Victim Six

Chapter Eleven

April 9, afternoon

Bremerton

The car sped along the back roads of Kitsap County, faster than it should. The driver didn’t care. Speed on a slippery pavement only ratcheted up the excitement of the hunt. It was as if what he sought to do weren’t dangerous enough. It wasn’t enough of a rush without the added risk of being stopped by a cop and assuming the affect of a concerned driver pulled over for a routine traffic stop-and not the look of a killer about to be apprehended. That, he was sure, would never happen as long as he paid attention to the rules.

He got on Highway 16 at Tremont Avenue and drove toward Bremerton. He slowed the vehicle in Gorst, the little burg at the tip of Sinclair Inlet. Gorst was always a possibility for what he had in mind. A topless bar and an espresso stand with baristas in pink leather hot pants was the chief draw for those who just might fit what he was looking for.

Something a little different. A little dangerous. Something pretty.

Nothing caught his eye. No need to brake, just keep going. Around the inlet and the off-ramp that led traffic past the row of Navy destroyers, aircraft carriers, and assorted ships awaiting their turn in the scrap heap. It was known as the Mothball Fleet-or, by those who disdained all things military, “tax dollars at work.”

It amused him how Bremerton, a decaying Navy town always on the cusp of a renaissance, had never been able to shake the vestiges of seedy tattoo parlors, hookers on the stroll, and druggies lurking in the garages of three-story parking lots. Half-million-dollar condos along a revamped waterfront and a horde of fine restaurants did little to ease the reality that places might change, but people’s habits don’t.

Except for some daydreaming, he’d never hunted in the place that, out of the entire Kitsap Peninsula, afforded the most chance for success.

The ferry landing was like raw bait swirling in a bucket and cast overboard. It was surefire. It attracted both people with a place to go and those who had no schedule, no clue, no interest in anything but loitering.

Or maybe scoring some heroin or the warm mouth of a hooker.

Before the enormous steel-hulled car ferries were deployed to shuttle people from one side of Puget Sound to the other, a veritable swarm of wooden steamers plowed the cold blue waters. The flotilla, aptly and lovingly called the Mosquito Fleet, had long since gone by the wayside in favor of so-called “superferries.” Yet, Port Orchard, a town that never really got the hang of redevelopment, held on to the good idea that had come and gone. The old wooden Carlisle II served as a link from Port Orchard’s ferry landing to Bremerton ’s just across Sinclair Inlet.

It was afternoon, and Sunday’s second shift of shipyard commuters had long since gone to work. The boat was empty, save for Midnight Cassava and a couple of beleaguered out-of-towners heading over to walk the deck of the USS Turner Joy, a retired navy destroyer that had been playing host to tourists and war buffs for more than a decade.

“You know of any good places to eat?” a ruddy-faced fellow with gold chains coiled in the neck of his shirt asked her.

Midnight smiled. “I wish I did.” She latched on to the disappointed look on the visitor’s face. “Kidding. If you like seafood, try Anthony’s. A little pricey but good. There’s also a great Belgian beer and fry place not far from the ferry landing.”

The man smiled and then looked over at his wife. “A beer sounds good…”

“In a couple of hours it might,” snapped the tall woman with close-cropped silver hair that was either stylish or unflattering; Midnight couldn’t be sure.

As she looked out across the water pondering her future, tide lines of flotsam and jetsam arced along the steely, flat surface. She knew the job she was doing was a young woman’s game and she had responsibilities.

Soon she’d start over.

Midnight Cassava had spent part of the day riding the boat back and forth from Seattle to Bremerton. She was a slim woman, with olive skin, a full mouth, and eyes that were skilled at never registering much interest in anything. Or anyone. She was twenty-seven on her birth certificate, but the miles on her life’s odometer put her closer to forty. She didn’t like to work late at night: Feeling the chill of the air between her legs in some man’s car was far from a pleasant experience. She’d thought that those days of “lingering and loitering” were behind her. She thought she could score the money she needed by using Craigslist to troll for johns. That, however, was before her computer was stolen and her drug habit escalated. Her plans for becoming a dental assistant or a lawyer had vanished. Midnight wanted out. Anything would do. Even a shipyard clerk’s position, a job she planned to interview for, would be fine. Until then, she was merely hoping to get through the day.

Working the Washington State Ferries system was a tough gig, but with a little one at home, Midnight needed to be able to turn a trick, get off the boat, feed Tasha, and get back to work. The two-hour ferry ride back and forth worked into a schedule that she could manage.

