“I don’t know,” Mendez said. They were creeping around the streets of Lompoc, trying to find the post office. “The other night Anne was talking about when Crane attacked her, how he didn’t look like the man she knew. It was like he was a monster inside and the mask came off when he went after her. Maybe there’s something to that.”

“When I first made detective I worked a rape case,” Hicks said. “A guy posing as a gas company employee got this gal to let him into her apartment. Normal-looking guy. Friendly enough. She wasn’t suspicious of him at all until he set his toolbox down and turned around.

“She said it was like he had turned into a different person. He turned around and just looked at her and she instantly became terrified. He beat her in the head with a claw hammer and raped her, and she said, during the rape every once in a while, he would pause and lick her like he was a dog or a wolf. And she said she could see in his eyes then that he wasn’t human.”

“Did you catch him?”

“Yeah. The guy managed a lamp store, had the wife and kids, the whole deal. Looked as normal as could be.”

“There it is,” Mendez said, pointing to the right.

They parked and went inside. Two people were working the desk: a surfer burnout with a bleached stand-up hairdo, and a large woman with bright blue eye shadow and long claw fingernails.

They waited their turn behind a woman buying stamps and a man picking up his mail after a long vacation. When they got to the male clerk Hicks introduced them and explained what they were there for. Mendez placed the photo array—such as it was: a mishmash of actual photographs and pictures cut from Oak Knoll magazine—on the counter.

“He would have been in probably a week ago today,” he said.

“Dude, I don’t know,” the surfer clerk said. “They all look familiar to me. Do you know how many faces come through here every day? I don’t remember.”

He seemed like remembering his own name might sometimes have been a struggle for him.

“It’s very important,” Hicks said.

“What was in the box, man?”

“Human body parts,” Mendez said.

Surfer clerk stared at them. “No way.”

“Way,” Mendez said.

“No way! You can’t send human body parts through the mail, dude. That’s against regulations.”

“Yeah, well, imagine what he did to get them,” Mendez said. “That’s seriously against the law.”

Surfer clerk grimaced. “Wooo ... Dude.”

He turned to his coworker. “Monique, come look. You remember people.”