“I'm sorry, too.”

“I know a lot of the guys who went to the service. She sounded like a really neat lady.”

“She was the best,” Griffin said honestly, and then, because two years wasn't nearly long enough, he had to look away. He fidgeted with the door handle. Fitz put the car in gear. They both cleared their throats.

“So what are you going to do now?” Fitz asked as he pulled away from the curb. “About the case.”

“Return to headquarters and set up command central. Then, I'll probably go for a run.”

“I'll follow up with the crispy corpse. With any luck, we got enough skin to print.”

“Hey, Detective, as long as you're returning home, get me a copy of the College Hill Rapist file.”

Fitz stopped immediately, his foot hitting the brake and stalling the car in the middle of the street. Griffin kind of thought that might happen.

“Come on!” Fitz exclaimed. “Don't let Tawnya get to you. The College Hill case was a good investigation. We had MO, we had opportunity, we had DNA. Took us six months to put it all together, and I'm telling you now, we did just fine. Eddie Como raped those women. End of story.”

“Didn't say he didn't.”

“I don't need the state reviewing my work! That's bullshit.”

“Life sucks and then you die.”

Fitz scowled at him.

Griffin returned the look calmly. “I want the file. The shooting is connected to the case, ergo, I need to learn the case.”

“I told you about the case.”

“You told me your opinions.”

“I'm the lead investigator! I built the goddamn theory of the case, I am the opinion!”

“Then explain this to me: You found Eddie once you started looking at blood drives. And you started looking at blood drives because of the latex strips.”

“Yeah, absolutely.”

“So why did Eddie, who left behind no hair, no fiber, and no fingerprints, leave behind ten latex strips? Why did he on the one hand learn how to cover his tracks, and then on the other hand leave you a virtual calling card?”

“Because criminals are stupid. It's what I like best about them.”

“It's inconsistent.”

“Oh Jesus H. Christ. We didn't plant DNA evidence! We did not frame Eddie Como!”

“Yeah,” Griffin said. “And frankly, Detective, that's what worries me.”

IN SPITE OF HIS WORDS, GRIFFIN DIDN'T HEAD IMMEDIATELY back to police headquarters in North Scituate. Instead, operating on a hunch, he returned to the rue de l'espoir restaurant in downtown Providence. It was 3:30. The three women definitely had had plenty of time to finish their mugs of chai and head out.

Except then he started thinking. Where would they go? They were obviously well experienced in the ways of the media. Surely they realized that as of 9:00 that morning, news teams had descended upon their front lawns, climbed up their front steps, started banging on their front doors. Let alone the number of white news vans trolling the streets, looking for leads, any leads, to give that station the advantage in the evening news race.

If it were him, he decided, he'd simply stay right where he was. With his fellow club members. That way if some earnest reporter did track them down, they'd at least all be together. Safety in numbers. According to Maureen, the Survivors Club had rules about that.

So Griffin returned to Hope Street. And then, operating on another hunch, he checked the license plates in the tiny parking lot. He found Jillian's car in less than a minute. Gold Lexus with license plate TH 18.

“Damn,” he murmured, and for a moment, he simply stood there, feeling a rush of sadness that struck too close to home.

Rhode Islanders had a thing about license plates. He didn't know how it had started. Maybe the original colonists had had a thing about horse brands. But Rhode Island was a small state, so its plates had literally started with one letter, plus a one- or two-digit number. Then the state had gone to two letters with a two-digit number. Now, the state did a straight five numbers, but only cultural outsiders settled for those. A true Rhode Islander, wanting to show off his long-standing ties to his state, personally went to the plate room of the DMV and requested the lowest letter/number combination possible, or, since highly prestigious plates such as A 20 or J 28 were mostly doled out to well-connected insiders, he requested his initials with a low two-digit number. Then he held on to those plates for life. Literally.

TH 18. Trisha Hayes, probably eighteenth birthday. Someone, Jillian most likely, had gone to a lot of trouble to get her little sister the special plates. Had Trisha been excited at the time? Had the plates gone with a new car, just what Trisha had always wanted? Maybe she'd thrown her arms around her sister's neck. Maybe she'd kissed her mother on the cheek. Eighteen-year-old Trisha Hayes, celebrating a new car. Eighteen-year-old Trisha Hayes, about to embark on a whole, brand-new college life.

Griffin doubted that cool, composed Jillian Hayes would ever say much about that day. She'd probably sold the car by now, at the same time she was sorting through her sister's clothes, closing up her sister's apartment, sifting through her sister's things. He could picture exactly what she'd had to do, because not that long ago, he'd done the same. The bureaucracy of death had surprised him. Nearly broken his heart all over again. But you did what you had to do. Get it done, people always advised. Then you can get on with your life.

Driving a car, he supposed, bearing your dead sister's license plates.

“What are you doing?”

Griffin whirled around. Jillian Hayes stood four feet from him, her car keys clutched in her fist and her hazel eyes already starting to blaze. Quick, say something clever, he thought.

He said, “Huh?”

“What the hell do you think you are doing?” She enunciated each word clearly, like steel nails she was hammering into a coffin. He wondered if he should clutch his chest theatrically.

“Would you believe I was in the neighborhood?”

“No.”

“Well then, let's not bother with the small talk.” He leaned against the side of her car and crossed his arms over his chest. Oh yeah, that definitely pissed her off.

“Get away from my car.”

“Nice plates.”

“Fuck you.”

“Already been told that once or twice today. Apparently, it's time for me to contemplate a new aftershave.”

“You really think you're cute, don't you?”

“In all honesty, I hate to think of myself as being cute, but that's just the male ego for you. Handsome, riveting, intimidating, compelling, charming, intelligent, threatening even, all good. Cute… Cute, bad.”

“I don't really like you much,” Jillian Hayes said.

“Is it the aftershave?”

“I'm serious. And I'm not answering any of your questions without a lawyer present.”

“So you're taking the Fifth in regards to my cologne?”

Jillian sighed, crossed her own arms and gave him a stern look. “I've had a long day, Sergeant. Don't you have any other women you can go harass?”

“Not really.”

“A girlfriend, a sister, a wife?”

“I never had a sister, and I'm not married anymore.”

“Let me guess-she stopped thinking you were cute?”

“No. She died.”

Jillian finally shut up. He'd caught her off guard. She looked troubled and perhaps fleetingly sad. Then she looked angry again. Jillian Hayes really didn't like being caught off guard.

“I don't think this is an appropriate conversation,” she said curtly.

“I'm not the one who started it.”

“Yes, you did. You showed up again after we'd already chased you off today.”

“Yeah, but tell me honestly-would you really sleep well at night knowing the state police sergeant working your case could be chased off by three women?”