Morning runs from Seattle to Bremerton were useless for her particular endeavor. Most of the men and women (Midnight would perform a sex act with a woman on rare occasions, and preferred it to having sex with men: it was less invasive) were in too much of a hurry to get to where they were headed. They had jobs to get to. Meetings to prep for. No one was in the mood for sex. That was fine. Midnight liked to sleep in as late as Tasha allowed her. She usually started up the ramp to the car deck around 4 P.M. That ensured she’d catch a couple of blue-collar guys looking for a blow job in the bathroom. She even had a regular, a physician who had a Lexus with black tinted windows. He’d invite her down to his car, and they’d have “around the world” in the backseat. With the noise of the ferry’s enormous engines a perfect cover, the doctor would cut loose with the most vile epithets that a woman could ever hear. But he paid well, never coming up short like some of the others who “swore” they had another fifty, but could produce only a twenty-dollar bill.

Midnight hung around the magazine and newspaper rack near the bathrooms. The racks were filled with brochures and flyers for getaways and activities that targeted the interests of the out-of-state traveler. There were also scads of publications with names like Coastal Homes and Saltwater Residences advertising the good life. Midnight sat across from the racks at a table bolted to the floor, prison-cafeteria style. The tops of her breasts and her pretty eyes were her calling card. She had the kind of emotional intellect that could determine who wanted to look and who wanted to touch. She laughed about it with her girlfriends.

“To get a guy, all you have to do is look at his package, then flick your eyes to theirs,” she said. “And bam! If they look back at you, you’ve got a shot.”

She’d give a nod, and the fellow with the lustful look in his eyes would slip into the bathroom. Making certain the room was empty, she’d follow. The stall next to the urinal trough was ideal. The engines below rumbled as they churned the water, obscuring the muffled moans of pleasure. She’d shut the door, turn the lock, and go to work.

Her friends asked her how it was that the ferry crew, the skipper in particular, didn’t bust her or at the very least kick her off the boat, but she just laughed.

“Who do you think Tasha’s daddy is?”

That evening, work done, Midnight sat on a bench on the plaza near the ferry landing and watched a fountain that she thought spurted water like ejaculate: one pulse, then another, weaker one. She put on a pair of walking shoes and slipped the pumps she wore for most of her “shift” back into her oversize purse.

“You look lonely,” a man’s voice said.

“You look horny,” she shot back, after a quick check of his crotch.

“I might be.”

“You might be a horny cop too. Are you a cop?”

“Nope.”

“Then Midnight just might be able to take care of your problem.”

The man flashed a smile, his teeth white and straight. He was clean-cut, and even from five feet away she could smell his cologne. He wasn’t some dirty, trashy john.

“My car’s over there,” he said, indicating the parkade.

“All right,” she said, glancing at her watch. A half hour until the last ferry took workers from Bremerton to Port Orchard. “Let’s get going. I have things do to.”

He showed that big white smile again. “Me too.”

Darrin Jones had answered service calls for Otis Elevators for twenty-seven years. It was a business, he unfailingly said whenever anyone inquired about the work he did, that had its “ups and downs.”

The Monday morning he was called out to the Bremerton parkade was cool and breezy, with a band of silver clouds heading over the Olympics and on their way to bump into the Cascades. The parkade job was considered a low priority, as there were adequate stairways and reasonable access for disabled drivers on the first level. The call that the elevator had been jammed was ten hours old.

Darrin pulled into the parkade, disturbing a couple of crows that had found the confines of the concrete structure, invited by its debris field of fast-food leavings. He parked his gray panel truck in front of the elevator and looked at his wristwatch. He’d made good enough time that he could kick back and smoke before getting to work, despite signs posted that admonished him not to light up. On the seat next to him was a folder holding the details of a Caribbean cruise that he and his wife, Lynnette, were scheduled to take the following Monday, the day he officially kicked off his retirement.

Five workdays to freedom!

Another car pulled in and drove up to the next level as he crushed out his cigarette and made his way toward the elevator doors. He noticed a thin brown smear two thirds of the way down at the point where the facing doors met one another.

People are pigs, he thought.

For a second his mind flashed on his retirement and how dealing with anyone he didn’t want to bother with was almost over.

Darrin pushed the button, but the elevator didn’t respond. He checked the fuse box around the corner.

Looks good. Damn thing’s just jammed.

