“Some.”

“Talia okay?”

“She’s still asleep.”

The unasked question hovered between them. Drex chose to ignore it. “Have you heard from Locke?”

“Check your email. He sent the coroner’s reports about ten minutes ago.”

“I haven’t turned on my laptop yet. I’ll get to them as soon as we hang up.”

“No surprises in the one on Elaine Conner. The woman last night? He came up behind her, probably caught her in a nelson, snapped her spinal column, C-six.”

“Jesus.”

“Tell me.”

Drex said, “What worries me most is the cheekiness of it. He killed that woman and hung around.”

“In the hope that you would show.”

“No doubt, but staying in the vicinity is out of his norm. He’s done it twice now within twenty-four hours. Takes balls.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Mike said. “It takes a psychopath. He’s accelerating.”

“Spiraling at the speed of a tornado.”

“Because you’ve come too close.”

“He’s taunting me. These two dead women are his red cape.”

“We’ve got to put this cocksucker out of commission, Drex.”

“I know. But listen, Mike, you can’t come back here.”

“I already figured that.”

“Beyond the chance of leading Rudkowski to Talia and me, I need you to stay with Gif.”

“Figured that, too. At least through today to make sure he’s on the mend.”

“Are you okay with hanging out there?”

“I’m better off than Gif.”

“I know, but—”

“Did you hug a nurse?”

“What?”

“A nurse. Gray hair, smiling eyes?”

Drex remembered her now. “She promised to take good care of Gif.”

“Well, she must’ve enjoyed that hug. Since you aren’t here, she’s taken me under her wing. Fetched me a pillow and blanket last night. This morning, she brought me a washcloth and towel. I took a sponge bath in the men’s room. There’s a large cafeteria. I’ve got my laptop and charger. I’ll be doing for you here what I’d be doing for you there. I’m fine. So long as Rudkowski leaves me alone, but I doubt he’ll make another scene like he did last night.”

“Thanks, Mike. I’ll stay in touch. Let me know if you see an opportunity for me to talk to Gif.”

“Will do.”

They disconnected. Drex made himself another cup of coffee and set up his laptop on the eating bar. He opened the email from Locke, whose message was: No connection between the two homicides except gender and birthdays in April. You still think it’s him?

“You bet your ass I do.” But Drex knew he would need more than, “I feel him,” to convince the law enforcement community that the man who was missing and feared lost at sea was on dry land, alive and well and lethal.

He opened the first attachment in the email, which was the coroner’s report on Elaine Conner. He read it word for word. As Mike had said, it didn’t contain much that Locke hadn’t already shared with them.

The report on Sara Barker, the woman murdered last night, was difficult for Drex to read. It was a heinously wasteful act. Jasper being his most self-indulgent.

After going through the report once, Drex left the bar and wandered into the living area, where he turned on the television. Network morning shows were in full swing. During the brief break-in for the local station, a story was aired about Sara Barker’s murder. A spokeswoman for the family described her friend as a giving, loving person. “Who would do such an unspeakable thing?”

“Who indeed?” asked the young female reporter, looking straight into the camera, affecting a tragic tone and expression.

“The same man who buried a woman alive,” Drex replied.

When the reporter began chatting energetically with the weatherman, Drex muted the TV and returned to the bar. He pulled up the report on Elaine Conner again. “Come on, Elaine. You loved to talk. Talk to me. Tell me what I’m missing.”

It had to be here: Weston/Jasper’s trademark, initial, stamp, signature. Something. What the hell was it?

He read the report again out loud, as though speaking the words would sharpen their definitions and make them revelatory.

And then he read a word, and, as soon as his mouth formed it, his mind slammed on the brakes. Returning to the beginning of the sentence, he read up to that word, and stopped on it again.

His hands got clammy. His heartbeat sped up. But before he let himself become too excited, he went back to the report on Sara Barker. He scrolled through the various forms until he found the one he sought. He magnified it to make the print larger on his monitor. And there it was. The same word. In a seemingly innocuous notation in the autopsy report.

He broke out in goose bumps.

In his haste to get up, he knocked the barstool over backward. He mounted the stairs two at a time and painfully banged his shoulder against the doorframe as he barged through it and into the bedroom.

“Talia!” He rounded the bed and sat down on the side she was facing as she slept. “Talia.” He shook her shoulder.

She roused and blinked up at him, then smiled sleepily. “Good morning.”

He placed his hands on her shoulders, as much to stabilize himself as to focus her. “Tell me again about Jasper’s wardrobe being custom-made, keeping his tailor busy.”

She struggled to sit up, dragging the sheet up over her breasts and pushing her hair off her face. “What? Has something happened?”

“You said he fussed over things, like buttons.”

“Yes. He recently had his tailor replace buttons that he called ‘outmoded.’”

Drex’s gut clenched. “He did?”

“No more than a week ago. He had old buttons swapped out for new ones on several pieces.”

Drex held still and let it sink in, then released her and sat back on his bent knee. Staring into near space, he said quietly, “He takes a button.” Coming back to Talia, he looked into her gaze, from which all sleepiness had disappeared. “He takes a button.”

Getting off the bed, he paced the length of it. “He’s collected them. He puts them on garments he has custom made and wears them in plain sight of everybody. His trophies are on display, no one suspecting they came off the bodies of women he killed. That’s his joke on us dumb slobs.”

He ran his hand over the top of his head, then down the back of his neck. It was still difficult for him to breathe evenly. His heart was racing, and not from climbing the stairs at the pace he had.

“How did you come to this conclusion?” Talia spoke softly as though not to derail his train of thought or interrupt the flow of deductive reasoning.

“In the coroner’s report on Elaine, he described her body as it was on the beach. The position it was lying in. So forth. She was fully clothed. A black, low-heeled sandal was on her right foot. The left one was missing. She was dressed in black capri pants and a light blue shirt. The coroner noted that a button on the shirt cuff was missing.

“The woman last night was wearing a skirt with decorative buttons down the left side. Here,” he said, running his hand along the side of his thigh. “According to the autopsy report, which included photographs of her clothing, the last button in the row was missing.”