While Judith Parrish, the mother of the missing Christi, tremblingly testified to Detective Brian Mills, a team of investigators was already on its way to do another DNA match. Christi's toothbrush, lady shaver, and other items were confiscated for that. Then, it was a matter of waiting.

Detective Brain Mills had told Elizabeth about Judith Parrish's testimony, and it had all been routine as usual, but one thing sent chills down Elizabeth's spine.

Christi's friends had gotten a message that Christi was no longer coming to Boston.

And the parents had gotten a message. That it was nice in Boston. It could be a coincidence. Either Christi was leaving. And she was still on her way. Or she had fallen into the killer's clutches, who had later cut off her feet. Who had deceived both sides, Christi's mother and the friends. And by the time both groups had received the news, the killer had already had her in his grip. Her and also her cell phone. He had taken her cell phone. And her feet.

Only there had been no cell phone with the cut feet in the box. Had the junkie lost it? Or had the killer changed his strategy this time?

Elizabeth had little time to think about it. Ginger Barnett had come to BPD, Christi's best friend. In her everyday life, she was Ginger Barnett, but online, she was Trixxxy. With three x's. That was important. Elizabeth wondered if any women made a living doing regular work.

For Ginger, blonde, light blue jeans and a tight pink sweater on her body, was just nineteen years old and ran a webcam online. She'd had nature's way with the platinum blonde of her hair and her cup size. She had fallen out with her parents to such an extent that she had moved out of their house. By the webcam, she earned enough money for her own apartment. So things were able to cross-fertilize.

"I don't offer sex," Ginger said. "I run cam forums."

Elizabeth nodded slowly. "Is that where you sit in front of the cameras all day?"

"More at night and in the morning, respectively. The busiest time is on Saturday or Sunday around 2 a.m."

"Because that's when the guys from the clubs come home?"

"That's the one. They haven't hooked up with a woman, and they're still horny."

Elizabeth's eyebrows drew together. "And then what do you do?"

"Spreading, dildo show, dirty talk. I also tell them that the sexy lingerie I wear on webcam I also wear in everyday life. That's kind of important to them."

The detective nodded again and furrowed her brows. "Even if it's not true at all?"

Ginger smiled wryly. "Of course not."

Elizabeth eyed Ginger. "I guess you can't do anything in this business without breast augmentation?" She thought of Viola, who had told her about the forty-dollar markup on hourly wages if the cup size was right.

Ginger slid back and forth in her chair as if feeling the heaviness of her breasts right now. Silicone didn't weigh too much, after all. "There are pros and cons to everything. I even have to wear a sports bra at night. But the guys gape and drool when I turn on the camera. And they throw money in right away, too. You have to find a good surgeon. The costly ones cost almost eight thousand dollars. That's too expensive. I wouldn't go to Mexico for two thousand dollars, either. They don't cut you open really well, under the pectoral muscle, like they should. I know a woman whom they just shoved it in there in Mexico. No support. The silicone cushion slipped up to her collarbone. It looked comical. And undoing it costs money again. If you complain, they suddenly can't speak English anymore."

"You have silicone?" Elizabeth tried humor. "And apparently not under the collarbone."

Ginger smiled. "Well, it's nice if you don't notice anything negative about it as a woman. Silicone still has a drawback."

"Which one?"

"My tits are very plastic-ish. That's just what happens when you use silicone."

"What else works?"

"Saline implants. Expensive as hell. If silicone bursts, you have a problem. Not with saline. It's a natural liquid and is absorbed by the body. But it has other disadvantages. And I chose silicone."

Elizabeth nodded and raised her eyebrows a little. "A good decision?"

"If they burst, I have a problem. But other than that, I'm pleased. Only my ex-boyfriend used to get upset. I told him, 'They're just for the camera and not for touching.' Now I'm single. But then, no one bothers me either."

"You don't offer sex, do you?"

"With the users in front of the camera? Never! I once shot a porn for them. But I use a professional I know."

