On the surface, what he’s saying is troubling. Really troubling. Yet I know from experience in my own life that people handle stress and grief with different, sometimes seemingly nonsensical actions. My mother cut my hair supershort after I came home that day because she was sure that my hair was what had attracted Albert Hodge to take me in the first place. I looked like a boy for two years. Even though I went on, Mom stayed stuck in “what could have happened” mode. It took the life out of a woman who had up to that point lived in full color. Joy. Love. It was like a slow-growing cancer.

It’s not yet noon when a text from Dr. Collier confirms most of what I already know—and something I didn’t. Sophie was beaten to death with some kind of blunt instrument. She died sometime Saturday. The time spent in cold water makes it difficult, if not impossible, to say anything more precise. The killer left his DNA in her vagina. As far as the pathologist knows, the sample hasn’t been run through the system yet.

Backlog at the state crime lab, she reminds me in her text. Still hoping we get a hit in a few days, though.

The tox screens, however, have come back, and while Sophie was clean of any controlled substances, reports indicate a large dose of diphenhydramine, what most people think of as Benadryl, was present in her body.

I make a note of the dosage.

Adam said that his wife had been fighting a cold, so the Benadryl doesn’t come as a surprise. The tox fits Adam’s narrative to a T.

But something else doesn’t.

I reach for my desk phone and dial Dr. Collier.

“Hello, Detective,” she says, picking up.

“Doctor, thanks for the preliminary. Still waiting on the DNA, right?”

Music plays in the background. It’s cheerful. Katy Perry’s early stuff, I think. “Still waiting,” she says.

“I noticed that your exam reports her stomach was basically empty.”

She lowers the volume on Ms. Perry. “Pretty much,” she tells me. “Let me look. Hold a second.”

In a moment, Dr. Collier gets back on. “That’s right. Empty. Some sesame seeds in there, but nothing else. Clean as a whistle.”

“When was the last time she ate something?” I ask her. “Can you tell?”

“Hard to say,” she says. “These Seattle gals are always on some kind of diet or cleanse. Taking Seattle out of the picture, I’d say she hadn’t eaten anything for at least twelve hours. No food. No water, either. She was a little dehydrated.”

“No sandwich?” I ask, thinking of what Teresa found in the refrigerator. “No food the night before she was abducted?”

“That’s what I said,” she goes on. “No nothing.”

I thank her, and we end the call—and I have to fight the temptation to lay my head on my desk.