Mahler looked into the dark woods. “I know where it is.” He ducked under the yellow tape and waited for Rivas and Bailey to join him. On the trail, Mahler took the lead, shining the light ahead and stepping carefully around rocks and tree roots. At a point where the trail veered abruptly away from the lake’s edge, he saw a manzanita fronting a wide patch of flat earth. A dark shape lay in the center of the clearing. Mahler shone his flashlight past the bush and onto a blue plastic tarp. At its top edge lay a mass of brown hair.

Mahler paused, aiming the light around the tarp.

Behind him, Bailey pointed to indentations in the dirt. “Footprints on the near side.”

Mahler stepped aside. “Get some pictures.”

Bailey went closer. The others waited while she shot a dozen photos from different angles.

Next, Bailey took a small flashlight from her jacket and approached the mannequin, stepping around the footprints in the mud. She pulled on latex gloves and put her equipment case on the ground. Then, kneeling close, she shined her light where the hair protruded from the tarp.

The flashlight’s beam caught the long, straight strands of a woman’s wig. Bailey looked behind her at the others. No one spoke.

She peeled back the tarp to reveal a life-size fiberglass mannequin. The thing lay facedown, unclothed. The torso was smooth and pink-colored. Its limbs were flung out stiffly on either side. A sticky red paste was smeared over the back.

Bailey backed away. “Who the heck does this?”

“Take pictures.” Mahler blocked her path. “Process it—all of it, footprints, prints on the mannequin and tarp.”

Rivas looked at Mahler. “You think these are the same guys who went after you and Steve? They’re fucking with us again?”

“No.” Mahler handed him Hadley’s large flashlight. “Those guys wouldn’t have broken the lock at the gate and left a mess like this.”

Mahler looked into the impenetrable darkness of the trees, struck again by how everything could appear normal and then fifteen steps down a dirt path it all came back, a blackness so dense you could lose yourself.

Susan Hart would come out of the trees soon—young and shy in her shorts and sweatshirt, drawn to their voices from the place on the trail where the killer had left her.

He thought of how little power the dead have.

He took a breath and waited. Closing his jacket, he shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. Homicides on television never got it cold enough, lonely enough.

He thought of Susan running her fastest time in Santa Cruz in the dark. What had she meant? He distrusted the darkness, knew what it harbored.