Bennie nodded. “I telephoned the Gary police captain yesterday. Gypsy girl, she and her family were camping in a field about ten miles from town. They arrested the father, but turns out he’d been working on a farm nearby for some months, and the farmer said he’d been there the day the girl disappeared.”

Francis replaced the papers in the satchel. He thought for a minute before speaking.

“So. A girl’s killed at Dreamland four years ago.” He moved aside the water glass, drew an X in the condensation left on the table. “Then one in Wonderland that same year.”

He drew a second X, and a third, and two more. “Another girl in Gary. And another here in Chicago, still missing from two years ago, presumably dead. And now two more at Riverview.”

He dabbled a finger in the moisture and drew a six-pointed star connecting the Xs. “Dreamland, Wonderland, Riverview…that’s four girls killed at an amusement park, three of them murdered in a Hell Gate ride. How can they not be related?” Francis stared intently at the star. “What was the cause of death in Gary?”

“The captain says it was asphyxiation. Partially clad body. Which sounds like the same killer.” Bennie took a long swallow of his beer. Despite his exhaustion, he looked exultant. “What do you think? Sounds like a vagrant to me, traveling between here and the East Coast.”

“No,” said Francis. “A vagrant wouldn’t be so organized. The amusement parks—they’re too far apart. And there’s four years between those first two murders and the ones this weekend.”

“He could be a hobo, riding the trains,” insisted Bennie. “And those murders are only the ones we know about. There might be others. Dr. Holmes’s killings, some of them weren’t discovered for years.”

“I don’t think so. A hobo can ride the rails for free, but he’d have to be awfully committed to his crimes to travel so far.” Francis rubbed his chin. “It’s someone who has an affinity with amusement parks. Or maybe just with the Hell Gate ride. Or water—the rides, the girl in the canal in Gary.”

Bennie cocked his head. “What about Elsie Paroubek? She was found in a sewage ditch.”

“I don’t think so,” said Francis slowly. “For one thing, she’s the wrong age—five. A twelve-year-old, she’s still a girl, but she’s starting to look like a grown-up woman.”

“Not to me, she doesn’t.”

“Of course not. But think about it—Blanche Sweet, Mary Pickford, Gladys Egan, those Gish girls—they’re all grown women, but in the movies they make them look like kids. Some of them were kids when they started, twelve, thirteen years old.”