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  “Cool.” Madison wanted to like this girl. If nothing else, she had an amazing Elvis tattoo on her chest. But Josie was prickly and difficult to make friends with.

  “My manager doesn’t want us talking to you, or really even to the police. We were told to have short memories when we talk to the police.”

  The waitress brought Madison’s coffee and water. “Why? What do they care?”

  “Hank’s has had really bad publicity for a long time. There are fights, and there was a guy that got brain damage from a fight that the bouncers took part in. They just don’t want any more trouble. They are trying to run a business. I kind of don’t blame them.”

  “That’s fair. But do you think they held anything back from the police?”

  It seemed like Josie was trying to decide what to say. Madison felt like she was under unwarranted suspicion. Finally, Josie spoke. “Yes, I do.”

  The waitress brought Madison’s food. She asked Josie if she wanted anything, and Josie declined.

  “Okay. What do you think they are withholding?” Bernini’s made the best home-fried potatoes. Madison was starting to feel the life come back into her body.

  “This is the deal. I can understand trying to keep your business going. But that could have been me leaving the bar late at night and never being seen again. We have to do everything possible to find that girl. Felicity deserves to know what happened to her sister.”

  “I agree. So what do you think they are withholding?” Madison was getting impatient; it took a lot for this girl to get to the point.

  “The police asked for the names of all of the staff who were working the night Samantha went missing. But they didn’t ask for it until about a month after she’d gone missing. By then there was a bouncer who’d quit; he’d only worked there for a couple of months, and he creeped all the girls out. I can’t for the life of me remember this guy’s name, and anyway, I think we called him by a nickname. It was like … Larry, or something like that. But I can’t remember, because I just avoided him. He was the ‘new guy’ or the ‘new bouncer’ until he wasn’t there anymore. But I know he was working the night that Samantha went missing, because I was working that night and I remember him being there.”

  Madison waved at the waitress to get more coffee. It was slow going getting up to speed this morning. “And did your manager hand over this guy’s name with the other names?”

  “That’s the thing: I don’t think he did. I specifically asked my manager, Jethro—”

  “Jesus, that guy,” Madison said.

  “Yeah, he’s a real prize. Anyway, I specifically asked him, ‘Did you give them the name of that bouncer?’ and he said, ‘Don’t worry about it. Go back to work.’”

  That was hardly a smoking gun, in Madison’s opinion. That sounded like the way Jethro talked to most people, most of the time, and didn’t necessarily mean he was hiding something. He would definitely not like Josie questioning him as to how he was doing his job.

  Josie was continuing. “So I need to get into his office and look at the personal files. I feel like if I see the guy’s name, I’ll know it.”

  Madison was glad that the breakfast at Bernini’s was so good; otherwise she would be annoyed at this meeting. Josie had made it sound like she had information that would help—so much so that she hadn’t wanted to talk about it on the phone. Now Madison felt like Josie was trying to be relevant so that Felicity would continue to talk to her. Madison definitely liked the bouncer angle, since that had been two of her tweets, but Hank’s had more bouncers than the average restaurant, so it didn’t really mean anything that Josie was interested in an employee who also happened to be a bouncer. Nevertheless, she wasn’t going to burn this bridge; it could prove helpful to have an in with someone who worked at the bar where Samantha was last seen.

  “Well, I would definitely love to know the guy’s name. It won’t help for me to call and ask Jethro for a list of employees working that night—we did not hit it off when we met.”

  “I’m going to be working on looking for that name during my shifts for the next week. Jethro is almost always there when I’m working, and when he’s not, his office is usually locked. But I’m going to figure out this guy’s name.”

  Madison waved at the waitress to get the check. “That sounds good. You have my phone number. Call anytime.”

  Madison’s phone went off. It was Tom. She answered without even glancing at Josie.

  “Yes?”

  The connection was bad. “Well … right … meet me … you know?”

  “Your phone is breaking up. What?”

  “I said … And make sure …” And then the call dropped.

