LITMIR.BIZ

      “I’m a part of this investigation,” Gretchen Sandler stated flatly, her palms spread on Mac’s desk as she stood in front of him. “Your latest after-hours attempt to get me out of the picture is…at the very least, amateurish.”

      It was dark, but then it felt like it was always dark this time of year. Mac knew his partner was pissed at him and didn’t much care. She, like many before her, would hang around for a couple of months, maybe even years, but soon enough she would get one foot on his back and another on the next rung to success and catapult herself forward. He was more interested in when the autopsy report and DNA would land on his desk, and if an artist could do facial reconstruction on her skull if there was no DNA match. Twenty years ago, DNA was in its infancy as far as law enforcement went, but it was available, and there were hair samples from a brush of Jessie’s follicles intact, that were being tested.

      He knew in his gut the girl found in the maze was Jessie, and her parents suspected it, too. They might not want to talk to him, but he’d heard the weary acceptance in their voices nevertheless.

      Mac still felt his partner’s presence at his desk. “D’Annibal ask you to keep an eye on me?” Mac didn’t glance up as he reread his notes on Jarrett Erikson. The guy was the slip-periest eel in the barrel and the least forthcoming. What a bastard.

      “I—am—your—partner.”

      “Could you say that a little slower? I’m not quite catching it.”

      “You can be as big an asshole as you want. I’m still part of this investigation.”

      Mac gazed into her sharp blue eyes, then leaned back in his chair. No point in a stare-down. “Okay, so I’ve talked to most of the guys of the group.”

      “I need to be with you when you interview anyone else. You need another perspective.”

      “You have been talking to D’Annibal. Perspective. That’s one of his favorites.”

      She moved sharply and Mac automatically flinched. He’d been around enough perps to sense a threat in a hairsbreadth. But Gretchen just twisted like a robot, then stormed away to her own desk, which was behind his and halfway across the room. She’d been seated closer to him once, but it had left her away from the rise and fall of gossip that other detectives and cops engaged in. She might be universally disliked, but she was going to be in the center of the action, by God. Hanging out with a has-been like Mac wasn’t going to cut it.

      He gazed down at his list. There were checkmarks and notations beside the names of the Preppy Pricks he’d already re-interviewed. Nothing much had come from those meetings other than a feeling that they all universally disliked him and that they were reluctant to give anything away. He probably deserved that. He’d pretty much squeezed them through the wringer back in the day.

      The only ones he hadn’t met with yet were Hudson Walker and Zeke St. John. He hadn’t started on the girls—women—of the group yet. He hadn’t learned much from them twenty years earlier and he didn’t expect to learn much now, but you never knew. He paused over each of their names.

      Tamara…Renee…Evangeline…Rebecca.

      He circled Rebecca’s name, feeling something stir in his memory about that one. She was different. A bit of an odd duck. But there was just something about her, something he couldn’t quite remember. She wasn’t Jessie’s closest friend, but she seemed the most like her in ways he couldn’t quite analyze. “What is it you know?” he said aloud, staring at the old picture.

      “What?” Gretchen called from the other side of the room, as if he were addressing her.

      “Nothing.”

      “Damn you, McNally. Don’t leave me out.”

      As usual, Mac didn’t respond.