"You said he struck Gray that night at the Rock and Bowl. Had you ever seen him hit a girl before?"

"No, but he calls girls b.i.t.c.hes and wh.o.r.es and stuff like that."

It was terrible to imagine a kid Kyle's age doing what had been done to Penny Gray, but Nikki knew it happened. She hoped to G.o.d it hadn't happened this time. Because of the complication of her being Kyle's mother, she had pa.s.sed the responsibility of further investigating Aaron Fogelman to Elwood. He had requested a meeting with the boy's father and had been referred to the Fogelmans' attorney.

"So what's the story with you and this girl Brittany?" she asked, pouring herself a cup of coffee.

He shrugged and blushed and dodged her gaze. "She's a friend."

She was the friend whose photograph Nikki had found in the trash some months ago. Her baby's first girlfriend. "She's very pretty."

"Yeah, I guess so," he said, squirming on his stool.

Nikki took the seat beside him. "She seems very sweet. She was friends with Gray?"

"Yeah. We were all in that writing workshop last summer. Gray and Britt and me. We used to hang out."

"And then?"

"Then Brittany wanted to be with Christina's crowd, and Christina and Gray don't get along."

"She seems to be rethinking that now."

"She's so much better than that," he said with frustration. "I don't get why girls want to be like Christina."

"I vaguely remember being a teenage girl," Nikki said. "It seemed so important to be accepted by the coolest kids."

"Accepted," he muttered with a small ironic twist to his mouth. "Accepted by kids who don't accept anyone different from them."

"People don't always make sense."

"Brittany talked Gray into going to the Rock and Bowl that night," he said. "Now she feels guilty. We both do. I told her maybe we should go see Gray's mom. You know, give her condolences or whatever."

Nikki's heart swelled with pride. She was somehow managing to raise a responsible young man.

"That's a really nice idea, Kyle. I'm sure Gray's mom would be touched by that," she said. "But I'm going to ask you to wait on that. Brittany should go if she wants to, but things are complicated with me investigating this case and you knowing Gray, and all of that. It's best if you stay away from all of those people for now-Gray's mom, Christina, Aaron Fogelman. Can you do that for me? Just lay low for a while until this gets sorted out."

He frowned down at the ice pack on his hand, thinking for a moment. "Can I still text Britt?"

"I don't have a problem with that."

He didn't like being taken out of his role, but in the end, he nodded. "Okay."

"Thank you," Nikki said.

She leaned over and hugged him around his broadening shoulders and kissed his cheek. "Do you know how proud I am of who you're growing up to be?"

He ducked his head and blushed and slipped away, embarra.s.sed in a good way, Nikki thought. She loved him so much she thought her heart would burst.

The doorbell rang, saving him from further humiliation. Nikki excused him to go to his room as she went to the door to find Kovac standing on her porch.

"Is everything okay?" she asked.

"No," he said, his face set in his trademark scowl. "The world is going to h.e.l.l on a sled and there's not a G.o.dd.a.m.n thing I can do about it."

"And this is news?"

"No, but I figured if I came over here and said it, you might feed me something that isn't crawling with salmonella."

"You didn't eat that pizza, did you?"

"No!" he said. "Maybe. Just a slice."

"Get in here," she ordered, holding the door open.

He came in with an armload of files and toed off his shoes in the foyer. "Do you think I'll get food poisoning?"

"Oh, for G.o.d's sake. You have a stomach like a billy goat."

"As it happens, I smell like one too."

"You can't scare me. I live with boys."

They went into the kitchen and he set his stack of paperwork on the island counter beside the stack of paper she had brought home and took the seat at the island that Kyle had vacated. Nikki pulled the lasagna out of the oven and made him a plate.

"You didn't make this," he said after the first bite.

"Why do you say that with such conviction?"

With food in his stomach he found half a smile. "I'm glad you got to eat with your kids tonight. Who cares where the food came from?"

Nikki took her seat beside him and warmed her hands with her coffee mug. "Any news on our news girl?"

He shook his head. "I've got a call in to my serial killer. Just waiting for him to call me back and confess."

"Do you really think it's Fitzgerald?" she asked. "If that turns out to be true, we're going to look like a bunch of a.s.sholes. We could have had him a year ago. He's killed how many girls since then? How could we have missed that, Sam?"

