Will watched two more patrons enter the restaurant. He tried to put himself in Miranda’s position. What kind of person posted a photo of a restaurant that she was not going to eat at, and mentioned a boyfriend that she did not have? He guessed the sort of person who catfished a desperate father and bilked him out of thirty grand.
Faith caught his attention as Miranda waited for her order to be filled. Faith looked pissed, but that was nothing new. The cashier called her up. Faith kept her body turned sideways, placing an order while she kept Miranda in her sightline.
The woman remained oblivious. She was clearly enthralled by whatever was on her phone. Will could see a tiny bump in the back of her neck where the vertebrae had conformed to her head constantly being bent toward a screen.
Miranda finally glanced up. Her order was ready. She took the tray that was waiting for her on the counter. Single, fries, drink. She filled her cup with unsweetened tea. Faith was directly beside her, filling her cup with soda while Miranda moved onto the condiments.
Straw. Napkins. Salt. Plastic silverware. She pumped the ketchup dispenser, filling six tiny paper cups.
Miranda headed toward the side of the dining area where a slim countertop and tall barstools afforded a view of the muffler shop across the street.
“Ma’am?” Faith flashed her ID.
Miranda nearly dropped her tray.
“Over there.” Faith pointed toward Will. She was in her cop’s stance, which instantly drew everyone’s attention. “Move.”
Will watched Miranda’s eyes slide around the dining room. She looked guilty just standing there. Will hadn’t chosen the booth at random. Between his position and Faith’s, they had effectively covered all exit points.
Tea splashed out of Miranda’s cup. Her hands were shaking. She took some very small steps toward the booth. Then some large ones when Faith turned her Cop Attitude to loud. Faith was a petite woman, but she could be menacing when the situation called for it.
Miranda slid into the booth across from Will. Faith got in beside her and pushed Miranda farther along the bench until she was effectively trapped against the wall.
Will made the introductions, because Faith had taken his usual position of being the silent, unpredictable one. “I’m Trent. This is Mitchell.”
Miranda studied his ID. Her hands were still trembling. “Is this real?”
Faith slapped her business card on the table. “Call the number.”
Miranda picked up the card. She stared at it. Her eyes were wet with tears. He could see her jaw working as she gritted her teeth back and forth.
The card went back down on the table.
She took a French fry, dipped it into each of the six ketchups, then shoved it into her mouth.
Will looked at Faith while Miranda silently chewed. He guessed the woman had decided to pretend like they weren’t there until they gave up and left her alone.
Will said, “We’re here to talk to you about Gerald Caterino.”
The chewing paused for a second, but she six-dipped another fry and stuck it into her mouth.
Faith reached over and Jenga-like pulled one of the fries from the pile.
Miranda gave a forced sigh. “I know my rights. I don’t have to talk to the police if I don’t want to.”
Will channeled his inner Faith. “Did you learn that at the police academy, Detective Masterson?”
Miranda stopped chewing. “It’s not illegal to adopt an online pseudonym.”
“Debatable,” Will said, putting his own spin on Faith’s irritated tone. “But it’s illegal to impersonate a police officer. Even a retired one who never existed.”
The news clearly startled her.
Faith put her arm along the back of the booth. Her jacket hung open. Her gun was visible to anyone who looked down.
Miranda looked down.
She swallowed so hard that the sound carried.
“My dog got sick,” Miranda said. “She needed surgery, and then my car broke down.”
Will asked, “All of that cost $30,000?”
“I worked for free for a whole year before I asked for anything. And then I had to keep charging because—” She realized that her voice was too loud. “I had to keep charging because it would look suspicious if I didn’t.”
“Smart,” Faith said.
Miranda’s eyes cut in her direction, but she told Will, “The Masterson persona gives me validity. No one would listen to me if they knew I was a woman. You have no idea how hard—”
Faith pretended to snore.
Miranda said, “I’ll pay a fine. I’ll return the money. It’s no big deal.”
“You’re a CPA, right?” Will waited for her to nod. “Did you pay taxes on that income?”
