Ben tried calling Ed Tracy for more information, but he’d already passed away. He tried the other lawyers in the case but they couldn’t offer much more than what he already knew. He called Torrie Tullock’s relatives. They were shocked by the tragedy and in mourning yet again, but knew nothing. He tried reaching Lou Sloan and Bill Jurek, but they were working with US investigators, telling him that everything would be passed to them.

In the end, Ben had made little progress and felt as lost as Tug, watching him with his ball looking for Emma, or roaming the house with her sweater in his mouth, until one day his phone rang.

“Ben, it’s Oscar Garcia at Orange County. We’d like to update you. Can we drop by this afternoon with a few other investigators?”

A few hours later, Garcia and his partner Lilly Webb arrived with law enforcement people from San Bernardino, the FBI and a Royal Canadian Mounted Police sergeant, who was a liaison officer from the Canadian Consulate in Los Angeles. They gathered in Ben’s living room and relayed what they knew.

Canadian authorities had DNA and fingerprint records of the three women known as The Skull Sisters on record. US and Canadian investigators, working with the coroners in San Bernardino and Orange County, had positively confirmed, and re-confirmed, their identities.

The murder victim in the park, Rita Mae Purvis, was born Marie Louise Mitchell.

The woman who attacked Kayla at the cabin was Lucy Isabel Lavenza, whose birth name was Nicola Hope Gorman, otherwise known as Nikki.

Emma Anne Chance, or Emma Grant, was born Jane Elizabeth Klassyn, known as Janie.

“This confirms your wife, Emma, was Janie,” Garcia said.

He went on to relate that a knife belonging to Lavenza was recovered near Ben’s cabin and submitted for DNA analysis and was found to be the knife used to kill Rita Purvis. Additionally, footwear impressions where Rita Purvis’s body was discovered were made by shoes worn by Lavenza.

Investigators noted that footwear impressions belonging to Emma, and a knife from the Grant home, were found in the vicinity but not at the murder scene. Investigators believed that Emma was startled and fell when she’d spotted a man in the wooded distance, who, it turned out, was most likely the dog walker who had discovered the corpse of Rita Purvis.

Continuing, investigators said they tracked the car rented by Lavenza to a motel, where they found a laptop, a video camera, notes and other items leading them to conclude that Lavenza was responsible for Rita Purvis’s homicide and threats to Ben’s family, arising from her perceived betrayal of their pact as teens. It was always Lavenza’s intention to kill Rita Purvis, using her as an expendable resource to frame Emma Grant for her murder.

“So Lavenza, or Nikki, set this all up?” Ben asked.