He moved on to the sketch of Madame Sade. Much like his initial reaction, Marlene flinched. Then she did the unexpected. She reached out and jabbed the image.

“This is the woman who killed my girl?”

Wyatt didn’t say anything.

“Whatever happened, it was her fault. You heard Nicky, Chelsea, talking. This woman took Vero from the park. This woman locked her up, never let her go. This woman killed my child.”

“You recognize her from the park?”

“No.”

“Ever see her before? In your building, around your neighborhood?” Because Wyatt didn’t believe a woman like Madame Sade abducted girls at random. Especially given the physical similarities between Vero and Chelsea, it was clear she was looking for a specific type. Perhaps even filling a client’s request, which would take scouting on her part.

But Marlene shook her head. “No.”

“You’re sure?”

She regarded him sharply. “You think you could forget a woman this cold? Just looking at her picture churns my stomach.”

Wyatt had another thought. “Notice any boys in the park that day?” He did his best to describe a younger version of Thomas Frank, who had to fit into this puzzle somehow. But once again Marlene shook her head.

“It’s been a long time, Sergeant. And Nicky wasn’t lying. I was drunk that day. I shouldn’t have taken my girl to the park. I shouldn’t have sat on that bench. That’s on me. And I paid for it, paid as dear as any mother can.”

He tried a different tack. “Who knew about Vero’s scar?”

“Anyone who read the missing persons report, of course.”

“By that, you mean the official police report? Because it’s not on any of the flyers. Those just have her picture and the basics, height, weight, age.”

“True.”

“Friends and family?” he asked her.

She grimaced shamefully. “Didn’t really have those. It was just me, Vero, and Ronnie.”

“So Ronnie knew. Police ever question him about Vero’s disappearance?”

“Sure. But that was a long time ago, and he had an alibi—he was at work when she disappeared.”

“Okay.” But Wyatt was thinking again. In terms of general age and description, Nicky Frank really would make the perfect long-lost Veronica Sellers. If not for that scar, as Marlene said.

Which made him very curious. Because not many people would have the information on that particular detail. Certainly, police reports weren’t available to the general public. Meaning, if you wanted Nicky Frank to be Veronica Sellers . . . Even went so far, say, as to plant a missing girl’s fingerprints in Nicky’s car in order to try to get away with something . . .

Except how? And why?

Thomas had met Nicky that night. His half-drunk, thrice-concussed, extremely distraught wife. He’d handed her gloves. He’d put her car into neutral and shoved it down a hill toward a ravine. Had he somehow planted the prints? Because he wanted her to live as Veronica Sellers? Or die as a long-lost child? But why?

A collapsible shovel, a pair of bloody gloves. What the hell had the man been up to that night? And when would any of this case make sense?

Wyatt thanked Marlene for her time. Got the woman’s assurances she wouldn’t be talking to the press, then arranged for a deputy to drive her home.

Moment she left, Tessa appeared in the adjoining doorway. This room was a twin to its neighbor; she took a seat on the bed directly across from him.

“Well,” she said at last. “That didn’t go as planned.”

“Let me ask you something: Can you fake a fingerprint?”

“Don’t I wish.” Her tone was dry. He shot her a glance, but she merely smiled at him. “In theory, I guess it could be done. Lift it from one surface, maybe with tape, then try to transfer it to another. But . . . a latent print is nothing more than a microscopic film of skin ridges and natural oils. Transferring it back onto a second surface and managing to recapture the entire print . . . feels like something that might work better on a TV show than in real life.”

“You know what struck me about the vehicle?” he asked her now.

Tessa shook her head.

“How lucky we were to have such obvious prints. Think about it—most cars, you can’t even print. Surfaces are irregular, have been handled so often, all you get is a smeary mess. But Nicole Frank’s car. With my plain eyes, I could make out a thumb print left behind in blood. Lucky us.”

Tessa stared at him. “You’re thinking it was planted.”

“Annie the search canine swears there was only one person present at the crash site, and I don’t argue with a good dog’s nose.”

“But why?”

“I have no idea.”

“How would you get such a print?” Tessa continued. “Three decades later, who even has access to her case file?”

“Don’t need her case file for her fingerprints,” Wyatt said. “The Center for Missing and Exploited Children digitized all the records years ago for national distribution. To assist with matches.”

“So we don’t know why or how, but under the who column, you’re thinking someone with access to the national database.”

Wyatt stared at her. In the back of his head, something finally clicked. “Of digital prints,” he stated. “Digital files.”

“Yes?”

“You know what else you can do with digital images?”

“Um . . . E-mail them, text them, share them—”

“Import them into AutoCAD and create a digital model.”

“A digital model of fingerprints?”

“Yes. Which could then be downloaded to a three-D printer, which would create a three-D mold of the distinct ridge patterns, used to, say, create a latex glove cast from a perfect handprint.”

Tessa’s eyes widened. “A glove alone can’t leave fingerprints. You’d have to spray it with an oily substance such as cooking spray—”

“Or blood.”

Tessa shuddered slightly, but nodded. “The bloody gloves, the ones you collected from Thomas Frank’s car.”

“That’s what he handed Nicky that night. A pair of . . . fingerprint gloves . . . he’d made himself on his three-D printer. So she’d cover the car in Veronica Sellers’s fingerprints. So she’d be mistaken as Veronica Sellers.”

Tessa asked the next logical question. “But why?”

Wyatt shook his head. “I don’t know. He’s got to be part of it, right? According to Nicky, she found that photo of . . . herself, I guess, in Thomas’s possession. Taken while she was in the dollhouse.”

“How’d she get away?” Tessa said suddenly. “I mean this whole, got Vero to OD then took the place of her roommate’s dead body. So Nicky gets herself buried alive, then heroically claws her way back to the land of the living in the midst of a storm . . . and then what? Walks all the way to New Orleans?”

Wyatt saw her point. “She must’ve had help. Enter Thomas Frank?”

“In that scenario, he saved her. And he must’ve cared for her to end up spending the next twenty-two years together. Just rescuing her one dark and stormy night doesn’t require a lifetime plan. And if he’s in cahoots with Madame Sade, maybe assigned as, what, Nicky’s watcher all these years, that doesn’t necessitate marriage. It feels like . . . he must genuinely care for her, at least in some manner.”

Wyatt remained skeptical. “He crashed his wife’s car, with her in it. He burned down their house, with all their belongings in it. If this is love, I’m sorry I’ve been wasting my time buying flowers.”

Tessa rolled her eyes. She rattled off their case: “Thirty years ago, six-year-old Veronica Sellers was abducted from a park and locked away in a high-end brothel. Twenty years ago, roughly, she died in that same house, but her roommate, Chelsea, managed to escape and, all these years later, has kept Vero’s memory alive.”

“Chelsea spent all her time in the dollhouse internalizing Vero’s stories. Which she now has a tendency to confuse as her own? Or maybe just wishes were her own?” Wyatt decided it was a moot point. “Either way, Vero is always with her. She can’t let her go.”