“Ah, they just want someone who does all the work for them. You’ve been busy, I see. Those girls were all over the television yesterday, and you’re all over the paper today.”

“What?” Victoria froze.

“Well, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration.” He held up the newspaper. “You’re on the front page of the metro section.”

Victoria tried not to snatch the paper from his hand. She hated publicity. And the thought of herself in the paper was making her stomach spin. She unfolded the paper and stared at an old photo of herself. It was from a lecture she’d given a few years back at Portland State University. She breathed a small sigh of relief. The Oregonian had used the photo before. That meant they didn’t have anything fresh from the current investigation. The headline read BONE LADY TACKLES OLD MYSTERY.

Not the Bone Lady moniker again.

Surely the papers could come up with a better name. She skimmed the article. It stated that she was taking a fresh look at the old bones from the original circle of women and briefly rehashed the story. She glanced at the byline. Not Michael Brody. Brody wrote better articles than this; this article said nothing. Brody wrote in-depth investigative articles. She wondered if he was examining the case for the paper. He was a close friend of Lacey Campbell’s, and had crossed paths with Victoria a few times. He knew how to push her buttons in a highly irritating way and seemed to enjoy it.

“So you’re looking into that old case, eh?”

She looked up. Jeremy studied her closely, and she wondered what her face had revealed. Irritation? Annoyance?

“Yes. I’m hoping to find something that will indicate who those unidentified three women were.”

“I remember when that happened. I always thought it was odd that no one stepped forward.”

She looked at him with new interest. “You lived in the city back then?”

“Sure. Lived right downtown. It was a different era, you know. Men like me did our best to stay out of the limelight, but we knew where to go to socialize with others like us.”

Victoria studied his face. They’d had a few conversations about what it was like to be a gay man in today’s society, but Jeremy rarely talked about the old days. Her heart winced in sympathy for the hidden life he’d led.

“We used to talk about that case a lot. Who would murder a bunch of women? Rumors swirled about white slaves and prostitution rings. I always thought it seemed like it had a personal touch. Like someone had arranged them in that circle, you know, put them on display for others to see.”

“But why weren’t all of them claimed?”

“Maybe folks were too scared to do so. It had that cult-like feeling about it, you know? Something about them being found in a pattern and dressed the same.”

Victoria shook her head. Could a cult have hid underground for that many decades in the city?

“I see all the recent girls have been identified.” Jeremy nodded at the paper still in Victoria’s hands. She handed it back to him, gladly closing the paper on her own photo. “All local girls, but different schools, eh?”

Victoria nodded. “You know Trinity, right? The girl who ended up in the hospital is a close friend of hers.”

“Ah, she’s a good one, that girl. How’s Trinity holding up?”

“She was relieved Brooke lived, but now is terrified she’ll die. She spent most of yesterday believing she’d already died.”

“It says they didn’t figure out who was who until late last night. Were you down there?”

“For a while. It was a nightmare. Lots of parents searching for their kids. Dr. Campbell narrowed it down pretty fast.”

“All this new technology, but teenagers still learn the quickest way to hide crap from their parents.” Jeremy snorted. “Some things never change. And they’re always willing to follow the person who seizes control of their crowd, applying the peer pressure. Usually to their detriment.”

“No word on a cult yet,” she added with a small smile.

“We’ll see,” Jeremy said with all seriousness. “There’s something that tied all these girls together. And something that ties them to those deaths decades ago. Convincing people to kill themselves takes some sort of brainwashing. Cults know how to do that.”

Victoria stiffened. “Who says they killed themselves?”

Jeremy shrugged, rolling his paper into a tight spiral. He tapped his palm with it. “Just speculating. Like they did in the article here.” He didn’t meet her gaze, his eyes focused down their street. “They’ll uncover this mystery. This one and the old one. You’ll help them get to the bottom of it.”

She hated speculation. She understood its use to form theories to help search for motive and answers, but she didn’t care for it being spread around until there was proof. And there was no proof that these girls had taken their own lives. Trinity’s tear-streaked face filled her mind.

She was going to figure out who killed these women. All of them.

Trinity sat in another waiting room. Twenty-four hours before, she’d been in the waiting room at the medical examiner’s office. This one was better. At least now she knew Brooke was alive. Barely.

Trinity’s foster mom, Katy, had disappeared in search of coffee. Trinity thumbed through last week’s People magazine, its cover shredded and wrinkled, her mind retaining nothing. She’d been given one minute to see her friend. Brooke hadn’t opened her eyes. The doctors said they didn’t know if she ever would. She’d gone a long time without oxygen. Her body had been in the process of turning itself off when she’d been found. Trinity had heard them talking about a drug that slowed down everything in her body until it simply stopped.