Flora Sullivan had dined out in style with her husband and her boyfriend. On the face of it that meant nothing. But she was Frankie DiMargio’s link to a building that was looking more and more like a death-trap. Was she the link to the dinner scenes? Malignant foodie with a hobby other than pleather? Had we been too hasty eliminating her?

Next: the Corey sisters. Recent expenses placed them clear out of the country, in Vancouver, Canada. They’d purchased only small stuff, nothing close to the cost of a room. Crashing with friends?

If they were worried about their safety, why hadn’t they contacted the police? Could they have been criminally involved? Professing love and grief for their mother but secretly allying with their father?

Had he used them, only to turn?

Bad man seeking a new life. Did that include a new love slave? Another victim already culled from the herd?

One thing seemed certain: Richard Corey was at the hub of all this evil. If nothing else proved it, the horses did; there was something about cruelty to animals that alerted you to a psychopath on duty, and Corey’s casual dispatch of his daughters’ beloved pets spoke to a special brand of callousness.

That fit the exploitation of Kathy Hennepin and Frankie DiMargio. Shy, withdrawn women vulnerable to the advances of even an awkward man like Corey? But Corey as a lothario was hard to picture.

That brought me squarely back to Grant Fellinger, a man able to overcome homeliness and bed a beauty like Ursula Corey. Smooth and aggressive and willing to use his legal training to battle a mentally ill homeless woman who’d yelled at him.

Bringing about her terrible death. Because killing was fun.

Maybe we’d been right about Fellinger from the beginning.

Food and death.

I looked down at my notes.

One name stood out: Darius Kleffer.

I tried to reach Milo, got voice mail everywhere, left multiple messages but didn’t hear back until he texted me that evening:

thanks for the . boo hoo, dk alibied on everything.

Advil was starting to look like a dandy appetizer.

Eventually, I cleared my head and focused on a limited issue: Why hadn’t Frankie DiMargio been spotted at any tattoo parlors near her home or her work?

Maybe because my circle had been too narrow. Using my phone and the Internet, I expanded by several miles, composed and printed a list, left and began dropping into establishments staffed by people with high pain thresholds.

Smelling enough blood and electricity and rubbing alcohol to last a lifetime.

The prevailing attitude was surly mistrust of anyone with unbroken skin. Some of that receded when I explained that Frankie was a murder victim. But no one recognized her or the inkwork visible on her DMV photo.

I asked several artists about the quality of the work. Quick consensus: the kind of stuff anyone could achieve with stencils.