SAN JOSE — For nearly a week, Kyle Myrick was presumed dead, but no one could find him, and the man suspected in the disappearance refuted allegations he killed Myrick.

But in the face of his denials, Steve Douglas Hlebo left trails, according to authorities and people who worked with him. Detectives found a segmented trail of blood at the crime scene and in Hlebo’s pickup truck. On Thursday, Myrick’s body was found along a trail in the Santa Cruz Mountains that Hlebo was known to have traveled in the past.

Earlier that day, police said they received information suggesting that Myrick might be in the area of Jamison Creek Road in Boulder Creek in unincorporated Santa Cruz County. Investigators had already learned that Hlebo was acutely familiar with the Santa Cruz Mountains.

His home in Los Altos gave him quick access to a series of quiet highway roads that could take him to the site while avoiding the overhead lights and scores of motorists’ eyes on the freeway.

Colleagues of Hlebo, now jailed on suspicion of murdering Myrick, helped suggest areas of the Santa Cruz Mountains because they knew he liked to ride his bikes — both motor-powered and pedal-driven — in those parts. Some of the employees went on rides with him.

“There were quite a few of us giving ideas of areas we thought he would be familiar with,” said Carlos Ruvalcaba, sales manager at motorcycle shop GP Sports, which employed both Myrick and Hlebo as mechanics.

They were still surprised when the remains of 28-year-old Myrick, a Campbell resident, were found about 4 p.m. Thursday. Soon, the Santa Clara Medical Examiner-Coroner’s Office was summoned and confirmed the grim expectation that the body was indeed Myrick’s.

“We’re relieved to have Kyle back,” said John Sparry, Myrick’s stepfather, at a vigil in front of GP Sports the night he was found. “We’re sad, of course, that things couldn’t have turned out differently, but we’re happy to know he’s in a good place.”

Sparry also expressed gratitude to the scores of volunteers who scoured the area looking for Myrick.

“We’ve had just the most incredible amount of support from people we knew, and then people they knew that we didn’t know, and then total strangers from all over the place.”

Ruvalcaba and Myrick’s other co-workers are now carrying on with the business of the shop, keeping their slain comrade’s memory as they proceed.

“We have to,” Ruvalcaba said. “Kyle was a guy who liked his job, and if he was looking down at us, he would want us to continue getting these motorcycles out there.”

He added: “It’s hard on everyone when something like this happens so close to home.”

It would be hard for it to have happened any closer: A building on the shop grounds vacated after a 2014 fire is the suspected crime scene, where employees looking for a missing Myrick on Jan. 22 discovered a storage room covered in blood and a severed human ear lying in a pool of blood. There were also blood patterns suggesting that a body had been dragged from the room.

Hlebo had been sent to the back lot, but not the building, earlier that afternoon to assemble a pair of all-terrain vehicles, and Myrick was sent soon after to help him. It was the last time anyone saw Myrick alive.

Hlebo was reportedly evasive about Myrick’s whereabouts, employees told police, and Hlebo’s white pickup was seen backed up to the vacant building, an unusual sight because nobody went in there anymore. Hlebo told this newspaper in a jailhouse interview that after work he “just went driving.” When he returned home around 2 a.m. on Jan. 23, police were waiting for him, and they later found blood in the cab of his truck.

Ruvalcaba said he and the rest of the GP Sports staff saw no signs Hlebo could be capable of the slaying, for which there is currently no established motive or cause.

“He was a little quieter than most people, but nothing abnormal that would raise red flags,” he said.

In the meantime, the staff will continue honoring the memory of Myrick, remembered as “always willing to help, always very friendly.”

“We want to stay positive for the family,” Ruvalcaba said. “Hopefully they find the closure they need.”

Staff writer Jason Green contributed to this report. Contact Robert Salonga at 408-920-5002. Follow him at Twitter.com/robertsalonga.