“Those were just the ones he kept close to home,” D.D. agreed. So he could spend more time with them, she almost added, but didn’t. Because serial murder was an escalating crime, and by that point in his homicidal career, Harry Day would’ve been an accomplished predator with an arsenal of tools, private work space and flexible schedule. Meaning if that one waitress hadn’t escaped . . .

Across from her, Adeline murmured: “Sooner or later, all adopted children fantasize about the true identity of their birth parents. My real mom and dad were royalty, but they had to send me away me at birth to protect me from an evil sorcerer who wanted to take over the kingdom, that sort of thing. My adoptive father was a geneticist. A good man but with a clinician’s heart. Let’s just say when I first asked him for the truth about my parents, he told me. And I had nightmares for the next ten years, incredibly vivid dreams where I would watch my own skin crack open and a monster burst forth.”

“Your adoptive father took you in as a baby?”

“When I was three and first diagnosed with congenital insensitivity to pain. He was one of the doctors who handled my case. Given my high-risk medical condition, he didn’t feel my needs could be adequately addressed by an inexperienced foster family. So he made arrangements to adopt me personally.”

“Lucky you.”

“Yes.”

“And your older sister? You said there were two of you?”

“She didn’t suffer from a rare genetic defect,” Adeline said simply. Which apparently, in her world, said it all.

“What about your birth mom?”

“She died six months after Harry, never speaking a word. She’d suffered some kind of mental breakdown and was in basically a catatonic state.”

“Do you think she knew what her husband had been doing?” D.D. asked. “Harry buried two bodies in the house. Ripped up floorboards, dumped them in the crawl space, covered them with lime. Can’t tell me it still didn’t smell.”