“Sara loves cooking,” said Nobody. “Why would anyone have to cook for her?”
“Because there’s a meal-share program for the out-of-town police,” said Mills, snapping his fingers. “I saw the sign-up sheet on the wall at the station. Hang on.” He dialed his phone and held it to his ear, waiting while it rang. “Hi! This is Agent Mills again, I believe we spoke earlier today? That’s right. Absolutely charming. Listen, I have one more question about Officer Glassman, if you don’t mind. Who was on the list to feed him last night? Yeah, I can wait.” He looked at us. “She’s checking the chart. Set that down really carefully so they can’t tell we moved it.” I set Officer Glassman’s face back into his plate, trying to match the impression in the food exactly. “Whoa,” said Mills suddenly. “Are you kidding me? What idiot set that up?” Nobody and I looked at each other, then back at him. “Okay, well, my apologies first of all, and second, you’re going to want to send some black-and-whites to pick her up immediately, and then send some more on over to the Glassman residence. That’s right. As soon as you can. And then pack up your desk, because you’re fired—I know I don’t have the authority, and I’m sorry, but the writing’s on the wall after that food chart you put together. Thanks, bye-bye.”
He looked at us, shaking his head. “This casserole came from Brielle Butler, Jessica’s sister.” He shoved his phone into his pocket and walked back out toward the porch. “Effing eff.”
21
Brielle was at home when the police arrived, planning Jessica’s funeral with her parents and little brother. We weren’t there for the arrest, obviously, but we were back in the station by the time they brought her in. They were surprisingly gentle with her. I’d always heard that cops got really rough with people who kill other cops, but I guess they hated traitorous cop pedophiles more, just like Marci had said. They practically treated her like royalty.
Not that this made Brielle any less arrested.
“She looks sad,” said Nobody. I glanced at her warily, studying her face; those kind of dreamy, semilucid statements often marked a change in personality. Had the sight of Brielle brought this one on? Did the nature of the trigger affect which new girl would take over? I looked back at the closed door of the interrogation room, wondering who would be sitting beside me in a moment. Marci again? One of the others? Or someone completely new?
Agent Mills sat down beside us. “The chief’s assistant swears she changed the food rotation at the last minute, precisely because she didn’t want the Butler family making food for the Glassmans—not that she thought they were capable of poisoning anyone, obviously, but because she didn’t want to torture them with the association. Swears up and down she canceled the meal completely. Brielle and her parents insist the same thing.”
I glanced at Nobody again. She was staring intently at her hands. “So who made the food last night?”
“The community volunteer in charge of the food rotation was, you guessed it, Sara Glassman. So we don’t know who she picked in the last-minute switch. We can search her house for a written record as soon as the forensics team is done with it, but barring that, our only chance of tracing the food is if someone can identify the casserole dish.” He leaned back in his chair, rubbing the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. “I miss the days of BTK.”
“You look too young to have worked BTK,” I said. “He was caught years ago.”
“True,” said Mills, “and thank you. But I was in college during that whole final thing, when he came out of retirement and sent new letters and all that stuff with the floppy disk and the DNA. That’s why I went into serial killers in the first place—because that investigation was brilliant. Start to finish. The people involved, the procedures they used, the combination of new technology and old school legwork; that’s what I wanted to do. And so I studied and I graduated and I joined the FBI—and it’s gross and full of dead bodies and sick minds, but it’s awesome, you know? I’ve read your file, I know that’s what got you hooked, too. Looking at a crime and using all those pieces to crawl into someone’s head. Like you did with the Glassmans.”