The major case squad was headquartered in a defunct bank that the city had bought years ago to use as office overflow space. Archie and his team had moved into the building after they’d reunited to track a serial killer murdering teenage girls. It had been the case that had brought Archie back from medical leave, and he’d assembled a group of detectives, many of whom he’d worked with at various times during the ten years of the Beauty Killer case. Ten cops. Most came and went, reassigned as needed from other units.

The bank was a square, one-story, flat-roofed structure surrounded by a parking lot. The drive-up ATM still worked. They’d ripped out the bank clerk counter, but inside it still screamed 1980s Wells Fargo, from the mauve task chairs to the gray carpeting.

The conference room had been the bank’s break room. The fridge still had magnets boasting low-interest home equity line rates.

Archie sneezed.

“Gesundheit,” Heil said.

“Diaries?” Flannigan said.

Ngyun rolled his eyes.

“What?” Flannigan said.

Archie wrote the word diaries on the dry-erase board next to the bulletin board. “Next?” he said.

“Golf cart keys?” Ngyun said.

Flannigan snorted. “And you think diaries was lame?”

“More,” Archie said. He wrote down some of his own. Lockbox keys. Cabinet keys. Padlock keys.

“Could be keys to old trunks, or jewelry boxes,” Ngyun said.

“Good,” Archie said, adding them to the list.

“Maybe they’re not keys to anything,” Heil said. “I mean, maybe they’re reproductions or fakes, you know? Dime-store stuff.”

Archie’s phone vibrated and he glanced down at it. Susan again. She’d called him four times in the last twenty minutes. He hadn’t had a chance to check the messages.

Fakes.

They had been assuming the keys were old, but what if they weren’t? The crime lab would be able to tell, but until they tested them, it was worth keeping an open mind.

Flannigan leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “How’d the kid get one?” he said.

That was the million-dollar question.

“He’s a victim?” Heil said.

Archie looked at the pictures, the small black key lined up carefully next to the other keys found in each of the victims’ possession. “He wasn’t poisoned.”

Heil shrugged. “Maybe Henry interrupted it.”

It made sense. Henry gets attacked and they find a key on him. The kid ends up in the river within two hours of Archie’s last contact with Henry, and he also has a key. There were too many coincidences for there not to be a connection.