I make scraping sounds as I move about in my ill-fitting jerry-rigged shoe covers. I direct the beam along the path, following it to the body, and from several feet away I see the long brown hair is in disarray. I see her attractive young face with its turned-up nose and delicate chin, her pale skin, the dirt on her parted lips, and her eyes staring dully through barely open lids. The sunglasses she had on earlier are missing, assuming the dead woman and the cyclist I met are one and the same.

I’m increasingly convinced they could be, and that’s thinking of it conservatively. That’s not including what my gut is telling me. In the intense light I can see that the shorts are light blue, and there are pinstripes in the socks. Soaked into the grass under her neck is blood. From where I am I don’t see a lot of it, and I don’t notice bruises, lacerations or other injuries to her face. Only dirt and vegetable debris, as if she took a tumble.

But the position of her arms is telling. They’re over her head, wide-spread and palm up, and that corroborates my growing conviction that she was pulled by her wrists. It never ceases to amaze me what people don’t think about in the uproar of the moment. It would have been simple to brush away the drag marks and position the body, making it not quite so obvious what was done after the fact. I glance at the twins again, and their faces are riveted to me. I have a bad feeling they’re lying.

They claim they didn’t get near the body, no closer than three feet, according to Barclay. But somebody did. It may have been more than one person. There may have been two people of similar strength and each one of them pulled the dead woman by an arm, then stopped. I wonder again about the helmet some twenty feet away, upside down in the grass like a beached turtle. Did someone toss it there? What happened to her shoes and shirt? What about sunglasses, a necklace, a bandanna? If she had them, where are they?

I paint the light over the bicycle as I slowly make my way around it. I look for damage to the tires, the white frame with blue accents and a racing stripe, and the gel seat. I don’t notice dents or scrapes. But the black plastic phone holder clamped to the flat handlebars is empty. The clamp that would have held a phone in place has been released. There’s no phone in sight, and I get that feeling again, only more strongly. It comes back as a pang in my stomach accompanied by a sinking sensation, and I take a deep, slow breath.