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enough left to make the last round.
    “Show it to me,” he said.
    Lena glanced at Novak, but her partner’s eyes were glued on Brant. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the Polaroid. It was a close-up of Nikki Brant’s face poking through the rip in the grocery bag. As Lena held it out, she measured Brant’s reaction. His eyes didn’t hit the photo and slide off as if trying to forget a memory. Instead, they met the image of his wife’s fate and appeared to crumble.
    “Is this your wife, Mr. Brant?”
    He rocked his head up and down, unable to speak, then started shaking. After a moment, he closed his eyes, wilted onto the front seat, and cradled his head in his arms. The cries came in deep, long stretches, followed by breathless gasps for air that ripped at Lena and jabbed at her.
    She slid the Polaroid into her pocket, stepping away from the car with Novak.
    “You think he’s legit?” she asked.
    When her partner nodded, she nodded back, feeling nauseous.
    It was part of the job, but that didn’t make it any easier. Showing Brant the photograph seemed both absurd and exceedingly cruel. She eyed him through the windshield and listened to him weeping. It was the sound of agony, wisping through a quiet neighborhood in the woods. The sound of someone hitting the wall without any traffic noise to dull the thud. She knew the tone and cadence from personal experience. It was the indelible sound of paradise lost.

THE wood-plank fence stood six feet high. Lena grabbed the top, lifted her legs over the boards, and hopped down on the other side. A gravel path led through the trees toward the tennis courts and community center up the hill. She checked the ground before taking a step forward. Satisfied that she wasn’t contaminating an extension of the crime scene, she headed up the path toward Rustic Canyon Park.
    She still felt nauseous. She needed distance. A breath of fresh air and the chance to clear her mind, if only for five minutes. But she also wanted a look at the Brants’ house from the parking lot on the hill.
    The path circled around a grove of trees, passing a set of concrete steps on its way to the ocean half a mile due west. Lena veered to her left, climbing up the stairs to the community center. The pool remained closed for the season. No one was playing tennis in the drizzle. When she reached the top, she checked the lot and found it empty. But the view was pretty much what she expected. A straight shot through the trees to every backyard in the neighborhood.
    She moved away from the steps, scanning the ground for debris and searching for any indication that the predator responsible for this hideous crime had been here. Spotting a trash can, she lifted the lid and peered inside. The plastic liner appeared new, the container, empty.
    When she closed the lid, a squirrel shot out of the underbrush, racing across the lot toward a tree. Ten feet up the trunk, the animal stopped and turned. Lena followed its gazeover to the building and saw a coyote hiding behind the corner. As she walked back to the top step and sat down, the wild dog trotted to the bottom of the hill and silently cantered past the Brants’ backyard.
    Her eyes drifted over the fence.
    Stray bands of sunlight were leaking into the smoky fog, igniting the moisture and causing it to glow. In spite of the spectacle, she had a bird’s-eye view of the house. As she thought it over, she wondered if the doer had sat on this very step. It didn’t amount to anything more than a distant feeling, but it was there as she took in the view. She could see an SID tech studying the garden below the bedroom window. He had been at it for fifteen minutes and told Lena on her way out that he hadn’t found anything. She could hear the sound of power tools coming from the house as two more techs ripped up the bathroom plumbing. Because the blood evidence was limited to the bedroom and the doer hadn’t left a trail, it was a safe guess that he’d cleaned