If anyone deserved a second glass of wine, she did.

Mason rubbed at the back of his neck. Holy shit, they’d been lucky.

Gunfire in a large crowd rarely ended well. But everyone was breathing a sigh of relief that the gunman had been tackled and arrested immediately by the police present. His department wasn’t handling the case. The shooter was probably lucky that the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office had him. Judging by Ray’s scowl, he would have slowly torn off the young punk’s limbs.

Ray pounded on his keyboard, probably imagining it was the face of the teen who was presently being grilled by the county police.

What had the kid been thinking?

One of the county detectives had told Mason that the teen’s friends were the ones who’d initially disarmed him. They didn’t know if the kid actually intended to shoot someone or just show off. It didn’t matter to Mason. An event that big would guarantee that several people were carrying concealed. In addition to the fifty officers who were present, Mason guessed there were another twenty handgun carriers in the crowd. Legitimate, law-abiding citizens. He had no beef with them. He fully respected the public’s right to arm themselves. But not a stupid teenager’s rights, who pulled out a gun in the middle of a crowd.

“You’re shaking your head,” Ray said from his desk.

“Fucking idiot.”

“You’re reading my mind.”

“It could have been a disaster. One on the news for the next two weeks.”

Ray snorted. “No point in worrying about what could have happened.” His desk phone rang and he picked it up. “Lusco.”

Mason directed his focus back to the Forest Park girls. They were getting nowhere fast. Lorenzo Cavallo’s death and the theft at the ME’s office had to be related to the original case, but forensics was still processing the evidence and so far hadn’t found any obvious leads. Rory Gibbs would be in tomorrow to talk to them about the girls from his English class, but Mason didn’t have high hopes for the interview.

What were they missing?

Maybe they should take another look at the cult theory. But there weren’t any underground whispers. Usually if a group is involved, someone starts talking. There’d been one freak who’d come forward, saying it was related to an invisible spacecraft passing by the earth. He’d meant to catch a ride that night, but had drank too much to remember to kill himself. Now he’d missed his ride and they wouldn’t be back for another fifty years. Mason had read the statement and nearly rolled on the floor. God bless the cop who’d taken it and managed to write it up without inserting a single ounce of sarcasm.

He still snickered about it at odd moments.

He knew cults thrived. They didn’t have to be large. They just needed a group of impressionable people and a charismatic leader. There was a mansion on several acres outside of one of the hick towns on the edge of the Portland tri-county area. Mason had heard the rumors of the large number of people living there. Locals were nosy and gossipy, saying that the people never left the estate, kept to themselves, and had all their supplies trucked in.

The rumors grew so large that the local sheriff finally paid a friendly visit. He’d found an old couple who simply kept to themselves. No masses of live-ins. No orgies or drugs. Two old people who’d decided to build themselves a fabulous home. And rescue cats. But they didn’t put them up for adoption. They kept them all. The place was crawling with cats. Supplies were trucked in. Mainly cat litter and cat food. A small group of staff received room and board to care for the cats. Mason liked cats. Just not that many cats.

He wondered if the mansion smelled.

He shuffled the papers on his desk, glancing at the clock. Nearly 9 P.M. He was hitting that wall of uselessness where his mind wandered and nothing got done. Time to leave for the night. Things had slowed to a stall on the girls. The search for the girls’ cell phones had turned up nothing. The cell phone carriers were all cooperating. But the girls’ phones had stopped sending signals before they died. Someone had the forethought to remove the batteries. Last locations were all near Forest Park. Ray had run a comparison on the text and cell numbers from the different carriers, looking for common numbers. The girls had called and texted each other, but there didn’t seem to be another common number that was unaccounted for.

How had they communicated with the organizer?

Mason had a mental image of the organizer as a tall thin man, walking away from the circle of unmoving girls; their shoes, phones, and purses in his bag.

Two girls had home landlines. No common calls.

Their Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and what-the-fuck-other social media accounts had been searched. No flags were found outside of the girls all being “friends.” Some of the girls had more than a thousand friends, which blew Mason’s mind. Ray informed him that teens often didn’t actually know their “friends.” They just gobbled up friend invitations from friends of their friends, trying to build an impressive number.

An ego boost. That was a concept Mason understood.

Ray had also pointed out that most social media messages could easily be deleted. But would all six girls be consistent with their deletions? Somewhere there had to be a digital footprint left by one of the girls that would point to their killer.

The computer forensics guys were searching the home computers and laptops for evidence, but they didn’t expect results for at least another week. The amount of data had to be overwhelming.

The remaining public memorial services had been canceled. No one wanted a repeat of today. The community couldn’t mourn when they were checking the stranger next to them to see if he carried a weapon. The tragedy of the day had escalated to a whole new level. Because of some punk teen.