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“Who owned it?”

“The Mills family.”

The name meant nothing to me.

Yet.

“Where was the camp?”

“Six miles upriver.”

“Is it still standing?”

“Some of it. The property has changed hands several times, but nobody has done anything with it.”

“Can you take us there?”

Sheriff Tate looked at the photographs I had placed face down on his desk.

“How bad are they?”

I turned over the photograph of the seventh victim.

His jaw tightened.

“The killer washes them,” I said. “Dresses them. Brushes their hair. Paints their nails. Then he leaves them posed in borrowed houses or vacant rentals.”

Tate stared at the dead woman’s forced smile.

“Why Eagle River?”

“That’s what I intend to find out.”

He looked at the camp brochure again.

“The camp employed dozens of people every summer. Counselors, maintenance crews, cooks, drivers. Children came from all over Texas.”

“I need every record you have.”

“You’ll get them.”

“Quietly.”

His eyes moved to Carson.

Carson held up his cup. “I can be quiet.”

“You introduced yourself to three women beside the road,” I said.

“They introduced themselves to me.”

Sheriff Tate almost smiled.

“Nothing stays quiet here for long.”

“It needs to. If the Keeper is in Eagle River, I don’t want him knowing why we came.”

“You arrived in a Dallas police vehicle. So you call him the Keeper. That’s creepy.”