Her eyes went shifty again. “Yes.”
Will said, “I need a copy of your private investigator’s license, your Love2CMurder business license and your federal ID number or social security number so I can verify—”
“The money was paid out over two years. That qualifies for a gift tax exemption.”
Faith blew out a stream of air between her lips.
Will used one of Faith’s favorite lines. “Can we cut the bullshit?”
Miranda’s jaw tightened. “I don’t have to talk to you.”
“We can arrest you on the catfishing alone.”
She pushed away the tray. “Look, okay, I accepted Gerald’s gift money, but I was really helping him. Do you think that dinosaur knows how to do a deep dive on the internet?”
Faith couldn’t stay silent. “Is thirty K the going rate for setting up a Google alert and cutting out some articles?”
“I did a heck of a lot more than that. Hours more. I crunched the data. I showed him patterns.” She reached into her purse.
Faith clamped her hand around the woman’s wrist.
“Ow!” Miranda winced. “I was just getting my phone. It’s in my bag.”
Faith took the plastic fork off Miranda’s tray and poked around the feed sack. Finally, she nodded.
“Jeesh.” Miranda retrieved her phone. Her thumbs started sliding across the screen. “You’re right. I sent Gerald the Google alerts that highlighted articles that reported similar attacks to the one Beckey suffered. Have you seen the pictures of her? She nearly died. A lot of women are dead. I’m not just investigating a string of murders. I’m hunting a freaking serial killer.”
Will wasn’t going to indulge her. “What patterns did you show Gerald?”
Miranda worked her phone as she talked. “The cases I sent him, all of the women were abducted in either the last week of March or the last week of October. All of them disappeared in the early morning hours between five and noon.”
He saw Faith stiffen, because the time of the women’s disappearances was a detail she hadn’t been privy to.
Will said, “We already know about the dates and times. What else?”
“Did Gerald tell you about the hair stuff? And the stalking?”
“Yes.”
“Which cases did he show you?”
Will hedged, “Which cases do you think he showed us?”
“I need to start from the beginning.” Miranda turned the phone sideways and angled it so that both Will and Faith could see the screen. “Okay, so here’s the original Excel spreadsheet showing all the raw data I sent to Gerald. My search criteria was women missing in Georgia over the last eight years. It took days, sometimes weeks and months, even a year, to track down what happened after they were reported missing. We are talking thousands of hours of my time to gather this into a searchable database.”
Will said, “Keep going.”
“This cell tells you what happened to them.” She flicked her finger across the screen to a new column. “The majority of the women showed back up, which is common. Women just need a break sometimes. The rest of them ended up getting arrested for drugs or whatever, a few of them were in women’s shelters because their husbands were abusive. Some never came back, but maybe they left the state or ran off with a boyfriend. But a small number of them turned up dead. Look at this column.”
Faith read, “Joan Feeney. Pia Danske. Shay Van Dorne. Alexandra McAllister.”
The same names that Faith had weeded out from Gerald’s list.
Will said, “According to Gerald Caterino, there were more victims than what you have in the columns.”
“He was wrong. I swear, he was just seeing what he wanted to see. I bet he never showed you my total list here.” She swiped the screen again. “This cell has the October abductions over the last eight years. This has the March ones. Gerald dismissed a lot of the names I gave him because he either couldn’t get in touch with the family, or they didn’t report hearing about a missing hair item, or the victims never reported that they felt like they were being stalked. But I thought a few of the women belonged on the list because they fit the other criteria.”
Will saw an imperceptible shift in Faith’s features. She was reading ahead. She knew Miranda was onto something.
Will asked, “What about the other criteria?”
“Like I said, they all disappeared in the morning, sometime in the last week of March or the last week of October. Except for Caterino and Truong, they were going about a fairly predictable routine—on a run, heading to work, hitting the supermarket or drugstore—when they were abducted. Then, however long later, they were all found in the woods, off the official path, with their bodies mutilated in what the coroners chalked up to animal activity.”