"He's d.a.m.n good at what he does. He's got it down to a fine science. We already knew that," he said. "I'm trying to find out what I can about Frank Fitzgerald, but I've got nothing to go on. All I know right now is he has no police record and he gets his mail at a storefront in a strip mall in Des Moines. That's probably not even his real name."

"He's been so careful," Nikki said. "We've gone over all of the Doc Holiday cases ten times. He hasn't made a mistake. I just can't buy that he screwed up so badly with Penny Gray. Quinn said these guys make their mistakes when they change their MO. If he s.n.a.t.c.hed the Gray girl, she fit his pattern. Dana Nolan doesn't fit his old pattern, but I believe that's him."

"And I'm waiting for the mistake," Kovac said. "I hope to G.o.d he makes it soon. Anything new on your side?"

She filled him in on the situation with the Fogelman boy.

Kovac gave her a careful look, like he thought she might punch him and he had better keep his distance. "You're sure you're being objective about this kid, Tinks? You're not just being a momma tiger?"

"No," she said. "It's two separate things. Do I want to kick his a.s.s for giving Kyle a hard time? Yes. Do I put my detective cap on and look at him and see a narcissistic sociopath with violent and misogynistic tendencies? Yes. You interviewed him. What did you think?"

"That he's a narcissistic sociopath with violent tendencies. And he's a liar. And he needs his a.s.s kicked."

Nikki lifted her hands. "See? n.o.body wants to believe kids could do what was done to Penny Gray, but you and I both know they can and do. And we can't rule out Michael Warner yet either. The s.e.x abuse angle is too strong. I'm hoping maybe we get some kind of tip out of the a.s.sembly at the school today. Tippen's niece connected well with the kids. I'm hoping she'll hear something through one of the social media outlets.

"I keep coming back to Julia Gray," she went on. "What does she know that she's not telling us, or that she's not admitting to herself? Does she just not want to see it?"

"She's lost her daughter," Kovac said. "Maybe she just wants to hang on to what she has left."

"Even if what she has left is a man who, at best, had s.e.x with her child, or, at worst, killed her? That's insane."

He raised his eyebrows and pointed to the tiny caterpillar line of st.i.tches above her left eyebrow where Julia Gray had struck her.

"Yeah," she conceded, reaching across the island to grab a file folder off the stack. "She's walking a mental tightrope, praying her fiance isn't a pedophile and hoping her daughter was taken by a serial killer."

Kovac slid his dinner plate aside. "Yeah. I nominate that one for Mother of the Year."

"If we could get our hands on the girl's phone or her computer, I know we'd get some answers," Nikki said. "Kyle says Gray made a lot of videos on her phone. She posted some of herself reciting her poetry to her YouTube account, but it's safe to a.s.sume there are a lot more. I wouldn't be surprised if she had a video diary."

"Her mother told us she kept her laptop with her at all times," Kovac said. "It could still be in her car, wherever that is. More likely it's with her killer. If that was someone in her circle, they would have to know it might contain evidence. They would have to get rid of it. If Doc Holiday killed her, he would probably keep it for a souvenir."

"We know someone still has her phone," Nikki said.

"And they were nearby when they sent texts to Julia Gray."

"Michael Warner and Aaron Fogelman both live within a mile or so of the Gray house as the crow flies. And we have no way of knowing where Doc is. He could live nearby or he could be watching Julia Gray's house for all we know."

"There's a grim notion," Kovac said.

Liska arched a brow. "Do we get to have any other kind?"

43.

can't blieve u btrayed me like that Britt. So hurt!

Brittany stared at the text and sighed. There were a dozen like that, at least. She had answered none of them.

It made her angry to read them. Christina made out like she was the wounded party. She hadn't asked for Brittany's side of the story. She hadn't asked why Brittany had left the a.s.sembly the way she had, or how she had come to be walking down the street with Kyle Hatcher. Christina was only about Christina. The universe revolved around her, and everything that happened, happened to her or because of her.

She was so selfish. Even when it appeared she was being generous, she was being selfish. Brittany looked now on the reasons she had liked Christina in the first place and saw them in a completely different light. What she had seen as strength, she now saw as arrogance. What she had seen as generosity, she now saw as manipulation. She saw that Christina did nothing without expecting something in return. She was like a fairy-tale queen who pretended to love her subjects but only wanted what they could give her or do for her. And when they didn't meet her expectations, they were punished.

