“They told us to stay away from their case?”

“Politely,” Somers said, gathering up the photographs. “Come here and I’ll show you what we’ve got.”

Scooting around the desks in his chair, the casters squeaking like mad, Dulac said, “They can’t do that. This is our case, our crime scene, our killer. Where the fuck were they when the Keeper took Mitchell and Phil and Rory?”

“Technically, they aren’t taking over the case. Technically, this is a joint effort. Technically, they’re advising the Wahredua PD and providing logistical support.”

“Technically?”

“Well, technically, they seem to think we couldn’t find our asses with both hands.”

“So, who are we supposed to be working with?”

“Senior Special Agent Park.”

“He sounds like an asshole.”

Somers grinned. “She might be; I don’t know yet.”

“Oh.”

“Internalized sexism, bro.”

“Dude, I had a really long night,” Dulac said, scrubbing his face, “and—” His hands froze; then they dropped. “Did you just call me bro?”

“Don’t get excited.”

“That was fucking incredible, dude.”

“Let’s not make too much of it.”

“This is the best day of my life.”

“Ok,” Somers said. “I only said it because you’re obviously having a rough start, and now I regret it.”

“I’m getting a tattoo of today’s date.”

Somers sighed and spread out the photos again.

“Probably on my bicep.”

“Here’s what we’ve got.”

“The right one, dude. Because it gets a little more swoll. And you deserve that.”

“Focus, please.”

As Dulac bent to look at the photographs, though, the boyish grin slid away, and he paled behind the maze of freckles. “Fuck me. Is that really Susan?”

“Yes. Her purse, with her driver’s license, was found by the body. We had to run fingerprints to confirm because, well, the damage to her face.”

Dulac looked a little green now, but he nodded, and his gaze didn’t waver. “And this asshole took Mitchell?”

“That’s what it looks like. We’ve got a couple of uniformed officers knocking on doors, trying to find anybody who might have seen Mitchell leave last night. We called some of his friends, including Nico, and nobody saw Mitchell last night. We’re also trying to pull footage from security cameras, traffic cams, you know the drill. Anything in the area that might help us figure out what happened.” Somers grabbed the computer mouse and wiggled it, more out of something to do than because he needed it. “It’s a lot of dead ends so far. No cameras in the apartment building itself, no cameras in the parking garage. They rushed a warrant to get access to the cloud backup of the feed from Mitchell’s security cameras, the ones inside his apartment. Gone. Erased. No backups.”

“Jesus Christ,” Dulac said, rocking back. “What a fucking shit show. How’s Hazard?”

Somers’s hand stilled, and then he gave the mouse a few more jiggles. “Not good.”

“Man,” Dulac said, resting a hand on Somers’s shoulder.

“Anyway, here’s what we know: Boyer estimates that Susan was killed between ten o’clock last night and midnight. A security guard patrols Sexten Industrial Park every two hours, or, at least, they’re supposed to. The guy who called this in, he started crying about five minutes into the conversation and told us that he just does one sweep, usually about halfway through his shift. He spotted Susan about half past twelve, got close enough to see, was violently sick, and then called it in.”