“He has a way of turning up when you least expect it. Like I said. Gum and shoe.”

“Anyway, he had some interesting information on Snyder, who is a man no woman should be near. With the panicked call from Jayne yesterday, it was a double hit within two days. I’m wondering if she was asking for help to get away from Snyder but wouldn’t admit it.”

“You said she was worried for Snyder.”

“That was what she said. But now I’m questioning if she didn’t want to tell me the truth. That she was the one who needed help.” Stress wrinkled her forehead. “I’ve learned I can’t take what she says literally. I have to read between the lines on everything.”

“Then you never know what to believe.” Mason’s brain throbbed at the thought. He always listened for subtext in conversations, but what was it like to talk to someone who never said what she meant? He stood and pulled Ava into his arms, breathing in the scent of her hair and skin. Instant relaxation. He felt his headache flee and his muscles relax. Ava softened in his arms and a small breath escaped from her. Did touching him do the same thing for her?

“You should have told me. I would have helped,” he whispered.

He was there to help her, be a rock for her. She needed to learn she could lean on him. But he knew she hadn’t done a lot of leaning in her past. Part of her baggage was the instinct to do everything herself. He’d brought his own baggage to the relationship. It wasn’t a lot, mainly a detective’s sense of distrust. And the damned insecurity about their age difference.

Zander cleared his throat. Ava jumped, but Mason slowly let go. Hell if he was going to act like he’d done anything wrong.

“Look what was dropped off for us.” He held up four yearbooks. “Carson Scott’s.”

“Sweet,” said Ava. “Let’s take a look.” She took two books and handed one to Mason. “See if there’s an index in the back.”

Mason took the heavy book and flipped some pages. “No index.”

“Mine has one,” said Ava.

“I’ve got one with an index and one without,” said Zander. “I wonder why they weren’t consistent.”

“Student council his junior year. Along with debate club. Carson Scott also played baseball,” announced Ava. “That opens up a lot of possibilities for meeting someone from another school. We need to check the other victims’ past interests.”

“I feel like we’re chasing ghosts,” stated Mason. “I don’t know if we should be looking this far in the past.”

“Well, we’ve got a team picking apart the last five to ten years,” said Zander. “That’s easier since there are so many digital footprints, and it’s simpler to cross-reference. It’s the years before that that are blurry. The years when people didn’t enter every step they took into statuses in cyberspace.”

“What about vacations?” asked Ava. “What you just said made me think of airlines and their extensive reservation systems. Maybe they all traveled somewhere at the same time. I swear our list of things to investigate grows by leaps and bounds every time we talk.”

Zander nodded. “I’d start looking with Joe Upton. He didn’t appear to go that many places. Unlike Carson, who probably flew fifty times a year. I’ll put some wheels in motion.”

“Do we have reports on the evidence from the Upton home?” Mason asked. He turned the pages in the yearbook, feeling out of touch as he eyed the dated hairstyles and fashion. Jake would have been an infant when Carson Scott was a senior. With no index, he was scanning the names under each group and club photo to find Scott.

“The obvious stuff. The trace evidence will take longer. The blood was Joe Upton’s. The tire treads haven’t been ruled out as belonging to the type of van we saw in the Fremont Bridge video. There’s no sign of forced entry.”

Mason looked up. “None? So Joe opened the door. Either he knew him or wasn’t nervous about who was at his door.”

“Or the door was unlocked and the guy walked right in,” added Ava. “Maybe it’s the type of community where no one locks their doors.”

“Do those still exist?” Mason didn’t think so.

“I’m calling Laura King to ask about Aaron’s yearbooks,” Zander said, touching his phone’s screen.

“Anything?” Ava looked at the yearbook in Mason’s hand with a curious gaze.

“This one is from his senior year, and I have to read all the names with the photos. So far I’ve found him in baseball and tennis, and here’s his senior photo.” He twisted the book so she could see.

She smiled. “He didn’t change much over the years. Look at that wide smile. They should have known he’d be a politician.”

Mason agreed.

“I’m going to pull up the photos from his condo,” Ava stated, scrolling on her laptop. “Seems like he had a lot of sports trophies. More than just baseball and tennis.”

“Laura, I’m putting you on speaker,” Zander said. “Special Agent Ava McLane and Detective Mason Callahan are in the room with me. Can you repeat what you just told me?”

“Well, all I said was that I’d found Aaron’s high school yearbooks in the garage,” came the scratchy female voice through Zander’s phone speaker. “And I mentioned that he’d kept a lot of stuff from high school, like his models.”