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killer bashed her head in with a forty-two-pound rock—a weapon of opportunity, left at the scene.”
    “Halloween, Thanksgiving, New Year’s.” Liska ticked off the holidays. “What about Christmas?”
    “He seems to have taken Christmas off. Maybe he’s religious.”
    “You think our bad guy is a serial killer?”
    “You know how I feel about coincidence,” Kovac said. “I think if I was young woman living in the Midwest I would be spending Valentine’s Day at home with the doors locked and a gun handy, in case Doc Holiday came calling.”
    “Makes me glad I have boys,” Liska said.
    “Where are they tonight?”
    “Speed took them to a hockey game.”
    Kovac arched a brow. “He actually showed up?”
    His low opinion of Liska’s ex was well known. It hadn’t improved any since Liska had moved from St. Paul to Minneapolis and Speed Hatcher had found even more excuses not to make the short drive across the river to see his kids.
    “Sure. Because it’s something
he
wanted to do.” She picked at her kung pao chicken, frowning. “Asshole. He calls the other night to say he saw me on the news with the New Year’s Doe story—just to make the statement that I’m not aging well. Like I didn’t already know I look like I haven’t slept in a month.”
    Kovac got his back up. “Fuck him!”
    “I’ve been staying up nights looking at the missing persons websites,” she confessed.
    “Me, too.”
    “Yeah, but you already looked like hell,” she said, mustering her sense of humor.
    “Hey, I hear chicks go for the Wounded Warrior.”
    “Yeah? Well, you’re here with me, so . . .”
    He conceded the point. “Have you seen anything promising on the sites?”
    “I ran across one last night. A girl out of Missouri.”
    “I saw that one. The date’s way wrong.”
    “And the clothes are wrong, too,” Liska said. “Our girl was wearing a red coat. This girl was supposed to be wearing a black coat.”
    “The face isn’t quite right, either,” Kovac said, bringing the image up on his computer screen.
    They both stared at the photograph of eighteen-year-old Rose Ellen Reiser. She looked so happy and full of life. Kovac didn’t want to think that a vicious predator might have snuffed out that bright life.
    “You know, if we could just get these mutts to kill each other, that would work out for everyone,” Kovac said.
    “Evil isn’t attracted to evil,” Liska pointed out. “Darkness only wants to destroy light.”

10
    The darkest days of Jeannie Reiser’s life had been those last two weeks before her husband’s death. Watching him suffer and struggle had seemed unbearable. But those days had been bright compared to the endless limbo that came after Rose’s car had been discovered.
    At least there had been an end in sight with Dean’s illness. They had known what to expect. The mother of a missing child had no such comfort. There was no way of knowing if her daughter was living in terror or dead and at peace. And the torment of trying to decide which answer would be worse was a living hell in and of itself.
    The imagination went to terrible places, unspeakable places. She had read enough books and watched enough crime shows on television to know that men who kidnapped young women were capable of depravity that knew no bounds. How could she hope her daughter was alive but in the hands of a madman? Yet how could she hope that her daughter was dead?
    Hope was just another word for purgatory.
    She went back to Wichita because, after the initial searches turned up nothing, there was no real reason to stay in Missouri. She maintained daily contact with the Missouri State Highway Patrol, checking for any bit of progress in the case, making sure they didn’t let it go. She tried to keep Rose’s name in the press but never got the national attention she’d hoped for.
    The fact that Rose had once run away, that she had gone through a dark period of rebellion, made her less than desirable to the