“Internet. The photo of the girls together is the last picture they posted, taken last evening. From the daylight in the shot, I’m guessing it was probably taken around eight last night, an hour before all communication was lost. And from the landmarks, it looks like they were on Bourbon Street, near Toulouse.”

He agreed. “I guess I don’t understand why you wanted to talk to me.”

“Because I’m . . . I’m afraid this isn’t just a matter of girls going missing,” she admitted and again her gaze held his. “I think it’s probably worse.”

“You think they met with foul play? Were abducted?”

The fear in her eyes said it all and that knot in his stomach twisted painfully.

“You worked on a couple of cases years ago, where twins were abducted and killed on their twenty-first birthdays.”

Bingo. No reason to beat around the bush.

“You think the 21 Killer is behind this?”

“God, I hope not,” she said fervently. She bit her lip before adding, “But, yeah. I think so.”

“He’s in prison.”

“Donovan Caldwell isn’t the 21 Killer,” she said, shaking her head. “The LAPD sent the wrong man to prison.”

“Really?” Bentz squinted at her and told himself not to leap to conclusions. “Why don’t you slow down and start over?” he suggested.

After a moment’s hesitation, she dropped into one of the side chairs and launched into a tale that only caused the knot in his gut to twist. As if she’d been practicing her spiel, she delivered an explanation of Caldwell’s innocence, claiming that charges against him had been trumped up. The case was circumstantial. Caldwell was snagged in a bad sting operation, but since the LAPD needed to make an arrest on the high-profile case, the charges stuck. “And it didn’t help that Bledsoe was the one making the arrest.”

Bledsoe, now retired from the police department, had been the arresting officer who had put Donovan Caldwell behind bars for the murders of his twin sisters. A thorn in Bentz’s side while he’d been with the department, Bledsoe was adequate at best in Bentz’s opinion.

“I even went to LA to talk to the police there,” she went on, “but no one was interested. Bledsoe’s retired.”

“So I heard,” Bentz admitted.

“So I ended up with Detective Hayes, your old partner. He worked the case with you, before you left, then with Bledsoe, so I figured he’d want to hear what I had to say.” She held Bentz’s gaze. “Turned out he didn’t. No one in the department, including Hayes, was interested. I was told that the case was closed and was politely but firmly given the brush-off.” Her jaw tightened visibly, bone showing through her skin.

“They’ve got their convicted killer,” Bentz pointed out. “The murders of twins stopped when they locked up Caldwell.”

“For a while.”

“You think 21 is killing again?”