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the newsprint-stained tan telephone that sat on the table and punched some buttons. “Derek?” he said. “Can you come in here?”

    It took about a nanosecond for Derek Rogers to appear at the conference room door. Derek was Susan’s age, which she, in her more contemplative moments, admitted brought out her competitive instincts. He had gone to college in South Dakota on a football scholarship and settled for sports journalism after an injury forced him off the team. Now he split his time between the crime desk and city desk at the Herald. He still looked like a jock, square-jawed and clean-cut, with that way of walking a little bowlegged, like a cowboy. Susan suspected that he blow-dried his hair. But he wasn’t wearing his suit jacket today, and his eyes looked bleary. Susan considered that perhaps he led a more interesting life than she gave him credit for. He smiled at her, trying to catch her eye. He was always doing that. Susan remained evasive.

    Derek was carrying a projector, a laptop, and a box of doughnuts. He slid the doughnuts on the table and opened the box. A sickly sweet aroma filled the room. “They’re Krispy Kreme,” he said. “I drove all the way to Beaverton.”

    A girl was missing and Derek was buying doughnuts. Nice. Susan glanced at Clay. But he didn’t launch into a lecture about the grave nature of the situation. He took two doughnuts, and bit into one. “They’re better when they’re fresh,” he announced.

    Ian took an apple fritter. “You don’t want one?” he asked Susan.

    Susan did. But she didn’t want to make Derek look good. “I’m fine,” she said.

    Derek fiddled with the equipment. “I’ll just get set up,” he said. He opened the laptop and turned on the projector, and a square of color appeared on the white wall. Susan watched as the blur focused into a PowerPoint title page. On a bloodred background, a Halloween font read THE SCHOOLGIRL KILLER .

    “The Schoolgirl Killer?” Clay asked skeptically. White clumps of doughnut glaze clung to the corners of his mouth. His voice was fat with sugar.

    Derek glanced down shyly. “I’ve been working on a name.”

    “Too literal,” Clay said. “We need something snappy.”

    “How about the Willamette Strangler?” Derek said.

    Ian shrugged. “It’s a little derivative.”

    “It’s too bad he doesn’t eat them,” Clay said dryly. “Then we could come up with something really clever.”

    “So the third girl’s been missing how long?” asked Susan.

    Derek cleared his throat. “Right. Sorry.” He faced the group authoritatively, his fists on the table. “Let’s start with Lee Robinson, Cleveland High. She disappeared in October. She had jazz-choir practice after school. When it was over, she left the gym, where practice was held, and told some friends that she was walking home. She lived ten blocks away.”

    Susan flipped open her notebook. “Was it dark?” she asked.

    “No,” Derek said. “But close. Lee never arrived home. When she was about an hour late for dinner, her mother started calling her friends. And then, at nine-thirty, she called the police. They’re not thinking the worst yet.”

    Derek hit a button on the laptop and the title page dissolved into the image of a scanned Herald news story. “This is the first story we ran, on the front page of Metro, October 29, forty-eight hours after Lee’s disappearance.” Susan felt a jolt of sadness at the sight of the girl’s school picture: flat brown hair, braces, jazz-choir sweatshirt, pimples, blue eye shadow, and lip gloss. Derek continued: “The cops ask anyone with information to call a hot line. They got over a thousand calls. Nothing panned out.”

    “You’re sure you don’t want an apple fritter?” Ian asked Susan.

    “Yes,” Susan said.

    Derek hit a key again. The story dissolved into another slide, an image of the front page. “The November first story was front-page news. ‘Girl Missing.’” The school