Mahler hated everything about the young ranger now—his self-importance, his phony military bearing, and the carelessness with which he wasted their time. He knew the ranger wanted to move but was standing still as a show of strength. “What’s the purpose of your patrol?”

“Sir?”

“The purpose. Why’re you doing it?”

“It’s part of the standing order.”

“Part of the standing order,” Mahler repeated. “Someone—probably at least two people—carries a woman’s body into the park and leaves it here, and you and your standing order don’t see anything. Is that right?”

“Yes, sir. As I said, we run the patrol every two hours. So it could’ve happened between them.”

“Or while you’re driving past listening to Brad Paisley.”

Hadley’s fingers were pressed white around his sunglasses. He looked at his shoes.

“All right,” Mahler said. “I’ll send a couple uniformed officers over to the ranger hut. They’ll get statements from you and your partner and talk to the campers. No one leaves until they’ve talked to an officer. Not even to go on patrol. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.” Hadley replaced his sunglasses and walked up through the oaks toward the parking lot.

Coyle smiled as the ranger reached the top of the hill. “Well, that was fun.”

Mahler finished his coffee. “He’ll get over it. Right now he’s thinking about what it would feel like to punch me in the mouth.” He turned to Eden. “This your first?”

“Seeing a body?” She looked startled at being addressed. “I mean, a victim. No, I’ve seen …others.”

Mahler saw fear trapped in her eyes before she retreated to the notepad. He realized they had spent little time together since he hired her two weeks earlier. She was smart, young for the team, but with a couple years’ experience as an FBI analyst. “You okay? You don’t have to be here.”

“I’m fine.” Eden straightened. “You should do…whatever you normally do.”

“You think this is Partridge again, Eddie?” Coyle asked.

Mahler wondered if Coyle had noticed his unsteadiness a few minutes earlier. “Could be. Last I heard, he’s still in town.” He managed to get the words out but didn’t trust himself to say more.

Coyle stepped close to Eden and gestured at the lake. “Two years ago, a young woman named Michelle Foss is killed in the park, over by the water tanks. Strangled, body left beside a footpath. Small town, public space like this, it’s a huge deal. Chief puts on extra patrols, cars at the gates. We look at locals with a record of assaults on women, and right off the bat, we question a guy named Irwin Partridge. Matches a witness description of a man seen on a park trail the night Foss was killed. But the witness is shaky, and we’ve got nothing to connect Partridge to the killing.”