  “Is everything okay?” Josie asked.

  “I’m not sure. I need to go. I’m sorry.” Madison stood up and met the waitress to pay. She ran to her car. She got a text from Tom just as she got in the driver’s seat.

  Found Elissa.

  * * *

  Madison sat in her car in front of Bernini’s. She had watched Josie pick up her purse and walk to a blue-and-black-checkerboard Mini Cooper and drive away. Madison was waiting for Tom to call her back or give her more information. She was tapping her fingers on the steering wheel in a series of patterns that was a small indicator of her extreme agitation.

  She had texted Tom back—Alive?—but he hadn’t answered. She wanted to hope for the best, but it seemed unlikely Elissa would be alive out there in the chaparral. Madison couldn’t just sit here. She had to know what was going on.

  She started the car and pulled into traffic, turning left onto Pearl to leave La Jolla. Knowing Tom, he would think that his text fulfilled his obligation to keep her updated. But Madison needed a lot more information than just “found Elissa.” How was she found? Alive? Buried peacefully? That was unlikely. But in what state? Where? Was it for sure Frank who had done it? It must be. Had they found Samantha as well? Had they looked for her? Tom didn’t know Samantha used to live next to Frank; it hadn’t come up last night, and for sure Madison had to tell him now. Her mind threatened to spin out of control. The only way to get all of this information despite bad phone service was to drive to Ramona and talk to Tom.

  She planned to take the 52 until she merged onto the 67 North, which would take her straight onto Main Street in Ramona. She could text Tom to meet her somewhere. As soon as the text went through to him, she would probably be in Ramona anyway. The drive was about forty-five minutes this time of day.

  She’d been on the 52 for a couple of miles when she saw the blue Blazer behind her. She first identified the headlight shape as belonging to a Chevy Blazer, approximate model year 2008, exactly like the one she’d seen parked across the street from the PB Cantina in Pacific Beach when she’d met the “three As” girls. She was driving in the number-one lane when she noticed it; he’d made the stupid mistake of driving right behind her. Perhaps not stupid in his mind, because he might not know she had seen his car in Pacific Beach the day before.

  Though she thought of the driver as a he, she couldn’t be sure it was a man. The windows were tinted dark, and it looked like there might even be some tinting on the windshield, which was so illegal that Madison couldn’t believe he’d made it on the freeway farther than a mile without getting pulled over by the California Highway Patrol. The effect was such that she couldn’t see who was driving the car.

  She casually changed into the number-two lane; this was a small freeway with only two lanes. The idiot changed lanes right behind her at the same time rather than waiting a few minutes. Or better yet, being in the number-two lane in the first place and not following her from lane to lane. Who is this rookie? Madison thought. Actually, it didn’t have to be a rookie. It could just be an ex-cop trying to make a living as a private investigator. Madison knew that cops didn’t do surveillance with fewer than four people in a team. They preferred six. Doing surveillance by themselves? Unheard of. They didn’t know how to do it. And this guy clearly did not know how to d
o surveillance by himself.

  She was using her indignation at the bad job he was doing to cover the fear brewing in the pit of her stomach. This could be Anonymous, here to make good on his promise to kill her. She didn’t want him to follow her to Ramona. She didn’t want him to get her on a lonely stretch of freeway. She needed to lose him.

  She exited the freeway at Genesee Avenue. She kept her movements casual so he wouldn’t know that she had spotted him. He left almost no room between them as he exited behind her. He was either really bad at his job or he wanted her to know he was following her and was trying to intimidate her.

  Madison rolled slowly to the bottom of the exit ramp and waited at the red light. Genesee was a large road, with several lanes in each direction, separated by a median. She had the choice of turning right or turning left and joining the traffic on the other side of the median heading south. If a U-turn were allowed at this intersection, which it was not, she would end up on the on-ramp to the 52 East, continuing on the freeway in the same direction she had been traveling. If she did that and he followed her, he would be committing the cardinal sin of tailing: doing something to remove all doubt that he was following her. If she made an illegal U-turn, that was also an illogical move since she’d just gotten off the same freeway, and if he followed her in the same illogical move, he would know that he had just revealed himself to her, making it difficult to ever do surveillance on her again. It would tell her whether he was following her to kill her or just to see where she was going; if the latter, he wouldn’t want her to spot him.

