We ran the 3D images through NamUs, the Doe Network, the SF missing-persons databases, and the FBI criminal database. Matches came up.

It was amazing, almost magical.

Claire got the first hit: Jane Doe EC 1 was Lina Rupert from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Cindy’s match was to Margaret Shubert from Toronto. The other four victims appeared to be missing persons from Chicago, New York, Omaha, and Tokyo.

We four shared the pictures in a Windows Cloud and chatted together in a dialogue box on the screen. Comparing notes took very little time. The victims were of all ages, the youngest only eighteen, the oldest forty-eight.

The victims weren’t criminals, and none of them was local.

Apart from their burial ground, what did these six women have in common? What had brought them together in a homemade boneyard in Pacific Heights?

Chapter 105

Chapter 105

YUKI WAS SITTING in the enormous chair in Brady’s hospital room. He had woken up for a moment, long enough to give her a lazy “Hiiii … Yu … ki.”

He told her he was enjoying the drugs and then fell asleep again.

The phone rang after that. It was a woman who said she was Jennifer Brady, Jackson’s wife.

“Who is this?” she’d asked.

Yuki considered telling the woman that she was a nurse but went with the truth.

“I’m Yuki Castellano. I’m with Jackson.”

“With him? What do you mean?”

“We’re significant lovers,” Yuki said.

The long silence was underscored by Brady’s loud breathing.

Yuki said, “He’s doing well, Jennifer. He’s sleeping, but he’s going to be okay. I’ll tell him that you called.”

Yuki dropped the receiver into the cradle, looked at it for a moment as if it were a porcupine. Then she upended it and turned off the ringer.

She said hello to the actual nurse who came in to attend to Brady, and then Yuki went back to her laptop and her Jane Doe EC 5, a young woman Yuki had identified as Hoshi Yamaguchi.

Yuki had already begun her research on Hoshi; she’d learned that she had been twenty years old when last seen. She had been going to school in Tokyo, was a student of history and fine art, and she disappeared while on vacation to the USA four years ago.

A family member had put up a website for Hoshi. There was a large portrait of Hoshi on the page. The next photo was of Hoshi ice-skating with her sister. The two were wearing leggings and matching blue puffy jackets, and they were holding hands.

Yuki could read some Japanese and was able to translate the caption under the photo.

Have you seen my sister?

Yuki opened a link and found messages from Hoshi’s friends listed in chronological order. The first notes were to Hoshi, asking her to write. Subsequent messages pleaded for anyone who had seen Hoshi to respond.