And then Darrin did what anyone in his position would do, despite hundreds of hours of training and being told that a “machine should never be forced” by the operator. He punched a slot-head screwdriver between the door gaskets and worked it like a lever. It was jammed, but not so much that he couldn’t wrestle it open as he’d done a thousand times before. He widened his stance, tucked his fingers into the opening, and grunted.

The doors slowly moved, but the second he could see inside, Darrin Jones wished he’d bailed on that service call.

The floor had a spray of blood.

“Holy shit,” he said under his breath.

He knew that he was required to call the police whenever there was anything suspicious to report. Company policy was precise on it. But he also knew that a call to the police would mean irritating discussion and paperwork.

I’m going to the Caribbean, he thought. Lynnette and I don’t deserve this.

Darrin looked around. It was quiet. He went back to his van and retrieved some rags and a canister of cleaning fluid. He hated the company. He hated the people who pissed, defecated, or bled in his elevators.

He wasn’t going to call it in, and he sure wasn’t going to miss the rum punch he’d been dreaming about.

Chapter Twelve

April 10, 9 a.m.

Port Orchard

Evil can lodge in the psyche like a Partridge Family song that catches a clock radio listener off guard as they wake from a night of steady slumber. The words that spewed from the man who’d called Serenity to detail what he claimed he’d done to the dead woman in the bay were like that. She replayed his words as she showered, brushed her teeth, and dressed in her work uniform: a pair of black jeans and a white sweater. She grabbed her notebook, purse, and car keys. She skipped breakfast, not feeling hungry.

She had a million more questions for the man, and she half hoped he’d call again, although the thought of it made her empty stomach turn. She wondered why he’d called her instead of another reporter for a bigger paper. The timbre of his voice had resonated in a strange way too. It wasn’t that he had an accent or anything distinguishable; it was kind of an average voice. Slightly mechanical, maybe.

Charlie Keller met her by the office door.

“I asked Josh Anderson to come up,” he said.

Serenity rolled her eyes. “Great, Charlie. He’s always hitting on me.”

Charlie lowered his voice as he led her into the conference room, “You’ll be sorry the day dirty old men don’t hit on you. But you’re too young to know that right now.”

Josh was already ensconced in the boardroom/interview room. He had a Seahawks mug of burned-on-the-bottom-of-the-pot newsroom coffee and a rolled-up copy of the Seattle Times.

“No mention of any missing girl,” he said, thumping the paper on the back of a chair.

“Maybe no one knows she’s missing,” Serenity said, taking a seat across from the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office detective. He was handsome, confident. Maybe a little too cocky, she thought. Her eyes landed on his open shirt collar, and she wondered why he felt compelled to expose that tuft of slightly graying chest hair.

“Charlie says you got a nasty crank call,” he said, eyeing her.

She nodded at the understatement. The call had been nasty indeed.

“If it was a crank,” she said.

“Tell the detective what he said to you.” Charlie fished a powdered donut from a box that Serenity suspected was left over from the day before, when the ad staff had brought in the fried pastries to kick off their “Donut Make Sense to Advertise” promotion. White confectioner’s sugar drifted like snow onto his robin’s-egg-blue tie, but Charlie didn’t appear to notice.

“Look,” she said, “I’m really not comfortable relaying all of the disgusting things that creep said to me.”

“I can take it,” Josh said. His tone was breezy, almost tauntingly so.

Serenity let out a sigh. “Of course you can.”

“Tell him,” Charlie finally said, dusting the sugar from his tie.

She took out her notepad and hurled what that man had said to her across the table.

Sex toy.

Kitchen rolling pin.

Duct tape.

Wire restraints.

Slice ’n dice.

The last one caught the detective’s attention.

“Sounds like a commercial on late-night cable.”

“Yeah, if your channel is Hell TV. Seriously, Detective Anderson -”

“Call me Josh,” he said.

He was hitting on her again. Charlie winked at Serenity-at least, she thought he had.

“Okay. Josh,” she said. “The man was a freak and enjoyed every minute of the call. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was masturbating while he talked.”

“That wouldn’t surprise me, either. Get his number?”

“Do you mean did I write it down so I could call him back for more of his vile talk?”

Josh narrowed his brow. He seemed to almost enjoy making her squirm a little. “No, that’s not what I mean. On your cell phone. Did you capture his number?”

“He called my landline. And no, there was no number. ‘Private caller’ was the designation that came up.”

Serenity picked at a cinnamon twist but determined it was beyond stale. Almost petrified, she thought.

“Did you notice anything about his voice-anything that might help ID him? You know, while the conversation is fresh.”

Serenity thought for a moment while the two men looked on. “His voice was odd.”

