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traced the shape. It was the outline of a paper clip, even a little mark where the metal had begun to rust and left a trace behind.
    Something had been clipped here. But folder 3CW was gone.

7
    The van slowed and pulled up to a checkpoint, thrown up in the middle of one of the tiny two-block mill towns that were strung from Buffalo to Syracuse like faded charms on a bracelet. The roadblock was three white barriers with orange striping across the road, plus men in gray with shotguns and rifles.
    Soon they were moving again.
    Each murder would have gotten progressively harder to pull off, Abbie thought. Teenage girls would have vanished off the sidewalks of Buffalo, kept inside by their parents, and on those rare occasions they were let out to visit a friend or go to church, they would have had escorts. A father. An uncle or older brother. But, still, as rare in public as a four-leaf clover.
    Sandy Riesen was next. The famous missing girl, the last of Hangman’s victims—and his own cousin. Her body was never found. Hangman had called her the day of her disappearance from his cell phone, and she’d slipped out of the back door of her family home. Hangman had picked her up a few minutes later on a street corner three blocks away. The reason for their meeting had never been revealed.
    With the state of panic the city was in, Sandy’s father had immediately noted her disappearance and called her in as a missing person.The license plate of Flynn’s car had been put out as a “Be On the Lookout,” and the car was spotted by a driver on 20A three hours later, pulling into the twelve-room Warsaw Motel. When cops arrived, Hangman was sprawled diagonally across the full-size bed, a wound to his right temple pumping out a thin stream of blood onto a pale green polyester comforter. Flynn was alive, gasping out quick breaths, but unable to speak. Nitrocellulose and other traces of gunshot residue—in popular CSI terms, “powder burns”—were found around the entrance hole. It was determined that the right-handed Flynn had shot himself once with an unregistered SIG Sauer.
    The girl’s black nylon jacket, a size 6 from Banana Republic, was tossed casually on the bed, as if she’d stepped out to buy a soda at the vending machine. Her scarf was in the suspect’s BMW, underneath the passenger seat. In the file, there were pictures of the two items of clothing, along with a close-up shot of one of Sandy’s school photos. The detail that had been blown up for the picture was a gold signet ring with an S written in a jagged medieval script, on the ring finger of her right hand. The next was an emerald ring, big stone. They were the only two pieces of jewelry Sandy had been wearing when she disappeared. Both were still missing. Along with Sandy.
    Abbie stared out into the trees whipping by.
    She flipped back through the witness testimonies from the early cases. No one had seen anything until the third murder: a six-year-old boy had spotted a man walking out of the field where Maggie Myeong had been found. She found the original interview transcript. “His face was all red. The man’s head was covered in red.”
    The call went out to the public: Look for a man in a red mask. But it was the killer’s method of execution, not his mask, that haunted Buffalo. That’s what led locals to give him his name: Hangman.
    “Five minutes till Auburn,” the driver called to her.
    She flipped to the beginning of the file, looking for Detective Raymond’s number, then called him on her cell.
    “What you got?” he said.
    “Nothing yet, but I need a few things.”
    “Shoot.”
    “Find out if any cars were ticketed within half a mile of the escapesite either early today or late last night. Any reports of cars idling by the road? Any nonlocals in the coffee shops or diners that morning, looking nervous?”
    “You think there was a vehicle waiting for Hangman?” Raymond said.
    “Maybe.”
    Raymond whistled. “What else?”
    “It’s going