The victim lay on her side on a park bench, the body wrapped in a red woolen blanket from shoulders to feet. Mahler guessed her to be nearly six feet and in her mid-twenties. Streaks of red dye had been inexpertly applied through the bangs of brown hair. The eyes were closed, the lips slightly parted, as if she were about to speak. For an instant he imagined the sound of her voice, a word or two left behind, hanging in the air.

Then a car door slammed behind him, and Mahler’s attention went back up the hill to the parking lot. The crime-scene techs had arrived, and two members of his Violent Crime Investigations, or VCI, team were waiting for him with a park ranger.

The bench sat on a hillside in Spring Lake Park, Santa Rosa’s largest public park, beside a stand of oaks with a view of the water. Below the bench, the slope dropped sharply to an access road before falling all the way to the lake’s edge. Valley fog diffused the early light and muted the sounds of the ghostly joggers and dog walkers traveling through the mist along the lakeshore.

An hour earlier, a call from Detective Martin Coyle had brought Mahler to the park. Now Coyle and a new investigator, Eden Somers, were “giving him his space” but checking every few minutes for his signal to join him. Beyond the crime-scene tape, a small group of spectators had gathered to peer down at the bench.

Mahler was short and powerfully built. He had close-cropped hair and wore a flannel shirt, jeans, and a golf jacket. A takeout coffee cup kept one hand warm, while his other hand was shoved in a pocket of his jeans.

He had awakened the night before with a migraine, the pain concentrated behind his eyes. For ten minutes he lay without moving, all his attention focused on the intense headache. Then he rose carefully on an elbow to get an Imitrex from the bedside table. He slid the tiny pill onto his tongue and waited for its bitter taste to spread across the front of his mouth. When the pill was gone, he dropped three Advil in his palm and swallowed them with water. He eased back into bed and was nearly asleep when his cell went off with the call from Coyle. Now, here in the park, the migraine’s intensity lessened, leaving him with a dull ache and sore neck muscles.