  As the light turned green, Madison crept slowly into the intersection and stopped. There was no oncoming traffic, so there was no reason for her to stop. The cars behind the blue Blazer began honking their horns at her in frustration. They wanted to get home, get to work, get off this damn freeway, and she wasn’t moving. One by one the cars behind the Blazer started coming out from behind and passing them, honking and glaring at her as they drove past. The Blazer stayed behind her.

  “My God, I hope you’re just dumb.” Madison still couldn’t make out a person in the driver’s seat.

  She whipped the steering wheel to the left, punched the gas a little to complete the tight U-turn but not so much that she would spin out, and then gunned the V-6 engine up the on-ramp toward the 52 East.

  Madison checked the rearview mirror as she sped up the long on-ramp. The Blazer had paused at first but then started the U-turn. Just as abruptly he gave up, altered his course, and joined the traffic making the left onto southbound Genesee. He didn’t want her to know he was following her; he was just bad at tailing.

  “Okay, so who the fuck are you?” Madison tried to calm her breathing. He didn’t seem like someone who wanted her dead; he’d given up pretty easily for that. He seemed like someone who wanted to know where she was going. That didn’t mean he didn’t also want her dead, just apparently not right now.

  If they had found Elissa, surely they’d picked up Frank already, or were about to? And anyway, Frank had a small red car with a smashed passenger side door, not a blue Blazer. And the Blazer had been following her in Pacific Beach yesterday while Frank had been at the store in his red car. This was not Frank. But Blazer man could’ve gotten out at the light and shot her through the glass, so he wasn’t a very determined assassin, if that’s what he was.

  Madison kept traveling toward Ramona, checking her rearview mirror on occasion. No other cars following her. She drove with her knees and tweeted:

  I see you.

  She didn’t use the Gaslamp hashtag. She didn’t know what good that would do, but it was somewhat satisfying. As answers revealed themselves, such as Elissa being found, and as she got closer to finding the truth, Madison felt herself being pushed further away. She had found Elissa by following Frank, and yet she knew nothing else; she didn’t even know if Elissa was alive, because Tom wasn’t answering her texts. Was Frank connected to Samantha’s disappearance as well? Who was this guy following her, and what was his connection, if any, to the disappearances?

  Madison’s attention was brought to the electronic sign on the freeway; there was a message on it. Common in California, these changeable-message signs were used to notify drivers on the freeway of important information, such as freeway closures and hazards up ahead, as well as persons of interest—anyone for whom a “be on the lookout,” or BOLO, had been issued. She checked the sign to see if it was looking for Frank. It wasn’t. The sign indicated an Amber Alert, the law passed in California to help find missing children within hours of their having gone missing. Madison grabbed a pen from the console and wrote down the license plate and vehicle information listed on the electronic sign in case she saw the kidnapper’s car on her way to Ramona.

  The phone pinged with a Twitter notification. The account that had mentioned her was the same one as before: MaddieKelly12. The tweet said:

  NO, I SEE YOU.

  Madison started to shake as a shot of adrenaline raced through her body. Her eyes shot to the rearview mirror: she was alone on the freeway. She glanced back at her phone. Frank was either in custody or hiding from the police right now; very doubtful he was tweeting her. Which meant the person leaving notes on her door wasn’t Frank. She would discuss with Tom what he had learned when she saw him, but it would appear she had a lot more work to do.

  And then she realized something: she had a friend, Arlo, who was a computer genius. Madison was pretty sure he’d turned down a job with the NSA. He could probably figure out at least where this Twitter account had originated. She should have done that when she got the tweet from this account three days ago. So one of the first things after Ramona would be to take her phone to Arlo and see what he could tell her about MaddieKelly12. And how did this guy know her nickname was Maddie? Not many people called her that.

