Frames did remember. Once part of a task force on neighborhood break-ins, he had spent three days knocking on doors on Coffey Lane. House after house with no one home or frightened faces looking out at his uniform. Then a young Hispanic woman opened her door and told him about driving home from a late shift and seeing in her headlights the face of the suspect. “I can say in my report you fucked me around.”

Timsen sighed and pulled a notepad from his shirt pocket. He paged through it. “A couple of the campers said a homeless guy was walking around early in the morning, saying stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“I don’t know,” Pruitt said. “None of it made sense. But he said he saw a body.”

“That’s what he said? He saw a body?”

“Yeah.” Timsen read from his pad. “Some old fart in an RV, Arnold Lester, was outside before dawn, screwing around with his gray-water valve or some shit, and this homeless guy comes through the campground, talking to himself.”

“Who was he?”

“Probably a transient named Donald Lee. We found a supplemental report for someone fitting the description.” Timsen returned to his pad. “Mr. Lester described him as having hair in dreads, wearing an overcoat, and carrying a trash bag filled with clothes.”

“I’m sure he’ll make an excellent witness,” Pruitt said.

“Did anyone else see him?”

“Yeah. The kids with the weed said he stood next to their tent, but they couldn’t hear what he was saying.”

“The park guards had a Field Interview card for him on file,” said Timsen. “Guy’s a regular. No matter what they do, comes through three or four nights a week. He’s harmless, so they leave him alone.”

“What else?”

“We knocked on the doors of the houses across from the park gate on Violetti, Pepperwood, and Bader Roads,” Timsen said.

“I think it’s pronounced ‘vee-o-letti,’ not ‘vi-o-letti,’” Pruitt said.

“Do you say ‘vee-lence’ or ‘vi-lence’?” Timsen looked at Frames. “This is why I don’t get invited to join VCI.”

“Maybe it’s because you pronounce it ‘Vi-CI’ instead of ‘Vee-CI,’” Pruitt said.

Frames hated this kind of chatter. When he and Rivas talked, it was about important stuff, how the world worked. “Can you stop fucking around?”

Timsen read again from his notes. “The owner at 2905 Pepperwood, Mrs. Dennis, said she heard a woman scream at two a.m. But then she thought it was a raccoon. According to Mrs. Dennis, an adult raccoon and a human female scream at the same pitch. She learned that on the Nature Channel. Anyway, that’s why she didn’t call the police. And she said the last time she called us, all the responding officer did was grunt.”

“Probably Paul Johnson,” Pruitt said. “That guy grunts a lot.”