"Go find the damn dog."

"Don't you want to help round him up?" Garcia asked with a grin.

"Just do your job," Herrera snapped.

He watched the young man swing easily over the gate and trot up the steep driveway that had been cut into the granite rock of the hillside.

He sucked in his thick gut and decided to add animal control officers to the list of people he didn't like, which up to now had only included his ex-wife, any and all civilians, and his asshole shift commanders.

While Garcia scrambled around trees and over rock outcroppings calling for the dog, Herrera turned his attention to the Terrell house. At least six times larger than his small subdivision tract home, it sat a hundred feet above him, sited to take advantage of the valley view and Atalaya Mountain across the way.

It had a deep portal bordered by a high patio wall that was under construction.

He heard a dog bark and switched his gaze to the driveway in time to see Garcia turn a corner, yanking the muzzled mutt along by the handle of the snare.

"You gotta go up there," Garcia called in a shaky voice as he approached.

"What's wrong?"

Garcia stopped at the driveway gate. He was flustered.

"There's a dead woman inside the house lying next to the front door with a pair of scissors stuck in her chest. Some guy came out of the back of an RV parked by the garage and ran off when he saw me."

"Shit," Cloudy said, reaching across his chest for the microphone to the handheld that was clipped to his shirt.

"You went in the house?"

"I just followed the dog," Garcia said.

"The patio door was open."

"Describe the woman for me."

"Dead, for Chrissake," Garcia said.

"I didn't stop to take a close look."

Herrera stared at the dog.