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Roy picked up a piece of paper from the table. He grabbed a magnet and stuck it to Lara Pasko’s whiteboard.

“White guy,” he said. “Tall. Handsome. Well-groomed. Thick head of dark hair. The sister said he looked like he might have money.”

I stepped forward to get a closer look at the sketch. I tilted my head slightly to the right. The drawing was of a handsome man with wide-set eyes, a strong jaw, and a cleft in his chin. Dark hair, long enough for a part on one side, and brushed neatly out of his face. I could think of at least ten men I knew and maybe twenty actors who bore a resemblance to this likeness. I spun my engagement ring on my ring finger. That same chill from yesterday ran up my spine.

“That’s about as generic a description as there is,” Roy said. “Hell, if you make the complexion just a shade darker, that could be Sheriff Rafferty.”

I turned. He was right. I shook off the little gremlin. This was ridiculous. What was I even thinking? And yet, the red ribbon felt suddenly tighter around my wrist. What was wrong with me?

“What about the others?” I asked.

Roy slapped pictures up of the other two missing women. Jade Darby was beautiful. The photo Roy had was from what looked like a professional session, not an ID badge like Lara Pasko’s. Jade was black. She had long, tight braids coiled into a thick bun. Dimples in her cheeks. Impeccable makeup. She’d been just twenty-four years old.

“Disappeared eighteen months ago,” Roy said. “Fort Wayne. A licensed massage therapist. Husband said he knew she was on WhisprMatch for about six or so weeks before she went missing.”

“Husband?” I asked.

“Yeah. Sounds like they both had extracurriculars. Her best friend said she started dating someone she met on WhisprMatch. The friend never knew his name. There was no way to retrieve any of that from the app, of course. But the friend knew she’d gone on at least two dates with her mystery guy. Gone totally without a trace. We don’t even know where she was taken. Her car was still in the garage. Purse. Wallet. Phone. Keys. All inside her house. The last signal on the phone was at her own house. The working theory is that whoever took her picked her up at home. If it was the guy she was cheating with, she might have left her phone at home on purpose.”

“No security cameras?” I asked. “Not even from neighbors.”

“Nothing,” Roy said. “Her husband was a person of interest, but he had a solid alibi. There have been no new leads.”

“That’s odd,” I said. “If we’re dealing with some kind of serial killer, don’t they tend to stay with a victim type? Jade was the only African American.”

“Sometimes these guys go by opportunity over appearance. Then Gretchen Small,” Roy said. “Ann Arbor. Six months ago. It took a while for the WhisprMatch connection to show up. Gretchen was in an abusive relationship for years. She had recently ended it and started dating again. Her ex wasn’t too happy about it. She filed a stalking report on him about three months before she went missing. He was actually arrested at first. But there was no physical evidence of any kind. Then Gretchen just didn’t show up for work one day. Gone totally without a trace. Never found her purse, her wallet, her cell phone, or her car.”

I picked up the police report. “How’d they clear the boyfriend?” I said.

“Turns out he was in rehab after a drug overdose. They were wrong about the time window of when she disappeared. Another witness came forward who saw Gretchen at a bar with some other guy a day after they initially thought she disappeared. The guy? Same description. Thick dark hair. Good-looking. Well-dressed. Wearing an expensive suit,” Roy said.

The conference room had a corkboard along one wall. Roy went to it and unfolded a large map showing Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. He put pushpins over Ann Arbor and Okemos, Michigan, then another over Fort Wayne, Indiana.

“That’s what we have so far.”

I shook my head. “I can’t be the only one thinking about it. Do I need to say it?”

I’d been leaning on the table. I pushed myself off and stood in front of the whiteboards. “The timing is way off. Corrine Egan said her mysterious Mr. Woodson stopped harassing her over five years ago. So, three years go by, then Lara Pasko goes missing.”

“We don’t even know that,” Roy said. “There could be other women. We’ve got inquiries out to every jurisdiction.” He drew an imaginary circle with his index finger over the map, including the intersecting quadrants for the three states we served. “That’s the main thrust of what the rest of us on the task force will do. We want every solved or unsolved missing woman case going back a year before Corrine Egan’s story and Gretchen Small’s disappearance. We’ll build it out from there.”

I shook my head. “But these three. Roy, you don’t have a body. Not in any of them. You have no physical evidence. No DNA. No blood evidence. No signs of a struggle at any of their homes. Not so much as a partial fingerprint you can’t identify, right?”

“So far,” he said.

“If you find someone,” I said. “Do you know how hard this will be to convict? If that’s all you have?”

“So far,” he repeated.

Any hope I had of a speedy clearance of our first case evaporated as I stared at those boards. Right now, we barely had a haystack to search, much less a needle.

“We have the descriptions,” Roy said. “White male. Handsome. Maybe rich or knowing how to fake that. The WhisprMatch developers are a dead end. They’ve got payment info about their users, but that’s it. Nothing gets stored beyond that.”

“What a mess,” I said, plopping down into a chair.

Roy went to the cart and grabbed a Danish off the platter Belinda had set out. He bit into it.

“Welcome to police work,” he said. “You’re used to having cases handed to you practically gift-wrapped.”