Leonardo.
She’s right, of course; about all of it. My obsession with Leonardo, in particular, has turned him into a sort of bogeyman over the years; the one who got away; the twisted enigma who leaves his calling card upon the ground. Heather knows about him from her time with the unit. Even then, she told me I was obsessing over him too much, letting him get under my skin. She was right, of course. But I couldn’t let it go then, and I can’t let it go now. The fact that Leonardo’s shine keeps reappearing at Bellis Fair Mall only emphasizes my inability to identify and capture him.
The phone is quiet as Heather waits.
“Thanks … for listening,” I finally manage.
“You’ll get him,” she says in that soft, soothing voice. I don’t know if she means Sad Face or Leonardo.
It doesn’t matter.
July 7, 1:13 P.M.
Tami enters the conference room and lingers near the door. I can feel her eyes on us, but Jimmy and I barely stir from our reading. We’re determined to find some overlooked clue or seemingly innocuous tidbit tucked away in one of the case reports. Something—anything—that will guide us to Sad Face.
The case narratives are starting to blur together and it seems I’ve read the same pages from the same reports a dozen times. Still, what else can I do? Lauren is dead, Susan is missing, and the Swanson boy is clinging to life in the hospital.
We have nothing.
As suspected, Sad Face stole the Swansons’ truck to carry out the abduction and then returned it to the driveway where he found it, once again leaving no prints and no clues. It’s maddening—frightening.
I haven’t eaten much in the last couple days, and I’m just unwrapping a Snickers bar when my pocket rings. I set the candy bar aside and fish out the cell phone. There’s an odd tone to Diane’s voice when I answer. It’s a tone I’ve heard before and, like Pavlov’s dog, my heart responds to the stimuli, pounding—thump, thump, thump—louder and quicker in anticipation.
This is it: the end, the last piece of the puzzle.
I can tell.
Diane is half Vulcan when it comes to masking her emotions, at least when she wants to, but she fails when she succeeds. When she solves a puzzle, the mask is ripped away and her emotions run raw and open, like a weeping wound. Her voice reflects every feeling: joy at solving the puzzle, sorrow for the wreckage of victims along the way, relief that the end is in sight, horror after staring too long into the abyss.
“What is it?” I press, my voice husky and low, while in my head I’m screaming, WHAT IS IT, DIANE? WHAT IS IT?
“I have something,” Diane repeats, “something that changes everything.”
She pauses, probably because she can’t believe it herself, but my head is about to explode and I fight to control my words, my heart, my head as I say, “Go on,” in a quiet, settled voice. “You’re on speaker.”
“I was staring at my ficus tree this morning,” she says, every syllable ripe with the tone. “Just sitting and staring at it,” she continues. “Not admiring its leaves or wondering why its trunk grows the way it does, not even wondering how many days it’s been since I watered it last, but staring at it and not seeing it. Have you ever done that, stared at something even though you’re not really looking at it?”
“Sure,” I say. More than she will ever know.
“Why did he switch his pattern?” she blurts.
“What do you mean?”
“Sad Face,” she says. “Why did he switch his pattern?”
“You mean the cars?”
“That’s what I was mulling over while I stared at my ficus: the cars, Jimmy’s analysis. Sad Face had a pattern going, an MO that seemed to work. The first five victims were abducted using their own vehicles. Then, after Ashley Sprague, he changes things up. How come? Why take the extra risk of stealing a car instead of using the victim’s?”
Jimmy and I look at each other, and Jimmy says, “Well … there are probably a number of reasons—”
“That was just rhetorical, dear,” Diane interrupts, and without pausing for breath she plunges on. “When he stopped using the victims’ cars and started stealing them it made me wonder if something happened that made him change, something that scared him or put him at risk or was more convenient. You wouldn’t believe the number and types of searches I’ve done over the last few days. I even checked all the new and used vehicles purchased in the Redding area during the three months between Ashley’s disappearance and Natalie Shoemaker’s disappearance, just in case he bought a car of his own to use before deciding to switch to stolen vehicles.
“This morning—after staring at my ficus for the better part of an hour—it hit me. I ran Ashley’s license plate and there it was, right in front of me, where it had been all along.” She pauses, but only for a second. “On the night of her disappearance, well after midnight, Ashley’s car was stopped by CHP on State Route 36 about ten miles outside of Red Bluff.”
“Did you find that in a citation, or an incident report?” I ask.
“A citation: ten over the speed limit.”
“Does the citation say where she was going, or where she came from?”
“You mean he.”
“He?”
“He,” Diane repeats. “He claimed he had just dropped his daughter, Ashley Sprague, at the Arcata Airport in McKinleyville and was on the way back to their apartment in Red Bluff.”
“That doesn’t fit,” Jimmy says. “Ashley’s father passed away when she was young.”
“Good memory,” Diane coos, “almost as good as mine. Ashley’s father was Walter Sprague, who died in a boating accident when Ashley was seven. Her mother never remarried.”
“So … who was in the car?” Jimmy’s voice is urgent, strained.
Diane lets the question hang in the air, savoring the moment. I sometimes think she missed her calling as a stage actress or a politician.
“Diane?”