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and follow the ridge to the summit or over and down to Highway 1 and the coast. Raveneau did neither. He eased off the road and parked between two redwoods near the start of a trailhead sign.
    Both Marin detectives were dead, one of a heart attack, the other drowning in rough surf on a long-awaited vacation to Antigua. That left Hugh Neilley and Ray Alcott. Alcott was happy to talk about the RV he was restoring and equipping with rooftop solar panels. He and his wife planned an extensive tour of the national parks next spring and summer, starting with the desert parks, Zion, Bryce, the Grand Canyon, places where the summer heat would be too much for his wife later. Raveneau learned about the new tires going on the RV, but nothing about the Coryell investigation, and Alcott’s explicit message was that he was retired.
    Raveneau started south on the trail and was soon on the open flank of the mountain where the rye grass was pale brown, knee high and rustled as he walked across and down. At the horizon a thin fog colored gold as the sun lowered. He found the offshoot trail he was looking for and soon was well down the slope, hesitating now, stopping as he looked for the Y-shaped oak he remembered.
    He spotted the oak, the crooked Y a third of the way up, the tree taller and fuller. When he reached the tree he reoriented himself again with two steep ravines, and then worked his way down to where the clearing had been and where brush grew now. Last night he watched the video made of the kill site and knew he was in the right spot now. He also reviewed tape of an Albert Lash interview done in the old homicide office. Lash’s left hand had a faint tremor and he wondered if that was nervousness, as it was read as then, or whether it was a precursor of the disease that left him crippled now.
    But Lash didn’t make the phone threat. Lash didn’t burn the candles or leave an iPhone and in part Raveneau made the trip up here to try to get his head around the difference between now and then. He ticked through various ideas: that she was killed here but walked down at gunpoint or under some threat by Lash, or that he had help, or that she was abducted as she went once again back into the eucalyptus grove trying to locate where the screams came from. The unnamed, unknown, random abduction was where Alcott and Hugh finally settled. But they had no evidence of that. What they had was a lack of evidence of anything else.
    Raveneau looked down to the coast highway below. A car came into view and disappeared again. Twilight wasn’t far away, the light softening on the ocean and the water turning from blue to gray. He didn’t have any new insights about why she was brought here. It was likely just that it was relatively remote, a gunshot wouldn’t be heard and animals would find the body first. They had.
    Was she murdered because of her writings? Was it someone who read her blog and became enraged? Sure, that was possible. They were out there. Coryell wrote that genocide is a cancer in our collective psyche. She drew from the Holocaust and cited the French dispute now with Turkey over acknowledging the slaughter of Armenians nearly a hundred years ago, her point being that it doesn’t go away. It doesn’t leave us until we face and acknowledge the wrong.
    Raveneau took a last look at the ocean and then turned. He thought of her, youthful, frightened and rain-soaked, yet vibrant, standing in the doorway of Lash’s guest cottage. He began to climb the slope. He spoke to her. I have not forgotten you. He climbed toward the Y-shaped oak and was startled to see a man standing there.
    As he got close, he saw the man was waiting for him. He saw a white guy in his mid thirties, tall, thin, long-legged and slightly stooped at the shoulders. He wore glasses with the popular black frames of the moment. Narrow blonde sideburns crept down a long head and he sported a little bit of a goatee, also trimmed narrow. He wore a black T-shirt, and despite