Page 70 of The Girl Who Was Taken

Megan raised her eyebrows. “I’m flattered.”

“Just bear with me. I promised him you’d be here to sign a copy of your book and answer some questions for him. It’s the only way he’d agree to talk.”

Nate was back a minute later. “You guys wanna come in?” he asked, oblivious to the many things that would prevent two women from entering his house. Like that they were in West Bay at dusk, with a muddy purple sky just ahead of Halloween. Or that his T-shirt did nothing to contain the tattoos that traced his arms and neck. Or that the giant hoop earrings that weighted down his earlobes shouted bad intentions and mischief.

“No, thanks,” Livia said. “Let’s talk on the porch.”

“Yeah, sure.” Nate walked onto the front patio and put a cigarette between his lips. “Hey,” he said to Megan.

“Hi.”

“I read your book.”

“Oh yeah?” Megan still hadn’t found the right way to respond to this. “Thanks.”

“Nate, Megan and I want to ask you a few questions about the club.”

“Go ahead.”

“You mentioned that the Capture Club talked about a variety of cases, old and new.”

“Right.”

“Who chose the cases?”

“Anybody. If you were curious about a case, you’d throw out a name.”

“Like Jeffrey Dahmer?”

“Dahmer, Gacy, Bittaker and Norris, Beneke. You name it. But we didn’t spend tons of time on them. They were old news.”

“You guys talked about current stuff mostly?”

“A lot of the time, yeah.”

“Anybody could bring up a topic or a name?”

“Yeah. Mostly we followed the news.”

Livia nodded. “Especially if someone nearby went missing?”

“Right.”

“Nancy Dee, for example.”

“Yeah, we talked about her.”

“You remember how the group got onto the Nancy Dee story?”

“I don’t know. Probably Casey. He was the most up-to-date on the new stuff. Always had a beat on it right when the story broke.”

“So, you’d say he knew about some of the cases before anyone else did?”

“Guess so, yeah.”

“You remember any other cases, newer ones, that you guys talked about.”

Nate wagged his head back and forth, eyes up to the sky. “Sure. Remember a bunch.” He lit his cigarette. “Got a binder full of the ones we talked about.”

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