Now he could hear the distant thrum of the waterfall pounding over the rocks. He could never hear that sound without remembering Robbie’s suicide, the temporary grave his body had found in the river.

Something prickled up the skin of Nate’s neck and he stopped, looked around. He felt a pervading sense of menace, something dark descending. He heard voices and saw Kia standing next to a few uniforms. Dr. Kathi Morris, the pathologist, was bent over a body on the ground among the trees about fifty feet from the path.

Nate greeted them and bent to look at Beatrice Flores as he pulled a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and slipped them on. She looked younger in death than she had in her mug shot, her eyes closed as if she were sleeping. Her skin was tinted a bluish color, patches of lighter skin marbling through the dark.

“She was found by a woman walking her dog,” Kia said quietly. She nodded at a pale elderly woman and a small dog being attended to by paramedics farther along the path.

“Overdose?” Nate asked.

“Most likely.”

“It’s a strange place for it.” Nate turned to Dr. Morris. “How long has she been out here?”

“A few hours,” she replied. “Rigor mortis is established around her neck and jaw but less marked elsewhere. So I’d say three to four hours. Livor mortis is on her right side, but she was found flat on her back, indicating she was dumped here.”

Nate pinched the bridge of his nose. His bruised fingers throbbed.

Kia looked at him curiously. “You okay?”

Nate nodded. He had to get a grip.

“Can you check the back of her neck?” he asked Dr. Morris. “See if there’s a puncture wound.”

Dr. Morris wrapped an arm around Beatrice’s shoulders and heaved her onto her side. The girl’s long hair slid over her face. Nate knelt and scooped it off her neck, gently tucking it behind her ears.

They peered closely at the skin on her neck.

“There,” Kia said. She pointed at a tiny drop of blood that had formed just above one of her vertebrae. She met Nate’s eyes. “Just like Martinez.”

“We’ll need a tox screen,” he told Dr. Morris. “See if it’s the same thing that killed Mr. Martinez and Ms. Williams.” He turned to Kia. “Did you question Ben this morning?”

“I couldn’t; he was asleep and the doctors wouldn’t let me in.”

“Let’s arrest him. We need his statement.”

Kia frowned. “We can’t do that. There hasn’t been a shred of evidence linking Ben to Martinez. No DNA, hair, fingerprints, nothing. Only Martinez’s girlfriend’s word that she saw Ben’s name on the phone. That’s not concrete enough. And you know we’ll never get through a grand jury with just circumstantial evidence.”