“Then we look for a different motive than pure pleasure. We’ve been looking at Walsh as a child predator. What if he’s not?”
“I don’t know.” She rubbed her temple, trying to banish the ugliness of the past hours. “Okay, why did he target those little girls? The first half a dozen or so we located were the same age as Jenny. Then, as time passed, the ages escalated as well. Nine. Ten … Maybe he was bored with the younger children. Same color eyes and hair.” She stopped. “Blood type was the same as all the other children. O. What about Jenny?” She grabbed her phone and dialed Nalchek. “Nalchek, what was Jenny’s blood type?”
“Just a minute, and I’ll check it.” He came back on the line. “B negative. Is it important?”
“Maybe not. I’m not certain.”
“You sounded urgent. Is there something I should know?”
Yes, he should probably be told about those children, but she wasn’t up to it at the moment. “It’s not urgent. I’ll call you tomorrow.” She hung up and looked at Joe. “That’s one thing that wasn’t the same. B negative.”
“What are you thinking?”
“Not thinking, grabbing for something to hold on to. Okay, that was one thing different. Though it may not have any significance.” She gazed at the fountain. Only hours before, she had sat here with Bonnie and tried to make sense of Jenny and her own connection with her. Now she knew there was no sense to the violence that had rocked the world and destroyed that little girl. But there might be reasons, and they had to find them, so they could find Walsh. “So many deaths. What a monster he must be.” Her hand clenched her phone. “And we haven’t even scratched the surface. Who knows how high the body count is going to rise.” She straightened on the bench. “We should go back. We’ve been following his trail through all these small towns in northern California watching him decimate and destroy with a kind of morbid fascination. It’s time we accepted what he’s doing and pull away and try to stop him from doing it again.” She moistened her lips. “Jenny said when he was thinking about the girl he was targeting, he was excited because she was ‘the one’ at last. I didn’t realize what that could mean, but I’m beginning to see now. She was supposed to live in Carmel. But we looked at Carmel records and didn’t find any photos of anyone resembling Jenny. Maybe Jenny was wrong.”
“You believe he was going to try to arrange another ‘accident’ in Carmel or wherever?”
“It may not have to seem like an accident. How do we know? He might be planning to allow himself a sudden explosion of pleasure. Maybe this girl is the finale he’s been working toward.” She repeated, “‘She’s the one,’ remember.”
“How could I forget?” He helped her to her feet. “Okay, we’ll skip to a few towns near Carmel and go looking for little girls who meet the same criteria as the ones we’ve located.” He paused. “But, as you noticed, the ages changed with the dates of the kills. The last one in Silicon Valley was last September and she was ten years old. We should probably be looking for a ten-or eleven-year-old.”
Eve nodded. “We’ll check for both.” She started for the gates. “And what did he mean, ‘She’s the one’? I’m beginning to have a terrible feeling that I have an idea about—” Her cell phone rang, and she glanced down at it impatiently.
No ID.
But it could be someone from Nalchek’s office.
She answered it. “Eve Duncan.”
“You’re very interfering, you know. You’ve caused me a good deal of trouble. I don’t like the idea of having to deal with you twice.”
She went rigid. She knew that voice. She pressed the speaker. “And you think killing an innocent FedEx driver is just trouble?”
Joe’s eyes narrowed as he leaned forward.
“Ah, you remember me? I thought you might. You’re very sharp.”
“Why shouldn’t I remember you? You didn’t even try to disguise your voice when you were pretending to be that dispatcher, Walsh.”