The other cop—Kraemer, a homicide detective—took his turn. He arranged several surveillance-video stills on the table in front of Luke. They showed Luke and Lisa leaving Uncle Lizard’s. The time stamps in the top right-hand corner read 1:52 and 1:53.

“This one.” Kraemer tapped his finger against a grainy black-and-white shot showing Luke and Lisa heading across the parking lot. From the angle of their bodies, it looked like they were staggering, propping each other up. “You’re clearly walking toward the back of the lot. No lights that way. No roads. Nothing except the Los Padres Forest.”

“I think we were going to make out,” Luke said.

“What are you, sixteen?”

Luke closed his eyes, half remembering the smell of Lisa’s perfume, the tangy, Arcadian aroma of the pines. I don’t think it’s working. Had Lisa really said that? Luke shrugged, touching the bump at the back of his head. It was still sore.

“You weren’t seen again,” Kraemer continued, “until you were photographed the following morning with Lisa’s blood all over your shirt.”

“Why didn’t you destroy the shirt?” Detective Montecino asked, leaning casually against the wall with her arms folded. “You knew it would be incriminating.”

Luke wiped tears from his eyes and said, “Because I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Kraemer asked Luke about his and Lisa’s fight at the hotel. He mentioned that the manager was called to their room at 4:24 p.m.

“Loud fight,” the detective said.

“Unh . . . kind of average.”

“You broke a lamp.”

“Lisa broke a lamp.”

Kraemer stroked his graying goatee and asked about their second fight, at Uncle Lizard’s. He showed Luke a video of the altercation that some turd had uploaded to YouTube. “You’ll like this bit,” he said, turning up the volume in time to hear Luke call Lisa a talentless whore.

“Sounds like true love to me,” Montecino noted. Her hair swayed and flashed.

The pressure continued, more of the same questions, the detectives pecking at his answers like hungry birds. Eventually they vacated the interrogation room, leaving Luke to stew. He paced and prayed. He thumped his fist on the table and swore at Lisa, wherever she was.

There was something, though. The video clip of their fight at Uncle Lizard’s had dislodged a memory. It wasn’t complete, but it had substance.

“There was a guy,” Luke said when the detectives returned. They appeared fresh and smelled of coffee.

“A guy?” Montecino took the seat opposite him.

He’d looked out of place, Luke remembered. Uncomfortable, even, standing with his shoulders drawn in and his small mouth pinched closed. Luke would have dismissed him as a socially inept freak, except Lisa had spoken to him, and something about her body language suggested a familiarity, an intimacy.

“Can you describe him?” Detective Montecino asked.

Luke sighed, propping his whiskery jaw up with one hand. “Mexican guy, I think.”