“I know he is, but I hope to God that he’s not behind the Denning twins’ disappearance. Oh, dear God . . .” Some of the starch seemed to leave her.

Was it possible? Was the wrong man imprisoned, leaving 21 still at large? Bentz was skeptical, despite his own gut fears, the similarities to long-ago crimes. He looked back at the photos of the girls. “Tell me what you know about these young women.”

Brianna gave him a rundown on the Denning twins’ disappearance, how she was involved, what she and the girls’ mother, Selma Denning, had learned this morning in Baton Rouge before returning to New Orleans, where Brianna only stopped to print out photos of the missing girls. She explained how unlikely it was that they wouldn’t show up for work or respond to phone calls and texts. She told of the lack of concern they’d encountered in Baton Rouge, and why she felt the twin girls were at risk.

“What’s your personal interest in the 21 Killer?” he prodded.

She explained that she was a twin herself, as well as a cousin of the Caldwell twins and their brother, Donovan. She’d begun studying the case because of the family connection, and then sort of fell into it. And therein lay the kicker. Not only had she studied the crimes of record; she thought she’d found two more recent incidences of the 21’s macabre activity.

Reaching into her beat-up leather bag, she found a sheaf of papers and slid them across his desk. “Zoe and Chloe Denning are . . . or might be the latest of his victims, but they’re not the only ones. I couldn’t prove that he was still working when I went to LA.”

“But you can now?”

Her gaze drilled into his and silently assured him that she was dead right. At least in her mind. He glanced down at the pages, most of them articles taken from the Internet. Two sets of twins who had gone missing in the past six months, twin brothers in Phoenix, a sister and a brother in Dallas.

“These kids all disappeared not long before their twenty-first birthdays. To my knowledge none of them has been located.”

“They’re still considered missing, right?” He narrowed his eyes, the knot of dread in his stomach tightening as he scanned the pages of information. “No bodies?”

“Not yet.”

He glanced up.

“They’re out there, somewhere.” She was nodding, as if agreeing with herself. “He’s hidden them.”

“Just because they can’t be located—”

“Twins. Every one of them. Twenty years old. Went missing only weeks or days before they turned twenty-one. Don’t you find that strange?”

“Could be unrelated.”