“Authority figure,” Rafe said. “Has to be.”

“That’s what we’re thinking. So we can’t rule out cops. We also can’t rule out someone who appears to be a member of the clergy, or any other trustworthy authority figure. Someone in politics, someone well known within the community. Whoever he is, these women trusted him, at least for the five or ten minutes it took him to get them alone and vulnerable. He looks safe to them. He looks unthreatening.”

Mallory said, “You said earlier that he’d killed a dozen women before coming to Hastings. Exactly twelve?”

“Six women in six weeks, both times.”

“So it is just women,” Mallory said. “Bottom line, he hates women.”

“Hates, loves, wants, needs-it’s probably a tangle. He hates them for what they are, either because they represent what he wants and can’t have or because he feels somehow emasculated by them. Killing them gives him power over them, gives him control. He needs that, needs to feel he’s stronger than they are, that he can master them.”

“A manly man,” Hollis said, her mockery both obvious and hollow.

Isabel nodded. “Or, at least, so he wants to believe. And wants us to believe.”

Alan Moore had always thought that calling the central work area of the Chronicle offices “the newsroom” must have been someone’s idea of irony. Because nothing newsworthy ever happened in Hastings.

Or hadn’t, until the first murder.

Not that there hadn’t been killings in Hastings before, of course; when a town had been in existence for nearly two hundred years, there were bound to be killings every now and then. People had died out of greed, out of jealousy, out of spite, out of rage.

But until the murder of Jamie Brower, no one had been killed by pure evil.

Alan hadn’t hesitated to point that out in his coverage of the murders and their investigation. And not even Rafe had accused him-publicly or privately-of sensationalizing the tragedies of those murders.

Some things damned well couldn’t be denied.

There was something evil in Hastings, and the fact that it was walking around on two legs passing itself off as human didn’t change that fact.

“How many times have I told you to pick up your own damned mail, Alan?” Callie Rosier, the Chronicle’s only full-time photographer, dumped several envelopes on his already cluttered desk. “It’s in a little box with your name on it right on the other side of that wall. You can’t miss it.”

“I just said you could pick up mine while you were getting yours, what’s wrong with that?” Alan retorted.

“What is this ‘while you’re up’ thing with you men?” She continued to her own desk, shaking her head as she sat down. “You sweat your brains out running miles every morning and lifting weights in the gym so you’ll look good in your jeans but pester other people to get stuff for you when it’s in the same damned room. Jesus.”

“Don’t you have film to develop?” The question was more habit than curiosity, and absentminded to boot since he was leafing through his mail.

“No. Why are all these places offering me credit cards?”

“The same reason they’re offering them to me,” Alan replied, tossing several into his overflowing trash can. “Because they haven’t checked our credit records.” He eyed his final bit of mail, a large manila envelope with no return address, and hesitated only an instant before tearing it open.

“I think these telemarketers are morons,” Callie said, studying the contents of one envelope marked URGENT! “They don’t even bother to be accurate in who they’re sending this stuff to anymore. I ask you, does the name Callie sound like it belongs to a man? This one should have been addressed to you. Take a little blue pill and get another inch or two. I’m sure you’d like another inch or two. And more staying power, says here.”

“I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Alan said.

“Aren’t you usually?”

He looked at her, saw that she was focused on her own mail and not even paying attention to the conversation. With only an instant’s pause, Alan said casually, “Oh, yeah, always.” Then he looked back down at his mail and, this time under his breath, repeated, “I’ll be a son of a bitch.”

Rafe accepted the message slip, absently introduced Officer McBrayer to the federal agents, then read the information she had offered. “Her husband says she’s been gone since Monday?”

“He thinks since Monday.” Ginny made an effort to sound as brisk and professional as she could, even though she was nervous and knew it showed. “He didn’t see her that afternoon, and with two cows calving he was out in his barns all night. He says it could have been Tuesday; that’s when he realized she wasn’t in the house. He thought she’d gone to visit a friend in town, since it’s something she often does, but when she didn’t come home, he checked. She wasn’t there. Isn’t anywhere he could think to check. I think it only slowly dawned on him that maybe he should be worried.”

“Yeah,” Rafe muttered, “Tim Helton isn’t the sharpest pencil in the box.”

“Understatement,” Mallory offered. “The way I heard it, he once decided that moonshine would work just as well as fuel in his tractor. Dunno if he got a bad batch or what, but it blew the sucker all to hell and nearly took him with it.”

“Moonshine?” Isabel asked curiously. “They still make that stuff?”

“Believe it or not. We’ve had the ATF out here a few times over the years because of illegal brew. Seems like a lot of trouble to go to, if you ask me, but the bootleggers seem to feel it’s worth it. Either that or they just don’t want to pay The Government a cent more than they have to.”

Rafe said, “And there’s at least one survivalist group in the area. They consider it the norm to make everything they need themselves. Including booze.” He made a note on the pad before him, then handed the message slip back to his officer. “Okay, standard procedure, Ginny. I want a detective out there to talk to Tim, and let’s get a list of places she might possibly be. Friends, relatives, anybody she might be visiting. From now on, we treat every missing person, man or woman, as if he or she could be a murder victim.”

“Yes, sir.”

When the young officer had hurried from the room, Isabel said, “Is this people starting to panic? I mean, is this an unusual increase in women reported missing?”

He nodded. “Oh, yeah. In the past three weeks, we’ve seen the reports jump tenfold. Most come home within twenty-four hours or are discovered visiting relatives or talking to divorce attorneys, or just at the grocery store.”

“Most. But not all.”

“We still have a few missing in the general area, but we haven’t yet been able to rule out a voluntary absence in any of the cases.”

“We’ll probably see even more of this,” Isabel commented.

“Problem is,” Mallory said, “we have to treat every report seriously, just as Rafe said. So we’ll waste a lot of manpower searching for women who aren’t really missing or who ran off and don’t want to be found. Lady last week cussed me out good for finding her.”

“Motel?” Isabel inquired sapiently.

“Uh-huh. Not alone, needless to say.”

“Still, we have to look for them,” Hollis said.

Rafe nodded. “No question. I’m just hoping it won’t muddy the water too much. Or deplete resources needed elsewhere.”

“In the meantime,” Isabel said, “those of us in this room at least have to focus on what we know we’ve got. Three murdered women.”

Rafe said, “You told me there’s always a trigger. Always something specific that sets him off.”

“There has to be,” Isabel responded. “You said yourself that five years is a hell of a long cooling-off period for a serial killer; it is, especially after a fairly frenzied six-week killing spree. A gap that long usually means either that murders in another location have gone unnoticed or at least weren’t connected to him, or that he’s in prison somewhere or otherwise unable to keep killing.”