Eden wrote in her notepad. “So you had to let him go.”

“Yeah, he walks. Three days later, another body’s found in the park. Susan Hart. Middle-distance runner at the junior college. This time down near the boat launch, but same type of victim, same strangulation pattern. It’s as if the killer figures he won’t get caught. The media start calling him the Seventy-Two-Hour Killer.”

“Which scares people.” Eden nodded as she continued to write.

“It’s a circus. San Francisco TV stations have news vans at the park gates. A neighborhood watch is organized on the perimeter. One night our guys find a pickup by the dam—four heroes in the truck bed with deer rifles. Some knucklehead in a house above the park hears a noise outside and shoots his own dog.”

Mahler stood apart. He disliked a lot of talking at a crime scene. The migraine pain now existed as an echo. He closed his eyes and pressed his fingertips on the lids. He remembered the crime-scene techs waiting in the parking lot. He waved at them. A dozen more spectators stood behind the yellow tape.

“What about Partridge?” Eden asked.

Coyle backed her away from the bench to give the crime- scene crew room to work. “With the Hart killing, we look at Partridge again. Hold him on an old failure-to-appear warrant and take his life apart: house, car, job, family, past arrests, the works. All of which comes up with nothing. DA declines to indict.”

“Then what?”

Coyle shrugged. “Then what? Nothing. We work a bunch of leads that go nowhere. But the murders stop, and the public and the media move on to the next tragedy.”

“Unusual for a successful killer to stop. So the cases were never solved?”

“No.” Coyle looked at Mahler. “No, they never were.”

“So, if our victim here was murdered by the same killer,” Eden said, “he could be starting again.”

“Maybe, but this one seems different,” Coyle said. “Someone bashed her head. The victims two years ago were killed by ligature strangulation.”

“This one’s strangled as well. There’s bruising on her throat.”

Coyle frowned. “You’re kidding. You saw bruising under all that blood?”

“Yes. Just now. Want me to show you?”

“That’s okay. Hear that, Eddie? Did you see it, too?”

Mahler looked back without speaking.

“But this bruising doesn’t look like ligature strangulation,” Eden said. “It’s on the front of the throat, consistent with manual strangulation. Statistically, front-side strangulation is rare, usually committed by someone known to the victim.”

Coyle snorted. “Statistically? Someone’s studied it?”

Eden’s face reddened. “Sorry. Was that the wrong thing to say?”

“Just not used to it, is all.”