Private

Then she described the young victim and the crime scene in excruciating detail, getting more worked up with every word. She stopped speaking as her throat tightened. She shook her head and swallowed hard, apologized before going on.

But on she went.

It killed me to see how much this case hurt her, and for that reason alone, I wanted to nail the killer almost as badly as she did. We all did.

“Jack, to repeat, whoever this psycho-killer is, he’s not the first to use ‘different means,’ but it’s rare. Most killers of this type have a pattern and stick with it. The pattern describes the killer’s mood and maybe their personality too. These murders are all different. That’s wacked out, and it’s something I haven’t seen before.

“Shooting someone is remote. Setting fire is a sexual crime. Strangling is personal. We’ve got those three methods and more.

“I don’t see this killer evolving, and I still can’t picture him. He doesn’t fit any profile I know. The only good news,” she continued, “is that Cruz found this sad little bag.”

“It was lying on the riverbank in the shadows under the bridge,” said Cruz. “Maybe the killer panicked for some reason and threw it away. Maybe there’s a witness we haven’t heard about yet.”

Dr. Sci picked up where Cruz left off. He was wearing a red Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts, and flip-flops, one of his standard outfits.

“I printed every fricking item in the girl’s bag,” Sci said. “There were smudges on Connie’s wallet and a clear partial print, but it didn’t ring any bells in the database. That print could belong to anyone, a friend of Connie’s or her killer, but whoever left it for us has never been arrested, or taught school, or been in law enforcement or the military.”

“Too bad,” said Cruz. “I was hoping for something better than that.”

Sci went on. “All is not lost. The cell phone is the jackpot, my friends. Mo-bot came in at four a.m.,” he said, “and she pulled the data.”

“Mo, you found something?” Justine asked.

“There were a slew of text messages,” said Maureen Roth, aka Mo-bot, computer geek extraordinaire, self-appointed mom to the Private family. She was fifty-something but didn’t look it, with her tattoos, ultrahip clothes, spiky hair-and then there were the bifocals, which looked like they ought to belong to somebody’s grandmother in Boca Raton, Florida.

“I found hundreds of messages, all traceable to IP addresses and cell phones except for the last one, which came from a prepaid phone. I know. What a shock. But still, you’ll all want to see this.”

Mo-bot inserted a flash drive into a laptop and poked some keys. Messages scrolled up on the center wall screen.

I read the text message at the top of the list, time dated yesterday afternoon.

connie, it’s linda. my mom took away my cell. i’m in massive trouble and i have to talk to you. meet me behind the taco bell? pleeeeze. don’t tell anyone!

Mo said, “Let’s assume that Connie gets the message that her friend Linda is in trouble. She has no reason to be cautious so far. She goes to meet Linda. Just like that, the trap is sprung.”

“So the text message was a fake? A lure?”

“Exactly. Anyone could have known the name of one of Connie’s friends, bought a no-name phone, and lured her to her death. But twelve girls have been killed now. They went to different schools, and none of the victims knew one another. That’s why I find it probable, even a certainty, that each dead girl was tricked by a fake text. It’s simple, even ingenious.”

Justine said, “So a hacker gets into the girl’s phone, figures out who she trusts, and takes on a friend’s identity by texting from a no-name phone.”

Sci said, “That’s what I’m thinking. A ghost in the machine. But that still doesn’t lead us to the killer. We hit a wall after that.”

Chapter 13

JUSTINE GOT TO her feet, quickly changed places with Mo-bot, and put her fingers on the computer keyboard. “I don’t believe in ghosts,” she said. “If the Schoolgirl psycho walks and breathes, he’s got fingerprints and hair and skin cells. The more times he kills, the more likely he is to make a mistake.”

She hit a couple of keys and projected a summary of the Schoolgirl case up on the flat-screens.

The time line placed the murders at roughly every two months for the past two years, except that recently the pace was accelerating. Next to the time line was a map of East LA with electronic flags representing the victims’ locations.

The faces of the victims took up another screen.

The girls were of all descriptions. Light. Dark. Some pretty. Some fairly plain. Scholars. Athletes. Some thin. Some not. All high school girls. All unreasonably, tragically dead.

“We should put out the word about these no-name phone calls,” said Mo. “Talk to the school principals again. Do a TV campaign about fake text messages with personal info.”