  She looked at herself in the rearview mirror. Her eyes were bloodshot and her pupils were pinpoints. She was so exhausted from the stress of this case. It seemed like every five minutes she was getting a shot of adrenaline. Madison wasn’t much of a drinker, preferring vitamins and minerals to alcohol, but she felt like she really needed a drink right about now.

  As the 67 freeway turned into Main Street in Ramona, she could tell something was up in town that day: there were cop cars everywhere. Sheriffs’ cars, San Diego Police Department cars; it was like a police road show. As she approached the Jack in the Box, she saw several groups of law enforcement standing near their cars, drinking coffee in the parking lot. She figured they had discovered this was the closest place to the scene that had cell service, just like she had. Hoping to find Tom, or at least text him and let him know she was there, she pulled into a parking space next to a San Diego Sheriff’s Department SUV.

  She texted Tom: Where are you? I’m at the Jack-in-the-Box on Main Street. She wondered what the residents of Ramona thought was happening. Any that had been farther along the main highway would have seen yellow crime scene tape marking off the whole area and would’ve probably figured it wasn’t something good.

  Stay there. His immediate reply indicated that he must be somewhere with cell service now at least.

  Tom must’ve been close by, because she saw his Crown Victoria pull into the parking lot within minutes of his text. She got out of her car and walked over to where he had parked.

  “Is she alive?”

  “What do you think?” Tom was not in a good mood.

  “Well, when you put it like that, I guess I think she’s dead.”

  “Give the girl a prize.” Tom was gathering crushed coffee cups and fast-food wrappers from his car and walking them over to the trash can.

  “So are we going to play twenty questions or can you just tell me what you discovered?”

  Tom stopped and leaned against his car. He drank from a bottle of water. Madison was trying to cut him some slack; she figured he’d been up all night. “They started the search near where you saw Frank’s car was parked. It didn’t take long. The night that he killed her, he ca
rried her only a few yards off that dirt road and threw her in a ravine. Then threw a blanket and some dirt down on top of her.”

  Madison watched a squirrel run down the tree trunk, grab a small morsel of something, and then stop to look at Madison. He turned and ran back up into the recesses of the tree. “I’m sorry, Tom.”

  “Yeah, well, if it weren’t for you, I don’t think we ever would have found her. I’m sure Frank wanted to move the body after that cat and mouse you had with him last night, but he woulda needed a crane. Bet he wishes he’d thought of eventualities the night he tossed her body down there. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now, because he confessed.”

  This stopped Madison in her tracks. “He confessed? To both murders?”

  “What do you mean, both murders? To Elissa’s murder. We even used your cell phone gag: we told him we had a recording of his last phone call and how he threatened her on the way to pick her up in the Gaslamp. And then we told him that we were searching the area where he had driven into Ramona last night. That was all it took.”

  Madison was silent for a minute. She’d already decided that she had to tell Tom about Samantha living next door to Frank. It was too relevant to an ongoing investigation. But she was afraid that in his current mood, he would explode because she hadn’t told him last night. “I need to tell you something: I found a connection between Samantha and Frank. Two years before she disappeared, she lived next door to Frank.”

  “You don’t miss much, do you? How did you find that out?”

  “You already knew that?” Madison had apparently been feeling guilty for no reason.

  “Well, we do now. Frank drove to the Gaslamp and found Elissa outside the bar that night. He followed her down the street because she wouldn’t come with him, and ultimately he jumped out and dragged her into the car—which is probably how you found her phone: it flew out of her hand when he grabbed her. He told some passerby she was drunk, and I guess she was too embarrassed to make a scene. They never made it into his house, because he was parked in his driveway when he strangled her. He says he has anger issues. I think he also has meth issues.” That made sense: those wild eyes staring at her through the windshield the night before. Madison shuddered.