The 9th Girl

“They want a statement?” Kovac asked, feigning shock. “It’s a clusterfuck. That’s my statement. They want a statement, they can pull one out of my ass. I just got here. I don’t even know yet what young Dickhead here has managed to fuck up in my absence.”

Dickson waved him off. “Fuck you, Kojak.”

Kovac turned and looked at the center of their crime scene: a dark green Mini, parked near the security light. Dana Nolan had parked exactly where young women were supposed to park their cars for safety—under a pool of light where they would be able to see danger coming.

Nothing good ever happened in a parking lot after midnight. It was unlikely there had been any witnesses. This was a quiet residential neighborhood. Dana Nolan’s belongings still lay on the ground where she had dropped them. She probably had seen danger coming. There just hadn’t been a damn thing she could do about it.

Kovac walked over to the car and squatted down for a closer look at Dana Nolan’s abandoned belongings. A purse. A makeup bag. A tote bag with papers spilling out of it. He picked one of the papers out and frowned as he looked at it—the missing girl poster of Pe

He stood up and looked at Nolan’s car, at the piece of paper tucked under the windshield wiper. A sick feeling began to stir like a snake waking in his belly.

Careful to touch just the edges of the page, he took it from under the blade and looked at it.

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL?

Pe

At the bottom of the page scrawled in black magic marker were two words and a smiley face.

HAPPY HOLIDAY.

37

“That’s not his MO,” Liska said.

“It is now.”

John Qui

Kovac didn’t want the press seeing Qui

“I guess it’s safe to say he’s liking the attention,” Kovac said.

“Loving it,” Qui

They sat in the war room, surrounded by everything to do with Pe

Qui

“This is why I didn’t want to challenge him,” Kovac said. “I was afraid he would take me up on it.”

“What do we do now? Do we acknowledge him?” Kasselma

“It’s going to be bad enough as it is,” Liska said. “First we’ve got a dead zombie, then a missing girl, now this. One of their own snatched out from under our noses. The news media is going to co

“If you don’t acknowledge him, he’s going to get frustrated,” Qui

“Not for Dana Nolan,” Liska pointed out.

“Dana Nolan is dead,” Qui

“He might drag it out longer this time because he has a stage,” he said. “That’s the best you can hope for.”

“That’s a hell of a thing to be optimistic about,” Kovac muttered. “If we’re lucky, he’ll spend more time torturing her before he stabs her to death and beats her head in with a hammer.”

“It’s more time to look for her,” Qui

“Yeah. If we had a freaking clue where to look.” Kovac turned to his boss. “I’ve got a small army canvassing Dana Nolan’s neighborhood. They’re knocking on every door that has a sight line to that parking lot and the street.”

“And you haven’t found anything to go on from the previous cases?” Kasselma

Kovac shook his head. “Nothing. I’ve got guys double-checking, triple-checking, quadruple-checking everything from each of those cases—every report, every statement. They’re calling the families of the victims. They’re reinterviewing the people who reported finding the bodies. Nothing.”

“He’s smart, he’s careful, he’s experienced,” Qui

“He stalked her,” Kovac concluded. “He singled her out because of the coverage of the Pe

“This is his big moment to show the world he’s smarter than everybody.”

“So far,” Kasselma

“We’ve got to trace Dana Nolan’s every move over the last few days,” Kovac said. “If he was stalking her, someone might have seen him.”

“He might have even interacted with her in the days leading up to this,” Qui

“So he’s probably not a scary-looking guy,” Liska said.

“Probably not. Probably average size or smaller,” Qui

“I got that feeling looking at a couple of his older cases. The Rose Reiser case, in particular. She disappeared walking out of a convenience store, and no one saw anything, which means she didn’t struggle. He had to have gotten right up to her without causing alarm. Then he probably used a stun gun or some other quick way of subduing the victim.”

Kovac looked up at the wall and the photos of Pe

“The Holiday station,” he said. “If he’s the one who snatched Pe