“And you just noticed her missing?” Mendez said. “Don’t you do a head count or something?”

Many of the Thomas Center “clients” were at-risk women from abusive situations. From what Mendez had heard, they ran a pretty tight ship for security reasons.

“We had recently moved Karly out of the center into one of our cottages. She was ready to transition to independent living.”

“What makes you think she didn’t take that idea to the next level and just split?”

Jane Thomas shook her head. “No. No. She was excited about starting over. She was a little nervous, but excited about starting her new job. Yesterday was supposed to be her first day.”

“But she didn’t show up,” Mendez said.

“No.”

“The employer is…?”

“Quinn, Morgan and Associates. A law firm that helps us out with family court cases.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“I saw her last week-Thursday morning at the center. I helped her pick out her new work wardrobe. We have our own store in-house, clothing donated from working women here in town, from Santa Barbara, from Los Angeles.

“Thursday was Karly’s makeover day. She had her hair done, her nails, her makeup. I remember her saying she felt like Cinderella.”

“Could she have gone out looking for Prince Charming?” Mendez asked. “She had a new look, new clothes. She was feeling pretty-”

“She’s shy. She was still recovering emotionally from being beaten nearly to death by her boyfriend.”

Mendez dug his notebook and pen out of the patch pocket of his tweed sport coat and started scribbling. “Do you have a name for him?”

“Greg Usher. I have all the information available on him in Karly’s file at my office. He has a record.”

“And he’s walking around loose?”

“The last I heard.”

“Do you have a photograph of Karly?” Dixon asked.

“Not with me.”

“Do you know if he tried to contact her recently?” Mendez asked.

“She would have told us.”

“Maybe she was afraid to.”

She didn’t have an answer for that. She wasn’t sure.

“Does she have a car?”

“Yes, a gold Chevy Nova. 1974 or ’75. I have the license plate number in her file.”

“Where’s the car?” Mendez asked.

“I don’t know. It’s not at the cottage.”

“So she could have gone somewhere on her own.”

“No. She didn’t just leave.”

“You know as well I do, Jane,” Dixon said quietly. “How many of these women go back to their abusers?”

“Not our women.”

Dixon lifted one white eyebrow. “None of them?”

Jane Thomas scowled. She knew better. “Not this one. She wouldn’t. She would never just leave Petal.”

Mendez stopped writing mid-word. “Petal? Who’s Petal?”

“Karly’s dog.”

His heart gave a big thump then began to beat faster. “What kind of dog?”

“A pit bull. Why?”

He turned to Dixon. “The kids said there was a black-and-white dog at the scene. It might have been a pit bull.”

“Oh my God,” Jane Thomas whispered, sinking down onto the chair behind her. She covered her mouth with her hand as her green eyes filled with tears.

“Where is she?” she asked. She didn’t look at Mendez or at Dixon but stared at the floor as if her life depended on it. “Can I see her?”

Dixon sighed. “We’ll be sending the body to the LA County coroner for an autopsy, but it hasn’t left yet. But it might be better just to have you look at some Polaroids from the scene-”

“No.”

“Jane-”

“I want to see her.” She looked up at Dixon now in a way that made Mendez wonder just how well they knew each other. “I need to see her.”

Dixon started to say something, then clamped his mouth shut and looked out the window. The silence hung in the air like fog. The image of the dead woman’s face slid through Mendez’s memory. He wished he hadn’t had to look at it, and that was his job.

Finally Dixon nodded. “Okay. But I’m warning you, Jane, it’s going to be hard.”

“Then let’s get it over with.”

The three of them got in a sedan and Mendez drove them to Orrison Funeral Home. No one said anything. Dixon sat in the backseat with Jane Thomas, but neither of them looked at the other, Mendez noted, glancing at them via the rearview mirror.

The funeral home director took them to the yellow-tiled embalming room where their vic was on a gurney in a body bag, waiting for her ride to the city.

Dixon dismissed the man, who closed the door behind him as he left.

“We don’t think she had been dead that long when we found her,” Dixon said. “Decomposition is minimal, but not absent.”

Jane Thomas stared at the body bag. “Just show me.”

“I want you to be prepared-”

“Damn it, Cal, just show me!” she snapped. “This is hard enough!”

Dixon held his hands up in surrender. Mendez unzipped the bag and gently peeled it open.

Jane Thomas put a hand over her mouth. What color she had drained from her face.

“Is that her?” Dixon asked.

She didn’t answer right away. She stared at the woman on the gurney for a long, silent moment.

“Jane? Is that her? Is this Karly Vickers?”

“No,” she said at last, her voice little more than a breath. “No. It’s Lisa.”

“Lisa?”

“Lisa Warwick,” she said, and she began to tremble. “She used to work for me.”

“This woman used to work for you?” Mendez said.

“Yes.”

“And one of your clients is missing.”

She didn’t answer. She’d gone into shock. Then she began to cry and sway, and Cal Dixon stepped close and put his hands on her shoulders to steady her.

Mendez looked his boss in the eye. “Three dead, one missing. Do you still think we’re not dealing with a serial killer?”

To his credit all Dixon said was, “Call Quantico.”

Good thing, Mendez thought, because he already had.

Vince Leone closed his car door. The sound seemed amplified. He looked up at the sky. The blue was so intense it hurt his eyes. He put his Ray-Bans on and breathed deeply of the crisp fall air. His head filled with the scents of Virginia: damp earth, forest, cut grass.

The academy grounds were alive with people. Young agents going here, running there. Veterans, like himself, hustling between buildings, between meetings.

The sounds of footfalls on concrete, snatches of conversation, a lawn mower, gunfire in the distance: All assaulted his ears. His sight, hearing, sense of smell-all seemed magnified, hypersensitive. It might have been an inner need to absorb as much of life as possible, or it might have had something to do with the bullet in his head.

He went into the building, to the elevators, pushed the Down button. Down. Way down. People got on the car with him. A couple of them looked at him sideways, then looked away. He vaguely recognized faces but couldn’t recall names. He didn’t know them well-or they him, he suspected, though his short-term memory still had some holes in it.

They knew of him, he suspected. He had signed on with the Bureau in 1971 after a stellar career in homicide in the Chicago PD. He had come to Quantico and the Behavioral Sciences Unit the fall of 1975, just as the unit was beginning to blaze some exciting trails. Being a part of that time had made him and his colleagues legends. He was forty-eight and a legend. Not bad.

Or maybe these people knew about him, as in “The guy that got shot in the head and lived.” The academy was a small, incestuous community, and like in all small, incestuous communities, gossip ran thick and fast.

The elevator stopped and most of the passengers got off, headed for the cafeteria or PX. The smell of coffee, eggs, and bacon grease hit him like a brick, then the doors closed and the car began to drop another twenty feet to what the agents lovingly referred to as the National Cellar for the Analysis of Violent Crime.