Elsie and Patti enter a dim bar where Patti knows detectives drink when they go off-duty. In a back booth they find Detective Roger Greaves and Detective Bale. Elsie already knows that Chief Cornwell privately traded case details, like the material the killer’s recent note was written on, to a reporter in exchange for favorable press coverage.

Patti approaches the table. Bale tries to dismiss them but accidentally mentions a missing girl from Berryview. Elsie then asks whether they plan to arrest Sean Wilson, visibly surprising both detectives. She lays two photographs on the table: one showing Diane Howard Murray’s apron with the cleaning company logo, and one of Wilson at his utility van, which bears the same logo. The women explain that Wilson’s company cleaned athletic venues where Cheryl trained, and that Elsie saw him watching at Cheryl’s vigil. The detectives are intrigued, but Bale calls the evidence circumstantial. Enraged, he slams his hand on the table and threatens to destroy both women’s careers if they continue interfering. As they exit, Roger quietly tips them off: look into who is supplying audio equipment for Cornwell’s surveillance operation targeting the Kings gang.

Inside the mansion, Margot pushes through the costume party and heads upstairs, having learned that Clarke isolates himself there during his own events. She follows cigar smoke to a cracked doorway and enters a dark screening room. Clarke sits watching a black-and-white film. Without turning, he summons his bodyguard, Chadwick, from the shadows. Margot stops him by announcing she finds Clarke’s films dull. Amused, Clarke dismisses Chadwick and draws Margot onto the sofa beside him. She gives the alias “Cindy” and studies Clarke for any tattoos connected to the killer’s known markings.

Under the pretense of pitching a story concept, Margot describes the area murders and eventually names Diane Howard Murray directly. Clarke feigns complete ignorance, convincing Margot he is more skilled at deception than she expected. She confronts him, saying she believes Diane corresponded with him and visited his home. When pressed, he reveals he returned home on Thursday after six weeks abroad. Margot grasps the implication immediately: If his travel dates are accurate, he cannot have committed any of the murders. He is a dead end.

Before she can leave, Clarke seizes her wrist and makes clear he expects something in return for his time. A frantic knock interrupts him: The crocodile from the pool has grabbed someone.

The unnamed narrator reflects that women’s deepest fears are sexual assault and death, while men’s greatest fear is romantic rejection. She wonders whether her disappearance has made the newspapers and how quickly coverage of a missing woman is discarded from public attention. She vows to make her captor understand there are far worse things to fear than not getting what he wants.

At a grocery store, Beverley’s seven-year-old son, Benjamin, has a violent tantrum, knocking cans from a shelf. His actions frightens her: That morning at the public library she read that psychopaths are prone to impulsive, explosive aggression, and she has begun to dread, with profound guilt, that Benjamin may have inherited something dangerous from Henry.

Her library visit also focused on Satanism, prompted by the “LOVE” and “HATE” tattoos on the knuckles of Emily Roswell. She wonders whether their killer might carry a similarly identifying tattoo.

Beverley’s reclusive neighbor, Christopher Appleton, appears in the aisle and helps gather the fallen cans. Beverley already suspects him of leaving the pig carcass on her lawn, though she doubts his physical capability. When she glances into his cart and sees six boxes of Lucky Charms cereal, the same brand the killer used to write his note, terror overtakes her. She abandons her own cart and flees the store with her children.

At the Signal office, Patti identifies the Berryview girl Bale inadvertently mentioned: Sarah Gunn, a 21-year-old majorette who vanished after a waitressing shift. Police are treating her as a runaway, but Elsie counts four victims in fewer than eight weeks and is certain of the pattern.

Patti then reports her findings from Greaves’s tip. The company supplying audio equipment for Cornwell’s surveillance operation on the Kings is owned by Broderick Arnold, the department store magnate Margot works for. Arnold is also Cornwell’s brother-in-law. Patti and Elsie conclude that Cornwell has been promoting the Kings as suspects to funnel public money to his relative’s business while the real killer goes unchecked.

With another missing girl from Berryview, Elsie worries for Beverley’s safety. Patti’s response is direct: Any woman is at risk regardless of where she lives.

