FEELING AS IF the floor beneath my feet had just vanished, I grabbed the edge of the sink. “What?” I gasped.

“That’s all I know,” Dad said. “I have to go.” The line went dead.

I closed my phone and stood there, stunned.

“What is it?” Mom asked.

I told her about Gabriel. Mom turned on the TV. A reporter was standing in front of yellow crime scene tape. I recognized the canopy of the building in the background. “Police say a passerby discovered the body behind a Dumpster about two hours ago. It appears that Gabriel Gressen was struck on the head.…”

The scene switched to another reporter with Chief Jenkins, who looked even wearier and more beleaguered than the last time he’d been on TV. “We have no reason to believe that this incident is in any way connected with our investigation of the murdered girls.”

“Are you saying that because police believe the girls were asphyxiated, while Gressen was allegedly clubbed to death, it’s a different MO?” the reporter asked.

I scowled at Mom.

“Modus operandi,” she explained. “Police-speak for the way a criminal behaves.”

“I’m saying it because other than the fact that Gressen worked at the modeling agency, there is absolutely no evidence at this time linking these killings,” Chief Jenkins replied.

“So you don’t believe the serial-killer theory?”

Jenkins shook his head. “We have a suspect in custody for the murders of two of the missing girls. We know that suspect could have nothing to do with this new development. I think that theory was something cooked up by you media people to sensationalize this story.”

The reporter ignored the comment. “Do you have any idea why someone would want to kill Gabriel Gressen?”

“Gressen had significant gambling debts, which may or may not have played a part,” the police chief answered.

The camera cut to another scene, but I was no longer paying attention.

Gabriel was dead.

Murdered.

Mom turned off the TV and stood at the counter, staring into the backyard. I wondered if she felt the way I did, like things had spun so far out of control that we needed to stop listening in order to make some sense of it.

“What do you think?” I asked.

She shook her head and, without looking at me, said in a flat voice, “I feel sorry for you, Shelby.”

“Why?”

“That you have to be part of this.”

Before I could say anything more, a text came in from Roman: Talk!!!!!!????

I turned to Mom, who seemed to know who it was without being told. She nodded. “Go ahead.”

I went upstairs. Roman was waiting for me on the computer. “Can you believe it?” she gasped, sounding nasal.

I shook my head. “No, I really can’t.”

On the screen, Roman sneezed, then blew her nose.

“You sick?” I asked.

“Not sure. It might just be allergies. But seriously, what do you think’s going on?”

“I truly … have absolutely … no idea.”

“The more Chief Jenkins denies that there’s a serial killer on the loose, the more I have to wonder,” she said, then blew her nose again. Even on the screen, I could see that her nostrils were bright red.

In the silence that followed, my head began to throb, and I realized that I’d been clenching my jaw. Massaging the sides of my head with my fingers, I tried to relax.

“If Janet was in custody, then who killed Gabriel?” Roman asked.

“I have no idea.”

“The pool of suspects is shrinking.” Roman actually sounded kind of excited.

“This isn’t Clue,” I reminded her. “We’re talking about real people. Real lives. You and I knew Gabriel.” Despite what he’d done in the beach-club bathhouse, I took absolutely no pleasure in what had happened to him.

On the screen a chastened Roman pursed her lips. “You’re right. Sorry … But think about it. Who’s left?”

“You mean, who’s still alive?” I asked. “Or who’s left who could qualify as a suspect?”

Roman sneezed again. “The latter. There’s Mercedes. What if she isn’t really missing? What if she’s just pretending while she goes around killing people?”

“She doesn’t drive, so she couldn’t have gotten to places like Hartford or Trenton. She isn’t strong enough to have taken those girls into the woods, tied them up, and killed them.”

“Unless she had help.”

That gave me a moment’s pause. Whit had suggested the same thing a few days before. There were those tough-looking guys who dropped Mercedes at work each day. “What’s her motive?” I asked. “In the history of serial killers, has there ever been a young single mother?”

On the screen, Roman wiped her nose. “I don’t even have to look that one up. The answer’s no. But that leaves you know who.”

I had no idea who she was talking about. “Who?”

“Mr. Amateur Investigative Reporter, who always seems to know everything before anyone else? Pretty amazing for a beginning journalist, if you ask me.”

“You’re crazy, Roman.”

“Can you be sure?”

Could I be sure Whit wasn’t a serial killer? “He’s not crazy, Romy. He’s rational and thoughtful and nice.”

“So was Ted Bundy. Handsome, charming, honors student in college, politically active, killed at least thirty young women. Should I continue?”

“No, because then what you’re saying is, the night we were in the studio, he arranged to have himself bonked on the head in order to draw the suspicion away from himself?”

“Stranger things have happened. Seriously, Shels? It’s not completely impossible.”

Was there an iota of possibility in what she was saying? Just because I couldn’t imagine Whit’s being the killer, did that mean it wasn’t conceivable? After all, before yesterday I couldn’t have imagined my father preying on young women for sex. Was that part of the problem? That I wasn’t a man and therefore couldn’t imagine the things men could do?

“Like I said before, Shels,” Roman went on, “if it’s not him or Mercedes, then who is it?”

It was a good question, but there was one other person who’d been involved from the start. The person who, in fact, had connected two of the missing girls before anyone else, who could have been the one who hit Whit over the head, and who also was always among the first to know the latest news—Roman herself.