So she wasn’t as close to being jailbait as one might have thought. She had to be twenty-seven or twenty-eight. He wanted to smile at her need to set him straight on that, but he refrained.

“What was your other major?”

“Psychology. I wanted to be a child psychologist, but—” She stopped herself from being so eager. “Life . . . took a different turn.”

“Funny how that happens.”

Anne looked away, took a deep breath, and sighed. She was embarrassed, he thought. She probably didn’t just go around telling her life story to strangers—or to people she knew, for that matter. He pegged her for the kind of woman who confided in one friend, if she confided in anyone, cautious in the way of an old soul—or a wounded one.

The waiter brought the wine. Vince sampled it and nodded his approval. They ordered their meals, sipped at their glasses.

“Anne,” he said. “I have a confession to make. I don’t work for the sheriff’s office. I’m a special agent with the FBI. For now, it’s better that isn’t common knowledge. My specialty is profiling serial killers.”

She said nothing, but her eyes got wider.

“I don’t know how much you’ve been told by Detective Mendez,” he went on, “but there is reason to believe Lisa Warwick—the woman your students found in the park—was the latest victim in a series of at least three murders.”

“Oh my God.”

“Another woman is missing. So, you can see, it’s imperative that we try to learn as much as we can from every possible avenue.”

“I don’t know what I can do,” she said. “I teach fifth grade.”

“Detective Mendez told me you have a pretty good handle on who your kids are. I saw that for myself this afternoon.”

She laughed without humor. “Oh, yeah. I’m so sharp I had no idea Dennis Farman was having homicidal fantasies.”

“Why would you suspect that?” Vince asked. “How many people would look at a kid in the fifth grade and peg him for a future killer? Nobody. That’s highly aberrant behavior. No normal-thinking person would look for that.”

“And that’s where you come in?”

He gave her half a smile. “Yeah. I’ve been experienced right out of normal thinking. I’ve spent a long time studying murderers and trying to figure out how they got that way and what makes them tick.”

“How do you sleep with that in your head?”

“Great,” he admitted, “as long as I’m medicated.”

“Why do you do it?”

“Because maybe if I’m good enough at what I do, I can prevent some innocent people from dying. Maybe I can spot a kid like Dennis Farman and get the right people to pay attention to him. I’m sure you can relate to that.”

She nodded and looked away, a soft sheen of moisture coming into her eyes.