“So what does that mean?” Zach asked. “That we just got the fax, I mean. You think Joe doesn’t believe Adam is guilty?”
Jeremy hesitated. “I don’t know. I didn’t mention this to anyone else. Brad was already crazy enough.” He glanced at Rowenna. “Anyone could have dropped that card. But it looked as if there was gum stuck to it. And Adam…Adam always has a stick of gum in his mouth. On the other hand, the land where the bodies were found belongs to the MacElroys, so Joe will be questioning them again. Ginny doesn’t have the strength to hurt anyone, but…Dr. MacElroy—”
“He was my pediatrician!” Rowenna snapped.
“And Adam is your friend,” Jeremy reminded her. He turned to his brother. “To answer your question as best I can, Joe’s a good cop, and so far he hasn’t got proof that Adam is guilty, so he’ll follow every lead until he’s sure.”
Zach looked at Rowenna. His tone was gentle. “What do you think?” he asked her.
She shook her head, looking anguished. “I don’t know. But…Eve is missing now, too, and…the killer needs seven sacrifices. They’ve only found five dead women, but with Mary and Eve…”
Zach put his hand on hers. “We’ll find them. Both of them.”
“The fourth killer,” Jeremy said, mulling over everything she’d told them earlier about the four killers. “You said they burned his house to the ground. Rowenna, where was that house?”
She looked at him. “I don’t know. It didn’t say.”
“What was his name again?”
“Brisbin. Hank Brisbin.”
“I’ll get on it in the morning,” Zach said.
“No, if you don’t mind, I’d like you two to stop by the MacElroy place tomorrow. Just chat with Ginny. See if she can remember anything else. She’s the one who told us about the lights, and that’s why I was out there to begin with,” Jeremy said.
“I can tell her I’m there to get my fitting,” Rowenna said flatly.
“That’s good, it’s a good reason for you to be there,” Jeremy said. His brother would see things through fresh eyes. That might help.
“Oh!” she said suddenly.
“What?”
“There was a book.”
Both brothers stared at her.
“Brad…told me that the day Mary disappeared, she had a book. A guide to the symbols on old tombstones. They found her purse and her cell phone, but they didn’t find the book. It may not mean anything, but I just thought of it.”
“If we find the book…” Zach mused.
Rowenna sighed. “They sell that book from Boston to Maine, and God knows where else.” She rose. “If you two will excuse me, I’m going to shower and go to bed,” she said.
Jeremy nodded. She had sounded stiff, and he watched her go with a frown. He knew she was upset that one old friend seemed to have gone crazy, another was missing—and he was still suspicious of everyone in her hometown, but even so…
“So this is a breakdown of who was at the bar the night Dinah Green disappeared?” Zach asked, after Rowenna had gone upstairs. “Because some of these people saw her and might have information about who she left with?”
“Yeah. We cleared the guy who was drinking with her of anything to do with Mary’s disappearance,” Jeremy explained. “And I’ll lay you any odds you want that he didn’t kill Dinah or any of the other women.” He gave his brother all his reasons for being certain the killer was local.
Zach agreed and started reading the list of names, starting with the locals. There were a lot of names Jeremy didn’t recognize, but plenty he did, including Adam Llewellyn, Ginny MacElroy, Eric Rolfe and Daniel Mie.
“Hey!” Zach said, catching his attention. “Joe Brentwood was in there that night.”
“Yeah?”
Zachary squinted at the fax. “He paid for three beers at midnight. There’s a note that two other cops were there with him, an Officer O’Reilly and an Officer Macnamara. Celia Preston—there’s a note here, says she’s seventy-one, lives alone and runs a wiccan shop. If it turns out Llewellyn didn’t do it, then you’ve got a hell of a long list of possibles, including three cops.” Zachary shrugged. “But I have to say, Llewellyn didn’t look too sane to me.”
Jeremy took the sheet. “Ginny MacElroy was on the list. That means Nick MacElroy was there, too. Ginny owns the land where we found the first corpse, and either she or the doctor owns the land where we found the remains today.”
“What about Brad?” Zach asked. “What do you want him doing tomorrow?”
Jeremy was thoughtful. “We make him act like a cop. He can call all the out-of-towners on that list, see what he can get from them. We’ve got to keep him busy or he’ll wind up getting himself arrested for harassing the police about Adam.”
“Sounds like a plan. And he may learn something,” Zach said.
Jeremy stood, realizing that he was exhausted. “Make yourself at home. It’s bed for me.”
“Yeah. I’m going to go online, see what I can find out about Brisbin’s house,” Zach told him. “There’s got to be a record somewhere of where it was.”