The sun was a fat orange ball ten feet off the horizon, up but not yet strong enough to burn off the damp chill clinging to the fall air. Mendez was glad for the sport coat he had on. Jane Thomas was wrapped in a hand-knit, moss green sweater that reflected the color of her eyes—except for the red rims from hours of crying.

He felt bad for her. To find out someone you knew had been murdered was a terrible thing. To find out someone else you knew was missing and could very well be the next murder victim . . . he couldn’t imagine.

The backyard of the cottage was fenced in to contain the pit bull that sidled up to Jane Thomas, growling low in its throat. Not a warning growl so much as a sound of discontentment. The dog sat and leaned against the woman’s legs, looking mournfully up at her.

“This is Petal?” Mendez asked.

“Yes. I took her home with me last night. She’s lost without Karly.”

He lifted his Polaroid and snapped a shot of the dog. He would take it to Anne Navarre later to see if her students could ID this as the dog they had seen in the woods.

Maybe the dog had jumped the fence and had been in search of its owner when it had come across the body of Lisa Warwick. If this was television, they would give Petal a piece of Karly Vickers’s clothing to sniff, and the dog would bark and take off, leading them to her owner who was trapped in the lair of a madman.

Unfortunately, they weren’t living in a TV show, and Mendez had never known a pit bull to be much in the way of a hunting dog.

“We’ll have deputies interview all the neighbors,” he said. “To see if maybe someone saw her leave the house, or saw her with anyone, or saw someone going into the house.

“The fact that her car isn’t here makes me think she probably met her abductor elsewhere,” he said. “We’ll need a list of everyone you know she saw on Thursday.”

“I can tell you,” she said. “She was at the center. She saw the staff. She had her hair and nails done at Spice Salon. She had her teeth cleaned.”

“What dentist?” Mendez asked, pulling out his notebook and pen.

“Either Dr. Pratt or Dr. Crane. They both offer their services to the center.”

Petal the pit bull got to her feet and began to growl in earnest. The back door of the cottage opened and Frank Farman stepped out.

“I’ve got two units here to start knocking on doors,” he said. He looked at Jane Thomas. “You’d better have a leash on that dog, ma’am. That’s a dangerous animal.”

Jane Thomas took hold of the dog’s pink collar. “Only to people she doesn’t like.”

Farman frowned at her.