“He used a stun gun.” Having left without explanation about half an hour earlier, Bartoli was back, standing in the doorway, looking as tired and wired as Charlie felt. His eyes were bloodshot, the top button on his shirt collar was unbuttoned, and his tie was slightly askew. Stubble darkened his cheeks and chin, and his hair looked like he’d been running his fingers through it. He was still handsome, which Charlie absently noted in passing even though her thoughts were almost totally consumed with gruesome things. “We just had that confirmed a few minutes ago. The marks were right up past the hairline on the base of the neck, so they weren’t immediately apparent. They were present on the other adult male, too.”

The first case, which involved the slaughter of the Breyer family and the abduction and subsequent murder of their eighteen-year-old daughter, Danielle, included an adult male victim, Danielle’s father, whose first name Charlie had forgotten for the moment. The second case was the Clark family, consisting of two pre-pubescent sisters and their mother, as well as the teenage victim and presumed target, seventeen-year-old Caroline. The attacks had come three weeks apart, in separate small beach towns along the North Carolina coast. The teenage girls had been determined to be the primary target. Both their bodies had been found within ten days of the murders of their families and their abduction, buried under nearby boardwalks. It was only after the third attack, which was on Bayley Evans’ family, that the FBI had gotten involved, because until then no one had put the crimes together and suspected they were dealing with a serial killer, or connected the new killings to the unsolved Boardwalk Killer cases of fifteen years before. The local FBI had in turn contacted ViCAP, or the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, a specialized group that tracked serial killers, among other particularly dangerous violent criminals. Bartoli, Crane, and Kaminsky were an elite Special Circumstances FBI unit that was sent around the country to investigate serial killers as an offshoot of ViCAP, and they were assisting local agents in this case. When Bartoli had filled her in on these facts on the plane ride down, Charlie had been impressed with how fast the FBI had worked. In not much more than twenty-four hours, every available investigative force had been mobilized.

Including herself.

“That explains a lot,” Crane said, while Kaminsky threw him a triumphant look.

“And you thought they had to have been drugged. Told you that would have been way too hard to coordinate,” she said.

“You like being right way too much,” he retorted.

“This making any kind of sense to you?” Bartoli asked, his eyes on Charlie. She was looking at autopsy pictures of the other two adult female victims—the mothers, although she didn’t like to think of them in that way—whose wounds confirmed what she already knew.

“You’re looking for a Caucasian male who was raised by a single mother.” Charlie swiveled her wheeled chair around to fully face Bartoli as she spoke. Crane moved to keep the camera on her. “His mother was overbearing and abusive, certainly physically and psychologically and possibly sexually. There were no siblings in the household in which he grew up. He is heterosexual, probably with an addiction to pornography. He wet the bed, most likely past the age of twelve, and was severely punished for it. As an adolescent, he would have had trouble in school and been socially isolated. Wherever he went to high school, he’ll have a disciplinary record. There may be instances of fire-starting or voyeurism, or possible animal cruelty in his background, any of which might have drawn the attention of authorities, so he may have a juvenile record. I am almost certain that he either lives or works within a few mile radius of his victims, which since they are located in three separate towns means he is itinerant in some way. And there will have been a trigger event, something that precipitated the killing spree, probably within a month of the first murder. Most likely a divorce or romantic breakup, goading him to lash out against the victims, who are acting as substitutes for the female who rejected him.”

Bartoli lifted his brows at her. “You work fast.”

“I’m good at what I do.”

Bartoli’s tense face relaxed into a near smile. “That’s why we wanted you.”

“I would place his age at twenty-five to thirty-five, except for one thing: if he is indeed the Boardwalk Killer, then he would have to be older, forty to fifty.”

“You cannot possibly tell that from those pictures.” Kaminsky looked at her with palpable disbelief.

“No, I can’t,” Charlie agreed. “I know how old the Boardwalk Killer was because I saw him. He looked to be around thirty.”

Kaminsky’s eyes widened. Then she grimaced. “I forgot about that. Sorry.”

“That’s another reason you’re here,” Bartoli said imperturbably. “We’ve got the sketch of the unsub you assisted the police with fifteen years ago. We’re having it age progressed as we speak.”

“I’m not convinced it’s the same man. The dormancy period has been too long.” Charlie kept her voice steady, even though remembering the circumstances under which she had helped the police artist make the sketch made her palms grow damp. The artist had come to her in the hospital. Charlie had tried to stay calm, but by the time the sketch was finished she’d been shaking and crying: a mess.

And in the end, none of it had helped Holly.

I can’t think about that.

“We’re not one hundred percent convinced, either. It’s a possibility we’re exploring,” Bartoli told her.

Charlie looked up at Bartoli. “He will have taken a trophy of some sort from the primary victims, like a piece of jewelry or clothing. Always the same type of object, which he will keep as a memento. Do you know what he’s taking for trophies? Because that will tell you something about him.”

“Not yet.” Bartoli signaled to Crane to turn off the recorder, then looked at Charlie again. “You up to visiting the crime scene tonight? If you’re exhausted, we could hold off until tomorrow, but …”

His voice trailed off. There wasn’t any need to say more. Everybody in that room knew that every second counted in the race to find Bayley Evans while she was still alive.

Charlie refused to think about what she was letting herself in for. “I’m up to it.”

“Let’s go, then.” He looked at Crane. “You can get busy pulling up the juvie records for two periods of time: twenty-five to thirty-five years ago, and seven to seventeen years ago. Whether this guy is the Boardwalk Killer or not, that should cover his teenage years. Look for what Dr. Stone said: fire-starting, animal cruelty, any kind of predatory violence. Also, run Dr. Stone’s original sketch through the juvie databases to see if we can find a match.”

Crane nodded. “On it.”

“And you”—Bartoli’s gaze shifted to Kaminsky—“start looking for someone who’s been out of commission for the past fifteen years and has just resurfaced. Caucasian male of the right age who’s been in prison and was just released, been out of the country, been in a hospital, you know the drill.”

“Got it,” Kaminsky said.

Ten minutes later, with Bartoli beside her, Charlie was heading for the Mead’s rented beach house, which was pastel blue and located next door to the pink one the RV was parked beside. The pink house, she had learned, had been chosen precisely because it was the next property down from the crime scene, although the two houses were separated by a considerable expanse of sea oats–covered sand. Walking along the wooden sidewalk that wound through the dunes—Bartoli had nixed driving; he didn’t want to alert the media (presently being kept at bay out front by the local cops) to their arrival—Charlie let the brisk wind blowing in from the ocean do what it could to soothe her. It smelled of salt and the sea, and lifted tendrils of her hair that had worked free of the loose knot at her nape and slid beneath the V-neckline of her sleeveless white blouse to caress her skin. Even with the breeze, the night was warm enough so that the black blazer she carried over one arm was not needed. She was once again wearing black pants—clean black pants; she had a lot of them—with heels. It was her professional but not-inside-a-prison look.