the initiations.”

“That was the thrill of the club. To get in, you had to agree to be taken. That was a rush, on either side of it.” He laughed. “We had some epic takes, too.”

“Let me try to understand. You all agreed to kidnap one another?”

“Nah, it wasn’t like that. You don’t just agree to it, that wouldn’t work. It wasn’t anything you expected. Casey was the contact guy who went online and found people who were interested in becoming members. As soon as Casey was convinced that a new potential member would be up for the thrill and would be cool with it”—Nate raised his eyebrows—“the take was on. No one ever saw it coming. If you expected to get taken, what’s the point? If it’s gonna work, you gotta be scared. I mean terrified.”

“Like Diana Wells.”

Nate just smiled and blew smoke into the night air. “Not everyone was cut out for the club.”

“And Casey was, what? In charge of the club?”

“He was the man.”

“Who else did you guys talk about at the meetings? What other cases?”

“Shit. Lots. Some old stuff, like sixties old. But mostly current stuff.”

“Like what?”

“Anything local, or even close, was always a big topic.”

“You guys ever talk about Megan McDonald and Nicole Cutty?”

Nate looked at Livia, the corners of his eye creased slightly out of suspicion. “You sure you’re not a cop?”

“I’m sure. You know who those girls are? Megan and Nicole?”

“’Course I do.”

“Yeah? Nicole Cutty was my sister.”

“No shit?”

Livia cocked her head. “No shit. Casey and the club ever talk about Nicole or Megan?”

“You mean about them going missing? No.”

“No? Why not? Can’t get more high profile than Megan McDonald. Plus, they were local girls. Probably had you guys salivating with such a big case being so close.”

“Totally. I was fascinated. Still am. Follow the McDonald girl online and watch her stuff. Even read her book. But there’s no more club. Casey organized everything. So when he took off, the club broke up. We tried to get together a few times. Used to meet down at the old Coleman’s brewhouse, but with Casey gone it wasn’t the same.” Nate smiled and shook his head. “So Nicole was your sister?”

Livia nodded. “She was.”

Nate gave another crooked smile. “She was one of the club’s most epic takes. She wanted it dark and dirty. Most people couldn’t handle what we did to Nicole. She loved it.”

Livia swallowed hard, pushing down whatever was trying to come up her throat. “So Nicole was part of your club?”

Nate frowned like everyone should know this. “Not just part of it. She had Casey all wrapped up. So whatever she wanted, she got.”

Livia blinked and tried to make sense of what she was hearing. “I don’t understand.”

He finished the cigarette, tossed it in the grass with the dandelions and stray beer cans. “Just being straight with you, Casey and Nicole were screwing and running the club. Like, together. Whatever Casey was into, your sister was into. The whole thing with Diana Wells went bad because Nicole took it too far and Casey went along with it.”

The words pushed Livia back half a step until she, too, rested on the railing opposite Nate. She tried to put on a casual expression. “You ever tell the police any of this?”

“I don’t ever tell the police anything.”

“They ever talk to you?”

“The police? Shit no.”

“You sure?”

“I’d know if the cops talked to me, trust me.”

“But Nicole goes missing, it’s all over the news. Megan McDonald, too. At the same time, Casey stops showing up for work. You ever stop to think if there’s a connection?”

Nate shrugged. “I just figured with Nicole being gone, Casey took off to avoid any heat from the cops. Boyfriend’s always under the gun, know what I mean?”

Nate took out another cigarette, offered the pack to Livia.

“No, thanks,” she said. “So this club, it’s no more?”

“Poof,” Nate said, lighting his Bic. He put the flame to the tip of his Marlboro. “Gone, just like that.” He released his finger and the flame died.

“But you still follow the stories, right? Missing girls?”

“It’s in my blood, or whatever they call it. You know?”

“DNA.”

“Right. It’s in my DNA. Ain’t my fault, it’s just part of me.”

“You’ve got some sick DNA, Mr. Theros.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“You mind if I come back and ask some more questions if anything else comes up about Casey?”

“Sure, whatever.”

Livia walked off the patio.

“So Casey’s really dead?”

“Afraid so,” Livia said over her shoulder.

“Sorry about Nicole. She was a cool chick.”

Livia lifted her chin and walked across the trash-filled front lawn, a very different picture of her younger sister forming in her mind. Gone was the image of Nicole lugging Harry Potter books into her bed, shadowed now by the aura of a girl clad in black, desperate for attention and willing to go to great lengths to find it.

CHAPTER 22