Mahler looked across the room at the team and took a deep breath. “By the way, I’ve already told Daniel and Eden, but the rest of you should know. The chief has given us until one tomorrow afternoon to make an arrest.”

“Are you serious?” Coyle asked.

“I’m afraid so.”

The room fell quiet. Mahler turned to face a new display of photo enlargements taped side by side on the wall beside the whiteboard. In sequence, the photos showed three men carrying the victim’s body to the park bench, then climbing back up the hill. “What do we have on these photos?”

Rivas joined him at the display. “We showed the photos to Peña. He confirmed seeing these guys with the victim Saturday night.” Rivas pointed to one photo. “According to his earlier testimony, the guy in the front is the Asian, the guy in the middle is dark-skinned, and the last guy is taller and white.”

Mahler peered at the photos. “The faces of the first two are pretty clear. If we can ID them, we can put them in the park with the victim’s body. This last guy—can the lab do anything on the resolution?”

“Not according to the techs.” Coyle sat back in his chair. “Something about the image lacking information. Anyway, the photo was taken in the dark, and the camera lens was focused on the foreground, a few hundred yards away. But we do know the Asian is also the hooded guy in the surveillance film taken at the park gate. Analysis of that film showed he was five feet four and left-handed.”

“The middle guy’s about the same size,” Eden said. “So these are the ‘little men’ the homeless guy talked about.”

“Maybe this dark-skinned guy isn’t Latino,” Rivas said. “Maybe he’s East Indian. The owner of the vintage Mercedes in San Francisco you’re trying to track down is named Victor Banerjee.”

Holland tapped one of the photo enlargements. “See this thing? On the Asian guy’s jacket?”

“It’s a shadow,” Rivas said.

“No, that’s what I thought, too. But look—it’s in all the photos, no matter which way he’s facing.” Holland picked up a black pen and circled the shape in each photo. “Look. Here and here and here. It’s something on the jacket. A picture or a letter.”

“It’s like a ball with a line coming out the top,” Eden said.

Coyle bent close to his laptop. “I’ve seen that somewhere else.” He swiveled the screen toward the others. “Yeah. Look, it’s the logo the victim had on her computer. It’s that startup down in the city—DivingBell.”