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down to the scene aboard the department’s helicopter, Star One.
    “San Joaquin Homicide is en route to your location,” Biondi continued. “They want to compare our picture to photos of their victim. But, Harry—they’ve confirmed their Jane Doe is peeling from a sunburn.”
    “Understand,” Machen said. He was not surprised.
    Machen was glad the chopper was coming—he would use it to make a sweep of the entire area and to take some aerial photographs of the scene.
    A flatbed tow truck arrived at 5:00 P.M.
    “It’s all yours,” Machen said. “It’s going directly to the crime lab to be processed for evidence. Don’t touch anything you don’t have to.”
    By then, Machen had taken numerous pictures of the car, and how and where it was parked.
    The tow truck driver found that the Colt’s emergency brake had been set. He released it. Checking the gearshift, he discovered that the car, which had a manual transmission, was already in neutral. Attaching a chain to the front bumper, the driver worked a power winch to pull the car up onto the bed of the truck.
    As the vehicle moved, Machen examined the bottoms of its tires. They appeared relatively clean; not out in dirt or mud recently. Then he checked the ground beneath where the car had been parked. Nothing.
    The tow truck left with the Dodge Colt.
    When the helicopter set down a few minutes later, kicking up a maelstrom of dust, Machen hopped aboard with his camera. After putting on a headset with microphone—it was impossible to yell over the loud whish-whishing of the rotator blades—he told the two deputies up front wherehe wanted to go. One of the pilots handed him the picture of Machen’s missing person.
    They flew the route Machen figured the killer had most probably driven once he had the young woman in his car and under his control. The detective wasn’t exactly sure what he was hoping to find—maybe, nearby, some clothing belonging to StephanieBrown, or even her missing purse along the road.
    Encouraging the pilot to fly just as low as possible, Machen kept his nose pressed to the window.
    They flew south on I-5 from the Hood Franklin off-ramp to the Highway 12 exit, a distance of 16 miles. Midway, they crossed the Sacramento–San Joaquin county line. They continued west on rural Highway 12 for a few miles, then turned around, as Machen did not know the precise location where the body had been found that morning.
    Had he killed her down there , Machen wondered as he looked at the vast fields and interlocking irrigation ditches that lined both sides of Highway 12, or had he done it somewhere along the way?
    Back at Hood Franklin, Machen found Pete Rosenquist and Vito Bertocchini waiting, along with several Sacramento deputies who had completed a canvass of the area—knocking on the doors of the surrounding farmhouses to find out if residents had seen or heard anything suspicious during the night. No one had.
    The San Joaquin detectives pulled out a starkly lit Polaroid shot taken at the morgue two hours earlier before the postmortem had begun. Jane Doe lay naked on her back on a chrome table outfitted with countless drainage holes. Her eyes were shut; her pale lips parted slightly; her hair swept back off her forehead; her complexion clear; her arms at her sides. She was, in truth, a beautiful young woman. Other than the angry dark furrow in the flesh of her neck left by some type of ligature, she might have been sleeping peacefully before awakening to begin a new day.
    Machen took out the snapshot of the very alive and smiling Stephanie Brown that her roommate had handed the patrol deputy that morning.
    The three detectives looked hard at the side-by-side images, then at one another. Although they would still need a fingerprint comparison for positiveidentification, there was absolutely no denying it.
    Jane Doe had a name now.

Two
    A t thepostmortem earlier that afternoon on the as yet unidentified body, Vito Bertocchini had found himself in a