Livia smiled. “Can’t get rid of regret by punching a bag. Isn’t that what you said?”

“Something like that.” Randy sat next to her. “All this frustration have to do with your sister?”

Livia shrugged. Randy listened more carefully than she thought.

“I sat around for a year doing nothing,” Livia said. “At least now I feel like I’m doing something.”

“Feels good to take some action, right?”

Livia nodded and took a sip of water. “I just don’t know how hard to push.”

“Because you’re afraid of what you’re gonna find?”

“Because I’m afraid I won’t be able to do anything when I find it.”

“Well,” Randy said, wiping his face. “You go at it like that and you ain’t gonna find shit. I’ll tell you that much.”

“Go at it like what?”

“With no heart. You want something, you gotta commit to it and go after it. Don’t slow down, don’t stop to think. Just keep moving forward.”

Livia stood up. “And stop throwing my side kicks so often.”

“That too.”

Livia screwed the top onto her water bottle. “I’ve got to run, Randy. Thanks for the spar.”

“Sorry I tossed you like a rag doll.”

“Sorry I flattened your nose with those jabs.”

Randy lifted his chin. “Hope you find what you’re looking for, Doc. With your sister.”

“Thanks.”

“You know, when I was trying to get straight my daddy used to tell me a story about how life works in the Serengeti. Do you know?”

“The African Serengeti?”

“That’s the one. You know how life works there?”

Livia shook her head.

“Each morning when the sun comes up, cresting the horizon and stretching shadows across the sand, every gazelle and every lion opens their eyes. They all understand something. Every gazelle wakes knowing that to survive the day they gotta run faster than the slowest gazelle in the herd. And every lion wakes knowing that to survive the day they gotta run faster than the fastest lion in the pack. That’s life, young lady.”

Livia stared at him. “So the fastest lion gets the slowest gazelle? That’s the point?”

“No.” Randy stood and headed for the showers. “The point is that no matter who you are, you gotta wake up runnin’.”

CHAPTER 30

In addition to two weeks of vacation, forensic fellows at the North Carolina Office of the Chief Medical Examiner were allowed four personal days. Livia used one on Friday. She made the two-hour drive from Raleigh to Emerson Bay and found Megan waiting for her on the same bench outside the courthouse where they met on Monday. Late October, the temperature was in the sixties. The sun was high, the sky blue, and the plaza in front of the county building busy with lunchtime foot traffic. Livia walked onto the cobblestone court and took a seat next to Megan.

“You get everything set up?” Livia asked as she sat down.

Megan nodded. “We’re good.” She checked her watch. “We’ve got twenty minutes before the evidence supervisor takes lunch. Then we’ll have about half an hour by ourselves.”

Livia nodded and let a moment pass. “Megan, I want to ask you something about the night you were abducted.”

“Go ahead.”

Livia diverted her eyes momentarily, working up her courage.

“Look,” Megan said. “I’m not going to fall to pieces if someone other than my shrink asks me about that night. All anyone has wanted for the past year is to see me back to normal. See me healed. You’re the first person who’s asked if I know anything about the night I was taken. You’re the first one who’s bothered to include me in any part of figuring out what happened that night. Ask whatever you want, Livia. And believe me when I tell you that I think of Nicole all the time.”

“I’m realizing that. And before we met, I never considered that it might be hard for you that you made it home and Nicole did not.”

Tears welled again on Megan’s eyelids, like they had Monday evening. “I’m not happy I escaped.” She shook her head and exhaled loudly. “That’s not true. I am happy. But part of me will always grieve for Nicole. The detectives haven’t talked to me in months about anything new. When you called the other day . . . I don’t know, a part of me woke up again. All this garbage about my book helping survivors of abduction is bullshit. But this. What you told me the other day. If we can find a connection between my abductor and the other girl who was taken . . . that will mean something.”

Livia nodded. “In your book, you describe the night you were taken. How accurate is the description?”

“Not very. I remember more now than when it was written.”

“But you never saw the man who took you?”

“Not his face, no.”

Livia reached into her purse and pulled out the photo of Casey Delevan, his arm wrapped around Nicole’s shoulder.

“You know this guy?”

Megan studied the picture. “No. Who is he?”

“He was dating Nicole that summer. His body showed up on my autopsy table a few weeks ago.”

Megan squinted her eyes and waited for an explanation.

“He was found in the bay. He was originally thought to be a jumper. At the morgue, we determined that he’d been killed. A little fieldwork suggests the last time anyone saw him was the weekend you and Nicole were taken.”

Megan stayed quiet as she tried to figure out the implication.

“So,” Livia said. “Besides a connection to Nancy Dee, I’m looking for anything that will help me figure out what might have happened to him.” Livia shrugged. “See if it has any connection to you or Nicole disappearing.”

“I’ve never seen him before. And I didn’t know Nicole was dating anyone. She was . . . I mean, there were some rumors that summer that she and, uh, Matt Wellington were hooking up.”

“The guy you were dating?”

“We were just friends.”

“Have you ever heard of a group called the Capture Club?”

“No, what is it?”

“A group of nuts who get off on abductions. Read about them, study them, discuss them, and even perform them. Mock abductions, anyway.”

“That’s sickening.”

“I agree. This guy,” Livia said, holding up the picture of Casey, “created the club. Nicole was part of it. I don’t know what any of it means. Maybe nothing. But I haven’t been able to calm my thoughts since he landed in my morgue.”

Megan checked her watch. “Let’s see if this helps answer some questions.” She pointed to the courthouse. “We’re late.”

*

They both showed their IDs and passed through the metal detector without a hitch. They walked down the long hallways as justice was practiced beyond the heavy oak double doors of the courtrooms next to them. Lawyers counseled their clients on benches outside the courts, and a hundred defendants of DUI, littering, speeding, and alimony failure wandered the halls and searched for their destinations. Megan opened the door to a stairway and Livia followed her down to the lower level, where there were no windows and no foot traffic. They conquered another long hallway and came to locked double doors, above which read EVIDENCE AND PROPERTY.

Megan used her ID card to unlock the doors. Inside was a vestibule with another locked door and a glass partition next to it, the window slid open. A thirtysomething man in an ugly brown uniform sat on a high stool behind the glass, paging through an auto magazine.

“Hi, Greg,” Megan said.

“You’re late.”

“Sorry.”

Greg looked behind him to make sure he was alone. “My supervisor takes an hour for lunch.” He checked his watch. “Forty-five minutes, now. I’ll give you half an hour to be safe.”

Greg pressed a button from his perch behind the partition and the door buzzed.

“Thanks, Greg. I owe you one,” Megan said.

Livia followed as Megan pulled open the buzzing door and entered the Evidence and Property storage area, where just about every piece of evidence collected from a Montgomery County case was located. In the back corner were rows of metal shelves stacked with cardboard boxes. Megan walked with efficiency to the M’s and pulled a box off the shelf. She’d been here before, Livia determined. Within the isles were waist-high tables. Megan deposited her case box onto one of them and lifted the lid.

“So, what exactly are we looking for?” Megan asked.

“I’m not sure.”