"Why were you friends with Christi?" Elizabeth realized at the exact moment that the question could be misunderstood. Something along the lines of, why does a blameless citizen like Christi Parrish have friends like you who strip in front of a webcam?

But Ginger, aka Trixxxy had obviously expected the question. "Christi? She was more blatant than that."

"Excuse me?" Elizabeth didn't expect that. "In what way?"

Ginger grinned broadly. "Angeldust --"

"Angeldust?"

"That was her username. With what she ... did it."

"And what was that?"

"We started together. Filmed each other playing dildo. We both are a little bi." She smiled almost seductively at the detective and leaned forward a little. "It's a great thing, actually. You take your clothes off, and you get attention. And the next thing you know, you're getting money. The only problem was that I did it with a mask in my school days. We were both still in school. Nobody recognized me."

Elizabeth furrowed her brows. "And Christi?"

"Christi didn't wear one. She said she couldn't get in the mood with the mask on. She never wanted sex with a condom, either. It always had to be risky. But she was different that way anyway."

"What else?"

"Christi did sexting stuff like that, too. But the dildo play videos blew up in her face the most." Ginger looked at her elongated pink fingernails. "She got a little bullied for that then. She spent most breaks crying in the bathroom. One boy was nice to Christi. But he also got bullied when he sat down next to her. Then he was gone again."

Bullying, Elizabeth thought. It happened to children much more harshly and cruelly than in the adult world. She knew of such cases: A fourteen-year-old boy jumped off a skyscraper. His suicide note said, "I don't want to die, but I have no friends.' A girl labeled around eighty letters with words like I have no one. She hanged herself in her room.

Ginger continued to speak. "Christi had one hundred and seventy friends on Facebook at the time. That's way too few, everyone told her. Yet that's not so little. And then her mom saw the pictures and banned her from the Internet for two weeks."

Internet ban, thought the detective. Modern-day grounding. "And then?"

"Then?" Ginger wiggled her head. "Then she listed herself on Lust-In."

"Lust-In?"

"Yeah, I guess it's supposed to sound extra like Linked-In and those career platforms. The erotic sites all sound like the big networks. There's Fuckbook, too, after all."

Elizabeth pulled the corners of her mouth down and nodded slowly. "Heard of it. And that's where she got in? She just turned eighteen, didn't she?"

Ginger shrugged. "Good point! She Photo shopped her ID and sent the picture of it to the platform. Because she was, in fact, still seventeen then. But she must have known a graphic artist who did the ID. It's blatant forgery, of course." She looked at Elizabeth uncertainly. "This is just between us, isn't it?"

"My colleagues will know, but believe me, we have more important things to do than hunt down this graphic artist. But the forgery, no one noticed?"

"No. And that was good. Because an ID was necessary."

"To do what?" Elizabeth asked, though she already suspected.

"Lust-In is a contact platform. Either there are women there looking for relationships and affairs. Some women are also looking for an affair. But for money."

"And Christi was --"

"Yes, she was there as Angeldust. And offered herself."

Elizabeth's eyebrows drew together. "As a prostitute? At seventeen?"

Ginger nodded slowly. "Ask Ms. Parrish why she did that."

Elizabeth preferred to ask the person sitting in front of her. And that was Ginger. "Why?"

Ginger sat back and collected her thoughts. "Christi had to get over herself first. But the fact was that her father, who I don't even know if he was her biological father, was groping her from age four."

All at once, the detective was wide awake. "Pedophilia?"

"Maybe not quite. Anyway, he groped and fondled Christi from age four until she was fourteen --" she shrugged, "maybe abused her, too. Until Judith Parrish separated from him. From then on, Christi grew up only with her mother. Later, a boyfriend of her mother's came along. He's okay, though."

A typical abuse biography, the detective thought. For some of these victims, prostitution, strange as it sounded, was a way to regain the power the young girls had lost to men. "Then she went into prostitution --," Elizabeth began.

Ginger understood what she was trying to say and finished the sentence, " ... to get control back over the men. And over herself."