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next to his car, he directed her to the passenger side.
    “Can you put my books there?” he asked. “Easier to get to later.”
    She nodded.
    He pushed the electronic door lock button on his key fob and Lisa popped open the door.
    “Did some other good Samaritan take a nap in here?” she said, a little teasingly, as she set the backpack on a seat that had been completely reclined to form a bed.
    He didn’t answer and Lisa turned to look over her shoulder.
    The young man was standing without crutches, framed by a lamp partially blocked by a dying cedar tree. Braided shadows crisscrossed his face like a spider web. He was holding one of the crutches like a Louisville Slugger.
    “What the—” Lisa started to say, but her words were cut short.
    He’d filled the aluminum tube of the crutch with his grandfather’s lead fishing weights, thinking that a little more heft would be helpful when he swung it at his victim’s head.
    Which he did.
    And it was.
    Lisa’s shoulder bag fell into the gutter and her cell phone cartwheeled on the pavement and broke into pieces. The college student offered no final scream. No real sound but the slumping of her body against the doorjamb of the Element.
    In a moment marked by a blur of swift movements and a gasp of air from the victim’s lungs, he had her inside.
    He looked at her through the passenger window, satisfied and excited. He fixed the image in his memory like a photograph that he’d retrieve later. Moments like this were to be savored and relived over and over.
    Lisa Lancaster was so beautiful. Sleeping . Like a doll with a swirl of lovely dark hair and perfect little features. He owned her right then, and a broad and unexpected smile came to his face. Not fear . Not a thumping heart sequestered behind a rib cage. None of that.
    At that moment, the young man understood something about the power of the hunt that had eluded him as he’d planned and stalked his first kill. The rush. The excitement of doing something few dared to do.
    And doing it better than the father he’d admired, though never known. He climbed behind the wheel and turned the key in the car’s ignition. He let out a little laugh at the pun that came to him just then.
    He really was in his element. In every way.
     
     
    At ten minutes before midnight, the 911 communications center received an anguished call from the mother of a missing young woman. The operator, Mary-Jo Danforth, thirty-one, took down the information provided and created a file she’d pass along to law enforcement. It was close to break time and Mary-Jo was feeling bored and restless. After she hung up the call, she swiveled her chair to talk to her friend and co-worker, Kirk Aldean.
    A video camera installed for training purposes captured their conversation.
     
    MARY-JO: Some mother thinks her daughter’s been abducted or something. Didn’t come home from college today.
    KIRK: Probably out whoring around.
    MARY-JO: You said it. I didn’t. I just told her that we usually don’t get involved if someone’s only been gone a few hours. I mean, Jesus, if my old man called every time I was late getting home from shopping . . .
    KIRK: Shopping? So that’s what you call whoring around?
    MARY-JO: You’re such a brat. Anyway, she was crying and saying it wasn’t like her daughter to be so, you know, irresponsible.
    KIRK: Such a ho.
    MARY-JO: You want to have coffee?
    KIRK: You hitting on me, MJ?
    MARY-JO: I guess. Let me finish the report. We can take our break out back.
     
    She returned to her keyboard and finished her record by typing in the name: LISA LANCASTER.

C HAPTER 4
    O ne of the highlights of the lobby of the Tacoma Police Department was without question the Mug Shot Café. Forget the historic placards and the tributes to the fallen officers that filled part of a wall. The espresso shop served up decent lattes and cappuccinos to the men and women of the department that perpetually seemed understaffed—it was appreciated and