Crane might have given her back, but he would have damn well made sure she wouldn’t be able to tell them anything.

It was chilling to think how long Crane might have gone on with his killing career. And just as chilling to imagine how long it had gone on to that point. His crimes were too sophisticated, his fantasies too finely honed for the three victims they knew of to have been his first.

The Bureau was thoroughly involved at that point, Vince being officially assigned to pursue the case and investigate Peter Crane’s past. It would be his last case as an agent. And while he had had an illustrious career, he was focused on what would come: his life with Anne.

Dixon had given him a desk in the war room. He sat now reviewing videotape, playing the interview forward, rewinding, replaying.

Mendez came in with lunch.

“Jane Thomas had Karly Vickers taken out on the hospital lawn in a wheelchair this morning so she could pet her dog. That’s going to be the first seeing-eye pit bull in history,” he said, putting the bags down on the table. He nodded at the television. “Why are you looking at that?”

“Come sit down.”

It was Dixon’s interview of Janet Crane the night her husband had abducted Anne. Vince watched, fascinated, as Peter Crane’s wife led Cal Dixon around in circles.

She had collapsed in hysterical tears after Vince had left the room that night, supposedly driven to panic by the idea of her son in the hands of a madman. Dixon had offered her comfort, coffee, to call a doctor. She had refused all, preferring to carry on intermittently.

Dixon had continued with the interview. They needed answers from her. Where did Peter like to go? Was there a particular place he might feel safe to hide? Were there vacant properties she knew of that he could get into using her key? Places that were hidden, out of the way, forgotten?

Around and around they went. Dixon got nothing. Janet Crane got attention.

It probably wasn’t even conscious on her part. That was just how she operated and had since childhood, Vince suspected.

She couldn’t believe this was happening to her.

To her. Not to her son, not to Anne, not to any of the other lives her husband had wrecked and ruined.

“What a bitch,” Mendez said.

“What a case study,” Vince corrected him. “She’s a textbook narcissist. Everything in her world revolves around her. The rest of us are just actors in her play.”

He paused the tape, rewound it again, found the bit he wanted Mendez to watch: the point in the interview when he had laid out Lisa Warwick’s autopsy photo in front of Janet Crane.

Mendez said nothing.

Vince rewound and replayed.