Rebecca had phoned to tell him she wanted to make an appeal for Megan’s safe return via a televised press conference. And, she’d said, her family was willing to set up a reward for information leading to Megan’s safe return. Since the investigation had stalled, Rivers had agreed, knowing full well the headache that would ensue when all of the fake tips started coming in, each one having to be checked out. It was remarkable how often a few hundred dollars could loosen someone’s tongue, and Rebecca was offering five thousand. That amount might spur someone to come forward. Rivers, however, wasn’t betting on it. “Okay, I’ll set it up with the PIO,” he said. “She’ll get in touch with you.”

“Thanks.”

He clicked off as he dropped the paper sack onto the counter near the refrigerator, beer bottles clinking as the bag nearly toppled. “Steady,” he ordered the bag and retrieved one bottle before stuffing the remainder of the six-pack and a jug of orange juice into the refrigerator. After shrugging out of his jacket, he cracked open one of the beers and retrieved a wrapped deli sandwich from the bag. As he added extra mustard to the ham-on-rye, he called Roxy O’Grady’s number and left a message that included Rebecca Travers’s request and cell number.

Only then did he take a bite, washing it down with a long swallow from his bottle of Heineken. As he consumed the sandwich, he thought about the missing woman and wondered how she’d disappeared without a trace.

“You’ll figure it out,” he said without a lot of optimism as he eyed the small personal items he’d “borrowed,” all laid out on the counter separating the kitchen from the living area of his condo:

James Cahill’s work gloves and sunglasses.

The necklace from Megan Travers’s apartment.

A tube of lipstick from Sophia Russo’s coat pocket.

Jennifer Korpi’s tension ball.

Rebecca Travers’s pen.

Yeah, of course, it was a little crazy—well, maybe a lot crazy, but he felt compelled to touch the personal items from a case, to feel a physical connection to those involved, be they suspects, victims, or perpetrators.

But, at the very least, it kept him focused.

Once, when he was still married to Astrid, she’d come across him with the items he’d lifted for a particularly grisly case in San Francisco, where a serial killer had actually run a stake through each of his victims’ hearts, as if he thought they were vampires. The killer had been insane, of course, but Astrid, upon finding her husband’s tokens from the victims, had seemed genuinely alarmed before collecting herself.