Forty-five minutes later, she struck pay dirt.
She turned back to Joe, excited. “Josiah Tierney Studios. Four weeks after Walsh was almost arrested, he tried again. The Tierney Studios aren’t in the city. They’re in a small town, Milsaro, north of here. Walsh asked Tierney the same thing that he asked Nick. Class pictures. Tierney wasn’t as careful as Nick. He didn’t see any harm in letting him just look at the photos.” She swallowed. “My God, I hope he was right.”
He reached for his cell phone. “Did he give you the names of the elementary schools in Milsaro?”
She nodded. “There were only three. McKeller, Davis, and Campbell. I’ll take McKeller.”
“No, I’ll have to identify myself and maybe tap one of the local law authorities to get the information I need from them. Not everyone in the school systems is as trusting as that ass Tierney.”
She leaned back in her chair and watched him go into high gear. She didn’t like this. It was driving her crazy not to be busy and help. She wanted desperately to know what mischief Walsh had been up to and was equally frantic to know that he had not been successful.
That there had not been another Jenny.
There were lots of them, Jenny had said.
But maybe in his past, maybe not here in this sunny California town.
She jumped to her feet. “I’m going to get a cup of coffee. I’ll bring one for you. Call me if you need me.”
She stood at the coffee machine a long time, sipping black coffee and thinking about Walsh. Nick had thought he was an ordinary pervert, but there was nothing ordinary about him. Why had he been looking at all those photos? Did a certain feature appeal to him when he chose a victim? That could be it. She knew that some killers were drawn to a hair color or the color and shape of the eyes. There was no telling what physical feature might draw them. What had Walsh been looking for when he had taken that second risk after Nick had almost had him arrested?
“Eve.” Joe was standing in the doorway.
Her hand tightened on the cup as she saw his expression. “You found one?”
“Maybe. I can’t be sure.”
“What do you mean?” She followed him back to the desk. “Why aren’t you sure?”
“Because there was the death of a child shortly after Walsh examined those school photos Tierney took.” He pulled up the report on the computer. “An eight-year-old student from McKeller Elementary School three weeks later.” He nodded at the report. “But no foul play was suspected. Donna Prahern drowned in the pond in back of her house early one Saturday morning.”
“Then it was a coincidence. Poor little girl.”
“Except that she could swim like a fish, and no one could figure why she’d be walking along the edge of the pond by herself. The consensus was that she’d slipped on the edge of the pond and hit her head on the rocks bordering the water.”
Her gaze narrowed on his face. “But you have doubts?”
“You know what a suspicious bastard I am. It was too close to the time that Walsh was doing his search.” He was typing into the computer. “So I decided to check and see if there were any other curious coincidences.” He pulled up another report. “Candace Julard, another eight-year-old girl. Another unfortunate accident. She died of smoke inhalation a month after Donna Prahern’s death, when Candace’s mother’s house caught fire from faulty wiring. Again, no foul play suspected; her mother also died in the fire.”
“Candace went to the same school?”
“No, she wasn’t even from the same town. I went a little farther afield to Fillmore, seventy miles south. Candace went to Douglasville Elementary.”
“But we don’t even know if Walsh made the effort to search for her out there.”