“A lawyer could say that Tinsley took the necklace before Barney found her.”

“That’s stretching.” Wanda threw her arms open.

“We need beyond a reasonable doubt and this is my problem. Tinsley looked like a potential serial killer when we thought he had something to do with Adrianna Blanc’s murder. But we know what happened to Adrianna and Crystal, and Tinsley didn’t have anything to do with them. That was Garth Hammerling.” A pause. “Who is also a serial killer.”

Wanda shook her head. “How many serial killers have you come across in your career?”

“In my thirty years of police work including Florida, I have dealt with three serial killers, although one case was iffy because there were charges against him for only one murder. It was just suspected that he may have done others. They’re out there for sure, but not with the frequency portrayed in the media. To have one serial killer involved as a witness in a murder case committed by another serial killer is crazy. That’s why we need to proceed slowly…so we don’t make a mistake.”

“So what do we do with Tinsley?”

“If we get Roxanne’s DNA off of the necklace, we can arrest Tinsley on stolen property—which is how he’s going to plead. He saw Roxanne’s body in the open lot and made a bad decision. It would be great to find a witness who saw Chuck and Roxanne leave together. Anyone in the files look promising?”

“I have to reread the pages.”

“You might want to check out Tinsley’s buddies at the time. Maybe he confessed to someone, although if he truly is a serial killer, I’d have my doubts.”

“I’ll go over the files again.”

“What’s going on with Lee Wang and Oceanside PD?”

“He’s still looking. We’ve sent the ring found in Tinsley’s possession to the lab. Maybe we’ll get lucky and get a DNA match for Erin Greenfield.”

“Was Tinsley in Oceanside at the time Greenfield was murdered?”

“I don’t know. I’ll call up Lee and compare notes.”

“One piece of jewelry is circumstantial,” Decker said. “Two pieces with DNA that matches two murdered girls can’t be explained away easily. Right now all we can do is cross our fingers and put our faith in science.”

AFTER THREE WEEKS in the hospital, Jacqueline Mars, the sixteen-year-old runaway whom Garth and Mandy had abducted, strangled, and wrapped up in a garbage bag, had recovered sufficiently to be discharged from the hospital. Unfortunately, her memory of what happened during the period of time in question was even fuzzier than Mandy Kowalski’s. At present, she still has no recollection of those fateful days she spent in a stupor.