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never get used to that.” I saluted him, then returned to the brightly lit master bedroom for my second search of the closet.
    A yellow tent now sat by the iPhone.
    I pulled on a new pair of latex gloves, then picked up the device. Didn’t see any fingerprints—didn’t mean there weren’t any. I pressed the power button and the phone’s light filled the closet.
    The wallpaper picture was a yellow dog, something small like a Shih Tzu.
    The battery symbol indicated the phone was fully charged.
    I wanted to study the call log but didn’t want to smudge any possible fingerprints.
    â€œWho the hell threw up?” one of the techs shouted from the bedroom.
    â€œThat would be my partner,” I shouted back.
    â€œYou make a note?”
    â€œYeah. Sorry ’bout that.”
    I powered down the phone and sat it back by its little yellow tent. Needing a breath, I stepped back into the bedroom.
    Over by the window, the techs were photographing Colin’s vomit. Other than that, there was nothing else to photograph. No beer cans or cigarette butts, no half-smoked jays or used rubbers. Nothing to suggest a party or squatters hanging out and shooting up.
    Back to the closet.
    Nothing there except that phone, that belt, and that girl. There were no other items to move. No other doors to open. No couch cushions to search.
    Who are you?
    A Vikings cheerleader, sure.
    She wasn’t a strawberry, though: raggedy and desperate, giving head for crack.
    No. Jane Doe had income—a fourth-generation iPhone cost $100, but then throw in the data plan … Nope, this girl wasn’t poor. She was somebody’s kid. She was that yellow dog’s mom.
    I ran my flashlight down to her feet.
    And where are your shoes?
    Tori had left behind one shoe, the left, a white Nike Huarache with a bloodstain the size of a quarter on the toe.
    I ran the light up the girl’s legs and up her torso.
    Light reflected off an object stuck to the back of her shoulder.
    I peered closer.
    Gold cursive letters. BABY GIRL . A nameplate with no chain.
    I stared into the girl’s dead, half-mast eyes—3 percent of me still believed that the last image seen by a dying person remained fixed in her eyes. “Who did this to you, sweetie?” I didn’t care about the “why.” Fuck the “why.” I wanted to know who had taken this girl’s life. Unfortunately, there were no images of that monster in her cloudy corneas. There were specks of red, though. Blood.
    â€œThat’s okay,” I whispered. “I’ll find that son-of-a-bitch.” For you. And for me.

 
    8
    It had been three hours since my arrival to Crase Parc and Promenade. A dead girl (another dead girl) had entered my life, this one anonymous. She had possibly left little drops of herself on the lobby floor, dripping all the way to a condo unit on the first floor, drops that were now marked with miniature orange pylons. With that cheer uniform, she may have been the same age as my sister when she disappeared. And Jane Doe had also been victimized in the same neighborhood as Tori, with the name Crase featured prominently in the background. Again.
    A part of me dismissed those similarities— of course there would be another dead black girl in this area, since no white ones lived here. Since the start of the new year, I had investigated a lot of murders starring this demographic. But this hadn’t been a simple drug deal gone bad or a trick turned fatal. The larger part of me agreed with writer Emma Bull: Coincidence is the word we use when we can’t see the levers and pulleys.
    And now, I was punching through fog, grabbing for those pulleys but missing by miles, to explain away the coincidences. I squeezed shut my eyes—the halogens were too bright, my mind too fragmented, but I needed to get over it and focus. I shuffled through the field interview cards compiled by Officer Shepard. Correction: