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Roy remained expressionless. He finally pushed himself off the wall and came to the other side of Lock’s bed. He opened his phone and showed Lock a photograph.
“Do you recognize this woman?” I did. It was Jade Darby.
“No,” Lock said.
“This one?” Roy flipped to a second photo, one of Lara Pasko.
The lawyer in me came roaring out. “You do not have to answer any of these questions.”
Lock looked at me with pure confusion. “I don’t know this woman either. What does this have to do with me?”
“What about this one?” Roy swiped to the next photograph of Fiona McBride. Lock turned his head. His eyes widened as he focused on the picture.
“Fiona,” he said. “That’s Fiona McBride.”
The room started to spin.
“Where do you know this woman from?” Roy asked.
“I… we dated. Corrine was the second woman I connected with on WhisprMatch. Fiona was the first. We dated for a couple of months.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Lock?” I said.
“It was a few months before I connected with Corrine. Fiona ghosted me for a while. Then I got a text from her saying she was leaving town. It felt abrupt, but we weren’t serious.”
“Did you always communicate on WhisprMatch?” I asked. Roy gave me a look.
Lock shook his head. “No. We exchanged our real cell phone numbers. We were getting serious until she just stopped answering my texts.”
“I know her,” I said as something clicked in my mind. “I mean, I don’t know her. I know where I saw her. There’s a picture of you with her in one of those albums in your study.” I remembered it now. The photo I took out of Piper, Eli, Lock, and his date. The girl with the blonde pixie cut. It was Fiona McBride!
Lock nodded. “I took her to a fundraising event. Piper liked how she looked in her dress that night so she asked if we could all pose for a photo.”
Roy pulled up a fourth photograph of Daniel Palicki’s mugshot. “Do you recognize him?”
Lock had seen him before, I was certain. Palicki’s face had been splashed all over the internet. Lock took Roy’s phone from him but didn’t answer.
“Daniel Palicki,” Roy said. “Do you have any explanation as to why a suspected serial killer would have your number in his phone?”
“What? No? Are you kidding?”
“He killed Fiona McBride,” I said. “An arrest was made a few days ago.”
“He’s changed his look a few times,” Roy said. “But we found this photo in his phone as well.” He swiped his phone screen.
Lock tilted his head as he studied the next photo. “I don’t understand.” Then, slowly, his face changed. His jaw slackened. His skin turned green. He didn’t have to say anything for me to know what he was thinking.
“You do know him,” I said. “Lock?”
“What did you say his name was?”
“Palicki,” I answered.
Lock was shaking. I grabbed Roy’s phone. The picture was one I’d seen before, framed in Lock’s office. Eli had pointed it out. In the photo, Lock stood with his arms around three teenage boys. Among the first he’d tried to help with Bennett’s Place before the shelter was built. Eli told me Lock had brought them all into his own home. Our home. His lost boys. The ones who didn’t make it.
The one who stood closest to Lock was virtually unrecognizable from the man he later became. This boy was painfully thin, with a head of bushy dark hair. I never would have recognized him from his mugshot except for those cold eyes. Those had never changed.