“I’ll secure the scene for CSU,” she said.

She went to the rear of the Explorer, opened the back, took out a big roll of yellow CRIME SCENE tape from the trunk, and walked back to the house. She tied one end of the tape to a streetlight and walked the perimeter of the property, stopping every now and then to secure the tape around a tree, bush, lawn chair, or other object. As she walked, she kept her eyes open for anything out of the ordinary.

It made her look busy while giving her an excuse to think about what she was taking on. Most of her investigative experience was in home and business burglaries. The few homicides that she’d worked were hardly big mysteries. One was an elderly man who killed his Alzheimer’s-afflicted wife, then himself. Another was a homeless man who stabbed another homeless man in a dispute over scavenging rights to a dumpster behind a grocery store. This case was more complex than anything she’d tackled before.

But what did she know? Only that a woman was missing and that some terrible violence had seemingly occurred in her house. There were no bodies. So was she dealing with a murder? Multiple murders? An abduction? It was way too soon to tell.

Eve was in the backyard when she noticed a depression in the dry brush going from the dead lawn up into the grove of trees at the top of the hill. Someone, or some animal, had trampled through the weeds recently. Perhaps it was the trail left by the dog when it fled the house.

She set down the roll of tape on a lawn chair and trudged up the hillside, creating a parallel path alongside the one that was already there so she wouldn’t contaminate any possible evidence. The dirt was hard and the weeds were like hay.

She stepped up into the trees and was surprised to see a rumpled sleeping bag on the ground surrounded by trash from a McDonald’s takeout meal. The sleeping bag wasn’t soiled, dirty, or covered with leaves. She squatted beside the trash and looked at a pickle slice in a Big Mac carton. The pickle was still moist.

This campsite hadn’t been here long. Maybe a day at most.

She looked back the way she came. Whoever was here had a clear view of Tanya’s house, front yard, and the cul-de-sac. She could see the Crime Scene Unit van arriving. Had somebody been watching the house? If so, why and for how long? Did whoever it was have something to do with Tanya’s disappearance and the violence? If not, did he see what happened?

She was about to start taking pictures with her phone when a twig snapped behind her. She whirled around and at the same instant some rampaging hairy monster—a grizzly bear? a werewolf?—burst out of the trees and whacked her across the head with a rock.

She felt a blinding explosion of pain and fell on her side. The enraged beast kicked her hard in the stomach, forcing the air out of her lungs. She couldn’t breathe and instinctively curled into a fetal position, protecting her midsection.