in a similar black plastic bag. Her name was Laura Lee Branco, and she had been knifed through the heart.
Cronin cut the tie with a pocketknife, and the bag fell open.
An arm tumbled out, almost in slow motion, the palm and fingers outstretched. It took Justine a long, heart- stopping moment to understand what she was seeing.
“What the hell?” Cronin said, pulling back the edges of the bag to reveal a department store dummy. Two other cops tugged the mannequin out of the bag.
Cronin turned over the female form and inspected it. There was no writing on the dummy, no note inside the black bag.
“So what’s the big message?” Cronin asked the air. “You’re the shrink, right?”
“The medium is the message,” Justine said. “It’s a dummy, get it? The implication is that we’re being played.”
Cronin said, “Why, thank you, Justine. That’s very astute. It’s a frickin’ waste of time, that’s what it is. And it definitely isn’t Serena Moses.”
Justine reeled from a wave of relief that was immediately followed by sadness. Serena Moses was still missing, wasn’t she? They still didn’t know where she was, or whether she was alive or dead.
She glared back at Cronin. “So where is Serena, Lieutenant? I guess you’re going to have to keep looking. I hope you’re as good as you think you are.”
Chapter 27
Justine thanked principal Barbara Hatfield for her introduction and then she took the stage of the auditorium.
The newly refurbished Roybal High School had five thousand students, but only the junior and senior girls were permitted to attend her talk that afternoon. The principal had told Justine that her presentation was just too graphic and scary for the younger girls.
Justine thought she understood, but frightening the girls was a necessary by-product of informing them. And most of the girls who’d been killed were in the lower grades. The principal hadn’t budged, though.
“I’m a psychologist,” Justine told the students in the auditorium. “But I’m also investigating the murders of the high school girls that you’ve all read about on the Internet and seen on TV.”
Someone sneezed up front. There was nervous laughter, and Justine waited it out.
“First, I want you to know that Serena Moses is safe. She was hit by a car and taken to a hospital. When she woke up this morning, she told the doctors her name. Serena has a broken arm, but she’s fine and she’ll be back at school soon.”
The kids broke out into applause. Justine smiled. But Serena’s being safe had raised a question for her: How did the killer know to fake an e-mail about her? Had he been watching the girl? Had they been watching her?
“It’s a big relief,” she said, feeling her eyes get moist. “But we have to talk about the girls in this area who weren’t so lucky.”
Justine nodded to the teacher’s assistant who was running her PowerPoint presentation.
The lights went down, and the sweet, smiling face of a teenage girl came onto the screen.
“This is Kayla Brooks. She was a junior at John Marshall. She wanted to be a doctor, but before she even graduated from high school, she was shot four times for no reason at all.
“Her life, her future, the children she might have had, the doctor she might have become-all of that is over.”
The pictures of Kayla’s body came up on the screen, and the sound of girls crying out almost tore Justine apart. She had to keep going. Bethany ’s picture was next, then Jenny, a student at this school, and then the rest of the names and pictures and stories, including that of Connie Yu, who had died only five days ago.
“We know that whoever killed these girls had information about them that he used to gain their trust.”
Justine explained about Connie’s recovered cell phone and the text message from an unlisted phone.
“Girls, Connie’s friend did not text her. This was a fake message, a trick-and it worked. So how can you know if someone is trying to fake you out?
“If anyone, anyone at all, asks you to go somewhere alone, don’t go. Tell the girls in the lower grades, don’t go anywhere alone. Do you understand?”
There was a sibilant chorus of girls’ voices saying yes.
“I want everyone to stand up,” Justine said. “And I want you to repeat something after me.”
There was the shuffling sound of a thousand kids getting to their feet, seats slapping against the chair backs, books ringing as they hit the floor.
The voices sang out in ragged unison, following Justine’s words. “I promise. I won’t go anywhere. Alone.”
Justine hoped that she’d reached the girls. But she was still afraid. That one of these girls was thinking she was special, that she knew better than Justine, that she was the one who would never die.
Chapter 28
Justine stepped out of the high school and onto West Second Street. She had just opened her phone when a black car swept up to the curb. The window buzzed down.
“Need a lift, lady?”
“Bobby. What are you doing here?”
“Just looking after my girl. Get in, Justine. I’ll drive you to your office.”
“I was just calling a Town Car. What timing. Thanks.”
She went around to the passenger side of his Beemer and got inside. She leaned over for Bobby’s kiss.
“How did it go with the kids?” he asked, pulling the car into the stream of traffic.
“Pretty good, I think. If they ever listen to anyone over thirty.”
“You don’t look over thirty, sweetie. Not a day, not a minute.”
“What do you want, Bobby? What else do you want?”
“Yeah. There is something. Uh, Justine, I wanted to tell you before this gets out. I’m thinking of running for governor. I’ve been approached by the DNC. Financial backing is there for me if I want it. It would be a hard race but worth it if I won. The powers that be think I have a good chance. Bill Clinton called me.”
“This is kind of sudden, isn’t it?”
“I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I didn’t want to say anything until I’d made up my mind to take the idea seriously.”
She didn’t show it, but Justine was stunned by the announcement. She told Bobby he’d make a great governor, and she believed he would-but her heart was sinking. She had feelings for Bobby. He was the first man she’d been able to trust since she and Jack had broken up. If Bobby became governor, he’d move to Sacramento. Then what would happen? Where would she be?
“It would be great if we could find the dirtbag who’s killing the schoolgirls,” Bobby was saying. “In fact, it’s got to be done. A conviction would really help me right now.”
“Sure,” Justine said. She felt a chill coming off the air-conditioning and dialed it down. Bobby seemed to be telling her something with a lot of subtext. So what was the real message?
If he was elected governor, did he want her to go with him to Sacramento? If so, as Diane Keaton had famously asked Warren Beatty in Reds, “As what?” Justine remembered that Bobby had taken a lot of heat from the police commissioner when he’d hired Private to work the Schoolgirl case. She hadn’t questioned his motive for a second. If anything, she thought Bobby had brought in Private because the case was so important to her.
But now it seemed like maybe he was intensely involved in this case because it was important to him.
Bobby braked at a light and said, “You’re quiet, Justine.”
“I’m thinking about you as Governor Petino. You’d be good. That’s all it is.”