“Odd?” Josh asked.

“Yes. Kind of bland.”

The detective pressed her for details. “Old or young?”

She studied him with a prolonged stare, in a manner that was meant to show she was doing so. “Old. About your age.”

Charlie reached for another donut, an attempt to mitigate the tension in the room-or simply because those donuts were pretty tasty. Sugar and all.

Josh’s face with a little red, but he tried not to let on that the insult had struck a nerve.

Almost immediately, Serenity amended her answer.

“I didn’t mean that he was an old man like you,” she said. “I mean mature. You know…someone middle-aged.”

Josh Anderson grinned. The pretty young reporter had challenged him a little, and he liked it. If she was a little sorry that she hurt his feelings, that meant that she was interested.

All the pretty girls were.

“Every time I do this, I sound like Mickey Mouse,” Melody said, setting down the voice changer while her husband impatiently looked on. “I just can’t do it.”

Sam took the device and moved the slide control, modulating timbre and pitch.

“You can. And you will,” he said. “It just takes practice. First time I did it, I thought I sounded like Darth Vader.” He pushed the headset back at her, and she took it.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll practice.” She dialed Sam’s cell number, and he answered.

“Hi,” she said.

“Slide the settings,” he said.

“Okay. Here I am.”

Her voice sounded unsure but more masculine. Not quite an automated digital tone but something less than human.

“Lower,” he said. “But just a bit-don’t overdo it, babe.”

Melody moved the control almost imperceptibly.

“How’s this?” she asked in a voice that sounded distinctly completely male.

“Love it,” he said. “Now, say what I want you to say.”

She looked down at some notes that she’d written to remind her just how she was supposed to play it.

“You’re a hot little bitch,” she said, hesitating.

“Tell her,” he said.

“I like that top you wore the other day. The one that showed off your body.”

He looked at her from across the room. One hand was in his pants; the other clamped the phone to his ear.

“Why are you doing this to me?” he asked.

“Because you deserve it, bitch,” she said.

“I’m going to hang up right now.”

“Hang up on me, bitch, and you die.”

He took his phone from his ear and motioned for her to come. Melody took off the headset and started toward him.

“Pull off your panties,” he said. “You’re a very good student, and you need a reward. I got something for you.”

Melody did what she was instructed. It wasn’t about being acquiescent or afraid. The fear just gave way to the thrill of what they did together. She didn’t think that what her husband was doing to her just then was any kind of a violation. It was a gift. She accepted him and whatever he put into her. She knew deep down what he wanted. He’d told her time and again.

“You’re an obedient bitch, but you’re not as pretty as she is. And I’ll bet she’s a whole lot more fun in bed.”

“All I want to do is please you,” she said, dropping to her knees.

“Then shut up and suck. You talk too much.”

Chapter Thirteen

April 13, 4 p.m.

Port Orchard

Donna Solomon did not fit the profile of a mother of a prostitute. She had never had any problems with men, drugs, or the law. To look at her was to see the very image of professionalism and personal accountability. At fifty-two, Donna worked as a charge nurse in the maternity ward of Harrison Medical Center in Bremerton, a job she’d held for more than fifteen years. She was a round presence with stick legs and a slight bulge around her tummy and a butt far bigger than she wanted. Heredity, she figured, thinking of her own mother and the scourge of a large buttocks and piano legs. She worked out four days a week at the Port Orchard Curves, doing a mild weight circuit and twenty-five minutes of cardio to Moby songs. Her butt was always going to be big, but she didn’t think it had to get any bigger. And yet despite all the things she tried to do to better herself-Curves, continuing education classes at Olympic College that had nothing to do with nursing and the New York Times crossword puzzle online every day-she had her hard luck too.

She divorced her husband, Zachary, after their adopted daughter, Marissa, put them through the wringer in ways that no parent could or should endure. Marissa had set a fire in the kitchen when she was six, run away from home at ten. By thirteen there was no more room for pretending that there was anything they could do to be the close family they had desired when they had brought her home in a private adoption from a Russian orphanage.

Donna Solomon rarely spoke of Marissa, although hospital administrators and other nurses at Harrison would happily have lent a sympathetic ear. When Marissa, who stopped using her given name in favor of Midnight Cassava, was arrested in a Bremerton Police Department prostitution sting at a local park, she was given her second chance. It turned out she wasn’t the target of the sting, but a Bremerton cop had been. Midnight was one of the chief witnesses in a case and ended up with a lightning-fast plea deal.

