newspaper.” He swiped the paper from the table and waggled it at me. “Yesterday’s.”
I poked around the living room as Will checked out the kitchen. “So, this guy seems awfully regular. He’s got milk in the fridge. Some take-out that looks like it’s from—” Will reached into and pulled out a Styrofoam carton. He popped it open. “Ugh, 1974. Nothing crazy. No disembodied heads or anything like that. Does that mean he’s not our kidnapper?”
“No, no, not at all. What do people always say when they interview the neighbors of a serial killer?”
“He had a shrunken head in the linen closet?”
I snorted. “No. They say, ‘He was just a regular guy.’” I picked up a magazine and flipped through it. “Or they say, ‘He kept to himself, mostly.’ Find anything interesting?”
Will turned around and handed me a framed photograph.
“Well, I’ll be.”
“The geezer from the front office.”
“Heddy is not a geezer,” I said, pulling the frame open and sliding the picture out. “Nothing special about this picture. Looks like it was taken at school, pretty recently. Not that Heddy changes much.”
“So we’ve got Janitor Bud in an affair with the school secretary. If they weren’t both a thousand years old, it would almost be sexy.”
I rolled my eyes and tapped the glass. “Do you think Heddy knows about Bud’s . . . side activity?”
“Whoa, love, we haven’t found a single thing here that indicts Bud as our kidnapper, other than his incriminating normalness.”
“But, Miranda!”
“But Miranda nothing. We’ve broken into a regular guy’s regular old apartment. Other than a fetish for the office bird, nothing is incriminating. Nothing is even slightly out of the ordinary.”
I put my hands on my hips and swung my head. “No, there’s something here. Something that we’re missing. I can feel it. Look for methods of restraint—duct tape, handcuffs, zip ties.”
Will waggled his brows and grinned. “Ooh, kinky. I didn’t really fancy a shag, but okay, I’ll go with it.”
“I mean things that Bud may have used to restrain the girls, you sicko. Look for anything out of the ordinary.”
I heard Will step into the bathroom and pull open the medicine cabinet. “No knockout drugs or Viagra, nothing like that.”
“Keep looking. Bud can’t be that smart. We should also be looking for any evidence of a secondary hiding place. There’s no way he could be keeping Alyssa in here without his neighbors knowing about it. She’s got to be somewhere else. See if you can find a storage container receipt or hotel matches or something. Bud’s our guy, Will, I can feel it. We’ll gather everything we can here and send Alex and the PD in for the kill.”
“You mean, if we can find Bud.”
“We will.”
My chest was feeling light and the blood pulsing through my veins shot a new, hopeful energy through me. We were going to track Bud down. We were going to find Alyssa. And, God as my witness, we were going to find her alive.
I found Bud’s bedroom at the back of the apartment. It was a simple as the rest of the place—a full-sized bed, a bureau, a television set that was probably brand new in 1957, and a single shelf lined with books.
“Bingo.”
Will came up over my left shoulder. “Bingo, what?”
I pointed to the shelf.
“Mystery buff.” A pause. “Oh. That’s different.” He reached over and slid a slim volume from the shelf. “
I slid the rest of the questionable books into my hand. “
“The book of protection spells.”
“Still don’t think Bud is our man?”
“All right, all right.” Will nodded. “I don’t think the books are definitive, but it certainly puts ol’ Bud in the running.” He sat down on the edge of the bed. “So, ol’ Bud lures the girls into his car, brings them—somewhere— strangles them, does the carving and reads from his little spell books here? What was he trying to accomplish?”
“Well, let’s see.” I pulled
“Hm.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Just thought that a spell book for a guy like Bud would be a bit more worn, is all.”
I turned the book over in my hand, checking the spine, then flipping a few more pristine pages. “Well, Lorraine said we were dealing with someone very powerful. Maybe he didn’t use this much because he didn’t need it. It does seem pretty simple for someone so advanced.”
“So our guy is an all-powerful wizard?”
“No, a wizard is something totally separate.”
“Ah, warlock then.”
“No!” I shook my head in a panic, then dropped my voice as though Janitor-Witch Bud would suddenly materialize and turn us into toads or Kardashians. “No, male witches are just called witches. The whole warlock thing? Bad form. It’s an insult. Literally means ‘oath breaker.’”
Will nodded, impressed. “You know a lot about it.”
“You tend to learn quickly when you call Lorraine’s Christmas party date a warlock and he repeatedly dunks you in the punch bowl.”
“Sounds like a lovely fellow.”
“I had a piece of pineapple lodged in my ear until New Year’s. Come on, let’s see what else we can find.”
We worked in companionable silence until Will pulled out the bottom drawer of Bud’s bureau. “I suppose there could be some truth to your theory.”
I rushed over and gawked. Will had last year’s yearbook spread out on his lap. The spine was broken down the center from heavy use, the book flopping open to a photograph of Cathy Ledwith. The smiling, black and white photo was circled in black, but there was a heavy red slash through it. A date was written in the same black ink.
“Oh.” My hackles went up and fear, like an icy breeze, shot down my spine. “That’s the day Cathy went missing.”
“You mean the day she was found.”
“No. When she went missing.”
Will turned a page; two newspaper clippings were carefully folded and pinched in the crease. I didn’t need to open them to know they were from the day Cathy disappeared and the day she was found.
“Trophies?” Will said grimly.
“Could be. What about these?”
Four loose photos were tucked in the back of the book. They were each the standard, posed picture-day photos—bright smiles, heads cocked, fuzzy blue background, Mercy uniforms pressed and impeccable. “Fallon, Alyssa, Kayleigh, Miranda,” I said, as I flipped through each shot. “It’s like a roadmap.”
“Or a catalog.” Will took the photos from me and laid Alyssa’s and Kayleigh’s out on the bed. “He’s got these two.” He picked up Fallon’s photo and eyed me. “Still think they’re partners?”
I swallowed hard. “I—I don’t know.”
Will placed the photo next to Miranda’s. “Then I guess we need to figure out which one of these he is after now.”
I waited outside while Will handed Bud’s key over to Centuri. He hadn’t been gone for a minute when I snatched my phone and hit the speed dial.
