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the hangover, and she regretted not having had time to get a strong black coffee before leaving headquarters.
    There were four more uniforms up here, arranged around a nude female body. She was about five six, slim, had dark brown hair, and was facedown and smeared from head to toe with dirt. The coroner investigator was on his knees by the body, scraping dirt from the victim’s fingernails into a plastic evidence bag. There was a small tattoo of a butterfly or a fairy or something in black ink at the base of her spine. Allen showed her ID this time and introduced herself and her partner. Then she opened her notebook and started jotting down the specifics of the scene for the report as the older of the four cops gave them the basics.
    “Caucasian female, late teens to early twenties. No identification, obviously.”
    “What about that?” Mazzucco said, pointing to the ink.
    The cop snorted. “Yeah. That’ll narrow it down.”
    “Preliminary cause of death?” Allen asked, addressing the coroner investigator this time.
    He didn’t look up. “Slit throat, multiple stab wounds, partial strangulation. Some shallow lacerations to the face and upper body, too.”
    “She was tortured,” Mazzucco said.
    “For sure.”
    “Sexual assault?” Allen inquired.
    “We’ll do a rape kit at the morgue. Until then there’s no way to be sure. No preliminary physical evidence, though.”
    “Okay,” Allen said. “Can you turn her over?”
    The coroner investigator waved at one of the uniforms for an assist. The two of them moved the body from its front onto its back, performing the maneuver with respect and care, as though moving a living person who was merely unconscious.
    The body was smeared with dirt on the front, too. There were puncture wounds and cuts all over her abdomen, many of them plugged with dirt. A pair of perfectly symmetrical diagonal cuts crossed her cheeks, as though tracing the paths of tears. The eyes were open, staring sightlessly up at the cohort of intruders. Allen thought they were gray, or a washed-out blue. Either way, they matched the drained colorlessness of the rest of her. The throat was cut deeply, from ear to ear. With one stroke, by the looks of it. No way was this a first timer. And yet the cut had strangely ragged edges to it, unlike the marks on the face and body. Allen had seen cut throats before, more than she cared to remember, but this one looked different somehow.
    Mazzucco gestured at the dirt streaking the body. “Was she buried when she was found? Partially buried, maybe?”
    The uniform who’d helped to turn the body pointed up the hill to where there was a fluorescent marker staked in the earth. From that point to this, they could see evidence of slippage, of overturned earth.
    “The grave was up there,” he said. “You can go have a look if you like. All of the rain caused a pretty good landslide. You see that shit last night? Insane.”
    “Insane,” Allen repeated, eyes still on the ragged gash in the girl’s throat, which was somehow less out of the ordinary in this town than inclement weather.
    “It was actually a good grave,” he continued, in the tone of a connoisseur of such things. “Half of the goddamn hillside came down last night; otherwise she would have been one of the ones we don’t find.”
    Mazzucco was nodding. The Santa Monica Mountains probably played host to more unofficial burial plots than anywhere else in the United States. With the exception of the desert outside of Vegas, of course.
    Allen, who’d been crouched down, examining the dirt-filled wounds in the body, stood up and looked around, headache forgotten for the moment.
    “This isn’t the primary crime scene, is it?”
    The coroner investigator was already shaking his head in sympathy. Body dumps, particularly in an environment like this, were the toughest cases to clear. They left no crime scene and no trail. “Again, difficult to be sure. But no. I think it’s the disposal site