What should have been a gift was turned into a sense of invincibility. Midnight had convinced herself that she was able to do whatever she wanted. She continued working the streets, the ferry, wherever she could score a john, partying the money away and doing whatever it was she wanted. It was the ultimate F-U to her mother, of course. Donna accepted that the daughter she chose to love had abandoned her. She could not return any of the love she received. Everything was about money, blame, and the choices others made.

When Midnight was seven months pregnant, she showed up at the nurses’ station looking for her mother. It was the first time she’d been to the hospital since she was a teen and was determined, it had seemed, to make her mother’s life as miserable as possible. She had left with a physician’s bag of drug samples. No charges were pressed because Donna was able to retrieve the missing samples. Donna had been pulling strings for Marissa since the day they brought her home from the agency.

After Midnight’s return and the impending pregnancy, however, things started to change. It started with a few phone calls. Mother and daughter met for lunch a couple of times at a drive-through in Navy Yard City, on the edge of downtown Bremerton. By the time Tasha was born, her mother and grandmother had come to an understanding: if the little girl was to have any semblance of a home life, they’d have to work together.

Donna never knew who the father was, and understood that it was probably something her daughter didn’t know for sure. She told herself that it didn’t matter. No man was needed. She’d help out however she could, and she’d be there whenever Midnight needed her, no matter the conditions. The terms, as she eventually learned, were to watch the baby on weekends and after shifts-but only when asked.

“I’ll call you when I need you, Mother. Don’t think about interfering with my life or my daughter’s. As long as you get that, we’ll be fine.”

Donna didn’t argue. She knew that Midnight had no real job. The money that she used to pay for her apartment over one of Port Orchard’s downtown junk shops was from prostitution. Or maybe selling drugs. Whatever it was, it was bad news. Over the first few months of Tasha’s life, Donna could see a change in her troubled daughter, and she held out hope that someday things would work out after all.

Not only for the baby but for her own broken heart.

It was Tuesday, and Donna Solomon hadn’t heard from her daughter since Saturday. She knew the rules. She knew that trying to involve herself in Tasha’s life was a risk. Too much interest might feel like a hard shove to a daughter whose love she wanted more than anything.

After work, she parked her car in the lot behind the aptly named Pack Rat’s Hideaway and climbed the stairs to her daughter’s apartment and knocked.

No answer.

She pushed the bell.

Again, nothing.

She listened, and she could hear the sounds of a baby crying.

“Tasha?”

No answer.

“Marissa!”

A man wearing oil-soaked blue jeans and a red flannel shirt poked his head out of the apartment next door. His face was the picture of annoyance and anger, a pinched mouth and eyes that told Donna Solomon that a smart person wouldn’t mess with him.

“Can you tell that ho to keep her kid quiet?” he asked. “Jesus, some of us have real jobs and need to get some shuteye. The kid’s been crying all night. Day and night. I don’t give a shit about the day, but I don’t like putting up with some brat squawking when I need to get some sleep. I get up at four a.m. Kid’s going all night.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll tell her,” Donna said, defusing the man’s anger with complete understanding.

“You better. That’s what I say.”

“I will. I said so.”

“Fine. That bitch is a piece of work, you know.”

Donna shot the man a cold stare. “Yes, I know, sir. That bitch, as you call her, is my daughter.”

The man, slightly embarrassed, retreated into his apartment.

Donna tilted her head and listened as the sound of a cry emanated from inside the apartment.

“Marissa! Open up!”

She jiggled the doorknob. Locked.

The sound of the crying grew louder. With a surge of adrenaline-the type that turns a frightened mother or grandmother into Wonder Woman-Donna rammed her shoulder against the hollow-core door with such force she could feel the frame bend and break.

And she nearly dislocated her shoulder in the process.

“Marissa!”

Once inside, Donna hurried into the expected disorder of the living room. If Donna kept a spotless home, her long-troubled daughter was the opposite. Things were never filthy, but nothing was put where it ought to be. Magazines and clothes were piled up on the coffee table in front of the TV. A bouquet of wilting red roses sat on the TV next to a small framed photo of Tasha.

“Marissa?” Donna’s heart was thumping, and the pain in her shoulder nearly made her cry. Obviously something was very, very wrong. She hurried to the apartment’s sole bedroom, the one that Marissa shared with her daughter.

Tasha was standing in her crib. She’d somehow shredded her diaper and her little body was smeared with feces and her bedding soaked in urine. Seeing her grandmother, the little girl let out an even louder wail.

