Coop said, “Good news indeed; let’s do it. Anything you can tell us about her?”

“Not much yet.”

Lucy said, “Your mustache twitched, Inspector. Come on, what do you know about her?”

“All I’ll tell you is that she’s a local and she’s never been in jail. As for anything else, I think it’d be good if you guys go in with no preconceptions. Then we’ll compare notes.”

Lucy said, “What about those unsolved missing persons you’ve been looking into?”

Delion pulled out his notebook, flipped a couple of pages. “The first two teenage girls simply went missing, both from Mount Elysium High School. We found out today both of them were in some of Kirsten’s classes. The first girl was a junior, sixteen years old. She had biology with Kirsten. One day she’s gone, no sign of her, nothing at all. Good family, reports that she was well adjusted, so probably not a runaway. It drove the police nuts, but there simply weren’t any leads of any kind.

“Same with the second girl. She went missing a year and a half later, a senior. Here one day, and the next day, simply gone. Same good background, involved parents, no leads at all.” He looked up at them. “She shared an English lit class with Kirsten.

“We found three other missing young women who knew Kirsten Bolger in some capacity, and they all simply disappeared, one every three years on average. There is another woman we haven’t been able to connect to Kirsten yet, but I’ll get to her in a minute.

“The last woman disappeared two years ago, a thirty-year-old woman named Elsa Cross who lived in Kirsten’s apartment building on Dolores, south of Market. I started with her since she’s the most recent. After her disappearance every eye was on her ex, but he was alibied up to his tonsils. I called her parents and asked them about a neighbor of their daughter’s—namely, Kirsten Bolger. The mother remembered her daughter saying Kirsten wasn’t very social, and she was always playing strange music in the middle of the night, but as far as she knew, there were no shouting matches, no angry words between the two women, just mutual dislike. At the time, the police spoke to the manager and all the neighbors, and that had to include Kirsten Bolger, but there weren’t any obvious red flags, so all I could find were a few notes about what Kirsten had to say when interviewed.”

“And she said what?”

“She said she barely knew Elsa Cross, only said hi to her when their paths crossed, said she seemed nice enough. Nothing else. The case eventually went cold when no new information surfaced.

“I called the manager this afternoon, asked him what he remembered about Kirsten Bolger. He said she was a loner, always paid her rent on time, and always wore white, never a color for contrast, only white, head to foot. He said he never saw any visitors, guys or gals.”

Coop said, “Bundy was a charmer, a real favorite at a party, evidently nonthreatening, given the number of women he got to leave willingly with him, yet his daughter is quiet, a loner, acts and dresses weird. But she doesn’t wear white anymore; now it’s black.

“There’s another thing. From what the bartenders in Cleveland and Philadelphia tell us, she can be outgoing, charming, a mirror of her daddy.”

Delion signaled to Cindy Lou for their check. After he set down his credit card, he said, “I wondered about that. I guess our girl’s adaptable, has some talent.”

Lucy said, “Sounds to me like she got into it with Elsa Cross, that or something around that time was the trigger that made her change her ways, and eventually set her out on her road trip. I wonder why she killed that first girl; she was only sixteen, you said?”

Delion nodded.

Coop said, “Maybe, like Elsa Cross, the girl made the mistake of criticizing her about something, and she found out about it.”

Delion said, “Yeah, could be, but again, no one remembers any confrontation between the two of them. It was a long time ago, after all.

“Okay, now there’s another woman—Arnette Carpenter—I went through her book but couldn’t find she knew Kirsten Bolger at all. I’ve assigned a couple of guys to try to find a connection to Kirsten. They’re going to be interviewing everyone involved again, all except for the husband.” Delion gave them a placid smile. “I called Mr. Roy Carpenter. We’ll pay him a visit tomorrow morning ourselves.”

“You’re good,” Lucy said, and grabbed the last broken tortilla chip before Carlos could take the basket away.

Delion signed the credit slip, picked up his notebook. “Roy Carpenter was the prime suspect at the time of Arnette’s disappearance, but there was no body, no rumors of marital discord, no other woman lurking in the wings, so he got dropped and the case went cold. This was three years ago last May. He still lives in the same house in the Richmond District.