He watched the security video from the Holiday station again. Penny Gray buying beer and walking out, hesitating as she started out of the building, almost turning and going back into the light and safety of the busy store. Who had she seen standing just out of reach of the camera? A stranger? An enemy? Doc Holiday? The kids she had just fought with?

He rewound the tape to five minutes before Penny Gray came into the store. People came in, bought things, left. Women, kids, men. Ordinary people. Odd people. A couple of rough-looking customers.

One man caught his eye, not for being suspicious in his behavior, but for seeming vaguely familiar—a short guy, stocky, thinning dark hair, a close-cropped beard and mustache. He got something from the automotive supply aisle, chatted up the customer ahead of him in line, walked out. Kovac couldn’t place him. He encountered so many people on a daily basis, everybody started looking familiar.

Several minutes later on the video, Penny Gray walked into the store. Kovac let the tape run on past her leaving. People came, people went. Five minutes after the Gray girl left the picture, Aaron Fogelman walked into the station with his buddy Tweedle Dumb. Fogelman bought cigarettes. The cohort shoplifted a bunch of candy bars. They walked back out of the store, carefree.

Where was Penny Gray at that point in time? Gone? Snatched by Doc Holiday? In the trunk of Aaron Fogelman’s car?

Kovac got up from his chair, went to the timeline, made a note. He stood back, ran his tongue over his teeth, and tried to rub the grit out of his eyes with the heels of his hands. It was nearly five A.M.

In need of a break to reboot his brain, he turned the VCR off and changed the channel on the TV. He would run through the local stations and see what was being said about the case. In the back of his mind he considered what might happen if Dr. Michael Warner’s name “somehow” got attached to the case in the media.

A lawsuit and the loss of his job and his pension, probably.

The guy had never had a criminal complaint made against him. Elwood would call any organizations and ethics boards Warner had to answer to in his professional life, but he’d found nothing against the man yet.

Warner had said the reason he had stopped seeing Penny Gray as a patient had been her issues with men and her constant attempts to manipulate him. He had dumped her, not the other way around. If he had been abusing the girl, it seemed that she would have been the one to quit the situation and raise hell.

Then again, just who was she supposed to raise hell to? Her mother? The mother who found her irritating and aggravating? The mother who was now engaged to Michael Warner?

Elwood had taped copies of Penny Gray’s poems to the wall at the far end of the room. Kovac browsed over them now, his eye catching on one titled “Unloved.”

I’m a bother

I’m a burden

I’m a liar

Close the curtain

Don’t wanna see it

Don’t believe it

Shut your mouth

She can’t conceive it

I’m not the dream

I’m just a nightmare

I’m in the way

Life’s just so unfair

I should come first

But I’m called

worst

Just a problem

She can’t solve

Unloved

Just who was Penny Gray supposed to turn to if her therapist abused her and her mother didn’t want to hear it? People didn’t like her. Warner had said so himself, the girl drew people in only so she could alienate them. How much of that did anyone tolerate before they just stopped listening?

Or had Warner bought the girl’s silence with a car? People sold out for less. It seemed pretty damned generous to buy your girlfriend’s daughter a car for her birthday. Then again, a mobile teenager was out of the way. Warner’s decision might have been strategic to getting more alone time with Julia.

Kovac turned back to the TV and changed the channel again. So far, he’d heard virtually identical reports on the case from three of the local stations. On the fourth he expected to see perky little Dana Nolan—the girl he crabbed at every morning when he woke up and turned on his television.

As much as the news media irritated him, he had never been able to shake the habit of beginning and ending his day with the news. He usually chose Dana Nolan in the morning just because she was so fucking chipper and optimistic. Her happy mood antagonized him into setting his personal dial at “curmudgeon” before he even got out of bed.

But it wasn’t Dana Nolan’s angelic face that greeted him as he changed to her station. A slightly older woman with thick maroon hair and a worried expression had taken Dana’s seat at the desk. She seemed flustered and distracted.

Even as Kovac began to form the thought that something wasn’t right, a photograph of Dana Nolan filled one corner of the television screen. He turned up the sound.

“Breaking news: Foul play is suspected in the apparent disappearance of NewsWatch 3’s own Dana Nolan,” the woman reported. “Police were dispatched to Dana Nolan’s Minneapolis apartment just an hour ago when Dana failed to show up for work and failed to respond to numerous phone calls and text messages.”

Kovac could see the fear and panic building in the woman. Her eyes gleamed with tears. Her voice tightened and trembled as she spoke.

“Personal belongings found in the parking lot of the apartment building near Ms. Nolan’s abandoned vehicle seem to indicate she may have been taken against her will.”

The screen filled with the image of the missing reporter.

“Her most recent assignment has been covering the disappearance of Minneapolis teenager Penelope Gray, and the possible connection between the discovery of the murder victim known as Zombie Doe and the serial killer law enforcement agencies throughout the Midwest have come to call Doc Holiday. Anyone having any information as to the whereabouts of Dana Nolan is asked to call the number posted on the screen.

“Please, please,” the woman implored, her tenuous hold on her emotions quickly eroding. “If anyone watching has any information at all, please call this number as soon as possible.

“Dana, if you’re somehow seeing this broadcast, please know that we’re all looking for you and praying for you to come home safe.”

The station went to commercial as the reporter broke down sobbing.

Kovac swore, grabbed his coat, and bolted for the door.

•   •   •

“WHY THE FUCK WASN’T I called the minute this came in?” Kovac snapped at the young detective who had caught the call. “I was right down the fucking hall!”

They stood in the parking lot of Dana Nolan’s apartment complex. The early morning darkness had been banished by portable lights from the crime scene unit, and from the half dozen news vans that had circled the scene like wagons in an old Western movie.

The detective—Dickson—barely looked old enough to have a job. Kovac had come out of the womb older than this kid. Still, the young detective tried to put up a tough front.

“Since when do we have to clear our calls through you? It’s not even your shift.”

“Oh. It’s not my shift?” Kovac thought his head might explode. Acutely aware of the cameras and microphones trained on them, he leaned in close. “It’s a fucking abduction, you fucking moron! I’ve got half the fucking department working an abduction/homicide that’s all over the goddamn news, and you think you don’t have to bother telling me? The fucking janitor would know enough to tell me! You’re a fucking idiot! And where’s your partner? He’s a fucking idiot too.”

One of the uniforms who had responded to the initial call intervened, wedging himself between the two detectives.

“Sarge, the newsies are getting restless. They’re asking for a statement.”