Brittany knew she was being punished even as she sat alone in her bedroom. She had gone on Facebook and Twitter to see what was being said about her and about Kyle by Christina and her minions. Lies, accusations, name-calling.

The flip side of friendship with Christina Warner.

Her phone pinged again.

I wish I understood. Can we meet and talk?

Brittany didn't answer. Christina didn't want to understand. She wanted to ambush her-just like she had Gray that night at the Rock & Bowl.

Gray might have been strange and out there and difficult, but she had always been honest. She called a spade a spade, as Brittany's father liked to say-which was why she had so few friends.

That was the catch, Brittany realized. Now that Gray was gone, she was finally seeing the truth: that Gray would have been a better friend to her than Christina ever could have been.

It was the same with Kyle. Kyle had no time for the bulls.h.i.t games of Christina's crowd. He said what he meant and meant what he said. And for a while, Brittany hadn't wanted to hear it. His truth had made her angry and resentful. But he only wanted her to see what was real and be the best person she could be, and wasn't that a better friend than the kind of friend Christina was?

She walked around her happy yellow bedroom with her arms wrapped around herself as if she were freezing, wishing life didn't have to be so hard, wondering what she should do next. Something strong, she thought. Something positive.

She thought about the poem Sonya Porter had read at the a.s.sembly that morning-Gray's poem about acceptance. And she thought about what Sonya had said after, that they should all be angry someone had taken Gray and her talent and everything she had been and could have become away from them.

I am angry, Brittany thought.

She was angry with Christina; she was angry with the killer; she was angry with herself. The question was: What was she going to do about it? Wallow and cry and pout and wish the world was a different place? Or stand up and make the world a different place by being who she needed to be?

She picked up her iPad from her bed and paged through her pictures from the writer's workshop that summer-herself and Kyle and Gray-and realized that Gray was touching and changing her life even now. More now than when she had been alive. She owed her friend something for that.

She and Kyle had made a plan to go to see Gray's mom, to give her their condolences. They didn't want to wait until there was a funeral or a memorial, when it would be easy to just be one of a bunch of people saying what they were supposed to say. They wanted to do it together, on their own, when it took an effort, and they couldn't just blend in with the crowd. They had decided they owed it to Gray to go tell her mom that they had considered her daughter their friend and that they were sorry she was gone.

They wanted to do it tonight-before they could talk themselves out of it. They had agreed to go after supper. Brittany wanted to go and come back before her mother returned from her pottery cla.s.s. Kyle would come here and they would walk together the few blocks to Gray's house.

Her phone announced another text message with a bright ping! Brittany glanced at it, braced to see Christina's name on the screen, but it was Kyle.

how r u? r u ok?

That was how he always started his texts to her-with concern for her. As many times as she'd been a b.i.t.c.h to him, as many times as she'd told him to leave her alone, his first concern had always been her well-being.

Wish u were here, she typed, then hesitated, thinking she wasn't brave enough to send it. She looked at the picture of Gray on her iPad and drew on the memory of her friend's strength. Gray would have sent the text. Gray would have told her to send the text. Gray would have said, f.u.c.k yeah! Send it!

She hit the Send b.u.t.ton, and b.u.t.terflies took wing in her stomach as the message went out into s.p.a.ce.

The answer came back right away. Me 2 She felt giddy and guilty at the same time. She'd been so mean to him, and he was so nice.

Can't go with u to c Gray's mom cuz of my mom/investigation. Really sorry Her disappointment was instant. She wanted to see him, to spend time with him without all the tension and BS of school and the people in it. More than that, she realized, she wanted to hide behind his strength when they met with Gray's mom.

Her first excuse was that she was shy by nature. She had met Gray's mom only a couple of times, and her perception of Julia Gray had been colored by the things her daughter had said about her-that she was cold, that she was selfish, that she was a b.i.t.c.h. But that had been Gray's reality with her mother and didn't have anything to do with the here and now, or with what Brittany needed to do to fulfill her obligation to her friend.

The truth was that she didn't want to be strong on her own. She wanted to let Kyle be strong for her.

No.

No worries, she typed. will txt u when I get back.

UL go alone? U shouldn't.