Mahler waited a beat. “I think we’re done.” He pushed back his chair and stood.

Chief Truro whispered, “Where’re you going?”

Mahler walked around the council table and up the steep stairs at the edge of the amphitheater. Passing the reporter who asked the last question, Mahler slowed to meet his eyes before continuing up the stairs.

The room was quiet. Mahler felt the reporters watching his back. As he reached the top of the council chambers, the theater erupted, and three or four reporters called out questions at once. Mahler turned to look down at Truro, standing with his arms above his head, as the noise flooded toward him.

Chapter Eight

(i)

(TUESDAY, 4:08 P.M.)

“We started without you,” the female officer announced as Eden walked into the conference room on the second floor of police headquarters. The woman, who introduced herself as Gina Cipriani, was broad-shouldered and had the erect bearing of many of the uniformed employees Eden had met.

Across the table, a large man with a smoothly shaven head sat peering into a laptop screen. “That imposing figure over there,” Cipriani said, “is future Officer-of-the-Year Bob Pace. He’s my partner, in the professional sense only, thank God.”

Pace waved at Eden without looking away from his screen.

Joining them, Eden felt small and underdressed. She wondered how much the uniformed officers knew about her. Did they know she was from the FBI? Would they care she was assigned to detectives from outside the department?

“You’re VCI, right?” Cipriani asked. She smiled. “Just how new are you?”

“Two weeks.”

“Well, welcome to the SRPD, Eden Somers. You’re fortunate this afternoon to be working alongside two of this department’s elite crime-stoppers.” She gestured toward the telephone in the center of the table. “That’s the public tip line for the homicide in the park. I’m transcribing the voicemails, and handsome Bob is hunting-and-pecking his way through the web replies. We’re transferring the information to standardized forms and posting them to the department database.”

Cipriani pushed a spare laptop across the table. “You may as well start reading what we’ve done so far and flag those we should follow up on.”

Eden peered at the screen. “What’re they like?”

“Mostly local. People think it’s someone they know. A few sound worthwhile. But we’re also getting the usual weird shit. Guy in LA thinks it’s that actress from the soaps who went missing a year ago. A Seattle psychic told us to check for a rosette tattoo on the left shoulder.”

Eden read the logs. Two callers knew someone with the same physical description. One caller said he’d seen a woman matching the victim’s description in the park the day before. A website reply asked for a photo.

The tip line phone rang. Eden looked at the others.

Cipriani nodded toward the phone. “You want to take it?”

“How do I answer?”