“That may be. But I’ll tell you something. The smart ones are often the most dangerous, because they are able to plan their crimes. These murders didn’t happen at random. They were planned, and we both know who planned them.”

Water pooled in her orbs. She didn’t answer him.

Decker said, “I need you to tell me where Darrell is.”

“I don’t know—”

“Yes, you do know!”

But she denied it with a fierce stare and a shake of the head. “No, I don’t know! Darrell’s a survivalist, in case you forgot. He was in Old Man Baldwin’s camp when he was sixteen or seventeen. He hated it, but he did learn how to survive in the wild. What he didn’t pick up from camp, he learned later from Hank Tarpin after he joined PEI. Darrell’s been going in and out of the woods for years as Ricky Moke. He claims he’s got all these little campsites all over the state. He could hide out forever. You’ll never find him. The FBI hasn’t.”

“Can you give me a guess?”

“Nope. And if he called the apartment to say where he was going, I didn’t get the message. Soon as I heard about Ernesto and the doctor getting whacked, I took off.”

“The unit number you gave us was bogus. Where were you living?”

“With Darrell.”

“And it didn’t bother you that Darrell hadn’t come home that night?”

“Nah. Lots of times he was out all night.”

“Doing what?”

“How should I know?”

“Guess.”

“Maybe with Ruby.”

“And where does Ruby live?”

“Beats me.”

Decker thought a moment. Something was off. At the time of the synagogue vandalism, Ruby was living at home. Then she moved back up north. Wanda had given him the former listing. But then she disappeared and assumedly came back down to L.A. So where did she reside?

Alice Ranger swore that she hadn’t seen her daughter in months. The empty room seemed to bear that out. And Wanda had yet to find a temporary address for Ruby. She had checked with the DMV, the DWP, the gas company, local credit-card companies, Ruby’s former bank…No new address had popped up. So now Decker was beginning to think that maybe Ruby had a Ricky Moke–type alias as well. Both of them—Darrell and Ruby—knew how to manipulate the Internet. They could enter any world from thousands of miles away under hundreds of different aliases. It made for a vast arena for potential crime that was staggering.

Erin was talking.

“…stuffed all my shit into a paper bag and came here. I never did tell Darrell my real last name. But I know he could have found out if he wanted to.” She bit a nonexistent nail, her fingertips being raw and red. “Do you think he’ll come here?”

“The thought has crossed my mind.”