Deputy LaShawn Brown scowled. “Don’t know. But looks like it.” A tall, beefy man who would still regale anyone who would listen about his glory days as a college football star nearly twenty years earlier, Brown was a dedicated cop. He’d settled down with a wife and two teenage daughters, his ball-playing days far behind him. Nearly six and a half feet of muscle, he probably weighed nearly three hundred pounds and was as intimidating as anyone on the force. “Just gotta check the serial number.”

“Who discovered her?”

“A friend who’s also a coworker,” the deputy said, pulling out the notepad from his back pocket. “Zena Wallace. When our girl here”—the deputy nodded at the corpse in the bed—“when she didn’t show up for work and didn’t answer any texts or calls, her boss got worried and sent Ms. Wallace over here.”

From first glance, it appeared as if the victim had committed suicide. But that was a BS theory since Earl Ray Dansen and the Clarion had been sent pictures of the scene, after she’d pulled the trigger.

“Was the door locked?”

“Nah. And according to the friend, that was odd.”

“Forced?”

“Nope.”

Mendoza asked, “What time was that?”

“Not quite an hour ago—you can check with nine-one-one for the exact time. Wallace found the body, freaked the hell out, and called nine-one-one. No, wait, I think she called someone else first.” Another quick scan of his notes. “She couldn’t get through to her boss, so she called Robert Knowlton, who is an overseer where they work.”

“At Cahill Industries,” Rivers said.

Brown was nodding. “Right. Soon as we got the report, Taggert and I, we drove over here, found her—Ms. Wallace—outside. Then we came upstairs and discovered this one”—he hitched his chin toward the bed to Willow Valente’s body—“right here.”

Rivers asked, “Where is Ms. Wallace now?”

“Down in the car. With Taggert.”

“Did Knowlton show up?” Mendoza asked the question as she checked out the small apartment.

“Yeah, he’s down in the parking lot. Or was. His story checked out. He only came because he was called.”

Mendoza asked, “The ME on her way?”

Brown gave a quick nod. “Should be here within the half hour.”

“And the crime-scene guys?” Mendoza pressed.

Brown rubbed his chin. “S’posed to arrive any minute.”

“Good.” Rivers had seen enough. He and Mendoza walked carefully down the exterior stairs, where the night was cold, new snow falling softly, the darkness abated by the single security lamp casting a gray-blue pool of light over the parking area of what had once been a bakery and the blue-and-red flashers from the light bars of the deputies’ vehicles.

Mendoza tapped on the driver’s-side window of the occupied, idling cruiser. “We’d like to talk to Ms. Wallace,” she said as the window was rolled down, Deputy Taggert behind the wheel.