Elsie, Margot, and Beverley meet at the department store to share information on Sarah Gunn’s disappearance. Margot speculates that the killer might be holding Sarah somewhere nearby, either in a basement or in an outbuilding within his established operating area.

Elsie proposes a new angle: a sexual motive. She argues that all their husbands harbored obsessive desires, and that Diane Howard Murray’s work as a sex worker is likely how she crossed the killer’s path. If the killer regularly visits sex workers, those women are best placed to identify a violent or fixated client. She proposes visiting a church café in Calabasas that serves as a safe refuge for them.

Beverley cannot go that evening. Elsie and Margot agree to go together.

That evening, Margot and Elsie visit the church café in Calabasas that functions as an informal drop-in for sex workers. During the drive, the two compare overlooked signs from their own marriages: Stephen’s compulsive late-night showering, and Albert’s unsettling habit of shifting between personas or “masks,” as Elsie calls them, that occasionally slip to reveal something frightening beneath.

At the café they approach Betty, the woman running the space. Invoking Patti Fowler’s name earns them a private conversation. They show Betty a photograph of Diane Howard Murray; Betty remembers her as a quiet, young-looking visitor. On learning Diane was murdered, Betty agrees to help. In response to questions about violent or fixated clients, she describes the Beware Book, a log the women maintain of dangerous encounters, recording descriptions and sometimes license plates. She retrieves it and hands it to Elsie, asking that it be returned by the end of the day.

Beverley waits in a television studio to be interviewed by Charles Marston, host of The California Day, which is broadcast across California. She agreed to appear after Sarah Gunn went missing, intent on warning the public, but the production staff assume she is there to apologize for Henry’s crimes. This signals the network’s true agenda.

Marston frames the segment around the fifth anniversary of Henry’s conviction, referring to him as the “Heatwave Killer.” Beverley quickly clarifies she is Henry’s ex-wife. Marston poses a series of judgmental questions implying she should have known about Henry’s crimes, and asks on air whether Benjamin might turn out like his father. Flustered, Beverley apologizes to the victims’ families rather than pivoting to her intended message.

When Marston moves to wrap up, Beverley refuses. She turns directly to the camera and urges the women of California to watch the men around them for behavioral warning signs: unexplained absences, secrecy, volatile moods, and evidence of sexual deviancy. Marston interrupts, mocking her for suggesting women should fear all men. The camera shifts back to him, ending her segment. Beverley is escorted out, convinced she wasted her opportunity.

Now four weeks into captivity, the unnamed woman compiles a mental list of ordinary pleasures she will reclaim once free: dancing to the radio, swimming in the ocean, baking a cake, breathing fresh air, and washing away every trace of her captor.

In the days after her television appearance, Beverley receives a flood of hostile letters calling her a “man-hater.” Her mother, Alice, visits to warn her that speaking publicly is endangering her children. Elsie and Margot call with reassurance, insisting Marston treated her badly and that she did what she could.

When Beverley reports her supermarket encounter with Appleton to Roger, he dismisses it, arguing that a man Appleton’s age could not physically overpower young, athletic victims. He does confirm that police now consider the murders linked and have other suspects under review. Elsie separately informs Beverley that Sean Wilson has been cleared by his wife’s alibi, though he remains a known obsessive who watched Cheryl Herrera and other girls from her athletics club.

Defeated, Beverley withdraws into her house. Almost 10 days after the broadcast, she finally checks her mailbox and finds a single letter. The writer says she is writing about her husband.

Five days later, Beverley waits in a diner, having nearly talked herself out of going. Sharon Farrer, a drive-in carhop, arrives in her pink work uniform with roller skates over her shoulder. She explains that Beverley’s television appearance prompted her to write. Her husband, Hank, is secretive, volatile, and aggressively misogynistic. Most disturbing, he has recently started demanding that Sharon scrub off every trace of her work makeup while he watches in the mirror. The detail surfaces a memory for Beverley: the day Henry struck her without warning while she was shaving him in front of a mirror.

Sharon explains she is afraid to go to the police because Hank has threatened to harm their children if she does, and she believes the authorities will not take her seriously. She asks Beverley to observe him directly. Then she mentions something she found after reading an article in the Signal, and opens her hand to reveal a shining object. Beverley cries out. They will have to look into Hank Farrer.