examining everything on their computers.
So far our lab had found nothing suspicious and hadn’t turned up a single clue.
Bottom line: thirty-six hours had passed since anyone had seen or heard from them.
By the time we’d finished checking their homes, Lieutenant Warren Jacobi had already contacted the women’s parents. Understandably, as good at his job as he was, Jacobi’s questions had sent the parents into a panic.
Carly Myers’s family lived in town. Conklin and I had visited them last night after Jacobi’s call to see if a stone had been left unturned. It had gone about as well as expected. Sheer terror, anger, unanswerable questions, demands for promises that their daughter would be all right.
Their fear and pain and denial had stuck with me and reverberated still.
I slugged down the last of my coffee, crumpled the empty container, and stuffed it into the plastic bag we kept in the car for trash. My partner did the same.
Rich Conklin is a sunny-side-up kind of guy, but you wouldn’t have known that today. He sighed long and hard, not just frustrated over this puzzle box full of blank pieces. He was reasonably worried. He had wanted to be in Homicide for years, and now he was living the dark side of the dream. I knew what he was thinking, because I was thinking it, too.
Where were the teachers?
Were they alive?
How much time did they have left?
As I texted Joe, my new husband, my partner sang the refrain of an old Steve Miller song, “Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ into the future.”
I checked in with dispatch, then said to my partner, “Okay, Rich. Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 4
Conklin and I got out of the car and headed up the stone stairway from the street to the school.
At the top of the stairway was a manicured lawn with a high 180-degree view of the ocean that was opaque with a foggy marine layer this morning. Ahead of us stood Pacific View Prep, a compound made up of three five-story buildings at right angles, forming a horseshoe around an open courtyard.
We approached the main entrance dead ahead in the central building and badged the armed security guard, whose name tag read K. STROOP.
I made the introductions.
“Sergeant Boxer,” I said. “Homicide. My partner, Inspector Conklin.”
“Homicide?” Stroop said. “Hey, no. You found their bodies?”
“No, no,” Conklin said. “We’re treating this missing persons as top priority. All units, all hands are on deck.”
Stroop looked relieved. I asked him, “Did you see Myers, Jones, and Saran leave the school Monday night?”
He shook his head. “I go off duty at four.”
“But you know them, right?”
“Sure, casually. I see them in the hallways, say, ‘Morning,’ ‘Have a great weekend.’ Like that.”
I asked, “Would you know if any of them have enemies? Maybe a jealous boyfriend? Or a disgruntled student who didn’t get the grade he or she wanted? Anyone showing inappropriate interest in any of them?”
He shook his head no again.
“They’re all nice ladies. Our students are good kids.”
I nodded. “I do have some routine questions for you.”
He said, “Go ahead.”
I asked where he had been the last couple of nights. He’d spent Monday home all night with the wife and son; last night he and his wife had gone to a birthday dinner at a restaurant with friends.
He pulled out his phone and produced time-stamped selfies at the dinner table, which he forwarded to me with his phone number and that of the birthday boy.
He said, “I wish I knew something. I want to help. I can’t stop thinking about them.”
Conklin handed his card to Stroop. “Call anytime if a thought strikes.” Then we entered the main building and started down the wide hallway.
Two days ago Carly Myers, Adele Saran, and Susan Jones had walked this same hallway on their way to and from class. As Stroop had confirmed, Monday had been an ordinary workday. He hadn’t seen any red flags that had caused alarm.
So what had happened to the three schoolteachers?
My sense was that they’d had no clue their lives were about to veer off from ordinary workday to an extraordinarily bad place. That they’d be abducted on Monday night within minutes of leaving the Bridge.
Every passing hour made it more likely that they were dead.
CHAPTER 5
Conklin and I checked the names on the doors as we made our way down the broad, locker-lined hallway to the office of assistant dean Karin Slaughter.
In a conversation with the dean, we’d learned that Slaughter was thirty-two, had a master’s degree in education, had