“Oh, baby, it’s all right. Grandma’s here.” Donna scooped up Tasha, shivering and crying. She didn’t think twice about how filthy the child was. She held her close. “It’ll be all right. It’ll be all right.”

She spun around the room dreading the bathroom, as it was the only place in the apartment where her daughter could be.

The door was open a crack, and she moved it open with her feet.

“Marissa, are you in here?”

But she wasn’t.

It was only her and Tasha. She grabbed a baby blanket and wrapped it around the crying baby. The stench was nearly overpowering. The white mattress cover was stained with a dark pool of urine, nearly the color of strong black tea. Tasha’s lips were dry and cracked. But despite her crying, no tears came to her eyes.

“Oh, my sweet baby, you’re dehydrated. How long have you been alone? Why did your mother leave you?”

She looked around for a bottle but found none. She went in to the kitchen and dampened a towel with tap water. She dabbed at Tasha’s dry lips, letting some moisture into her mouth.

“Marissa, what did you do? Marissa, where are you?”

She reached for her cell phone and dialed 911, first requesting an ambulance, then a police officer.

Josh Anderson responded to the call to the apartment above Pack Rat’s Hideaway, joining officers from the Port Orchard Police Department, who had the jurisdiction for the city limits. The city police and the Sheriff’s Office had a long history of cross-training and cooperation. Josh was on the roster to join in that Tuesday. By the time he arrived, child welfare caseworkers had already followed Tasha’s ambulance to the hospital. Donna Solomon didn’t fuss about it. She needed immediate medical assistance. If Donna hadn’t come when she had, the worst possible outcome would have been likely.

A day later, and Tasha might not have survived.

“My daughter has her problems,” she told the Kitsap County detective as they stood by his car in the parking lot off Bay Street, “but she wouldn’t leave Tasha for any real length of time-never long enough for the baby to be in jeopardy. Something has happened to her.”

Josh knew Marissa by reputation and rap sheet. Most local cops did.

“But your daughter does hang out with unsavory types, doesn’t she?”

Donna knew he was trying to be kind. He probably knew plenty about her daughter. The distraught mother and grandmother could appreciate his kindness, of course, but she wasn’t looking for that just then.

“You know very well that she does,” Donna finally said, her voice rising with more emotion than she wanted to reveal. “But it didn’t mean she isn’t a good mother-that she doesn’t love her child. She would never leave her for more than a minute or two.”

“Point made. Was the baby’s father involved in her life?”

It was clear just then that he knew what kind of life Marissa had. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have referred to the “baby’s father” he would have presumed that Marissa had a husband.

“Look, my daughter and I seldom talk about anything of importance, except for Tasha. Not for years. I don’t know who the ‘man in her life’ is, and she never told me. Frankly, I never asked.”

“Do you know who her friends are? Maybe someone who knows her better than you do?”

Donna had held it together pretty well. She’d been through tough times, the late-night phone calls from drug dealers demanding to know where Marissa had gone. But the truth hurt. She knew nothing much about her daughter. Nothing at all. A single tear rolled down her cheek, but she flicked it away so quickly she hoped that Josh Anderson hadn’t seen it.

“She might have been seeing someone,” Donna said. “I saw some flowers in a vase. She’s not the Better Homes & Gardens type to have fresh flowers from the market. But, as I’ve said, I don’t know my daughter very well. Really, you have to believe me: she loves her baby girl. I see the look in her eyes. I see the way she held her. She wouldn’t leave her.”

“I’m sorry,” Josh said. “We’ll do our best to find her.”

“Do you need me to make a statement or anything? You’re treating her as a missing person, right?”

“Yes, we are.”

“Fine. Then you’ll need this.” She reached into her purse, pulled out her wallet, and found a photograph. “This was taken three weeks ago. Look at that mother with her baby. Tell me…Tell me…” She stopped to compose herself. “You know that she loves her daughter.”

Josh looked at the photo. It was a color image printed at Wal-Mart. It showed Midnight Cassava, a.k.a. Marissa Solomon, with Tasha on her lap. They were sitting in a booth at a restaurant. The table had two plates of food. Two cups of coffee. One was positioned in front of Marissa and the baby. The other was in the immediate foreground.

“You take this shot?”

Donna shook her head.

Josh tapped his finger on the photograph, noting the obvious. “I guess your daughter has some friends,” he said. “Someone took this picture, right?”

Donna Solomon turned away. She knew nothing about any friends. She was happy, though, that Marissa had any at all. She wondered if being a mother had become too much and Marissa had run off somewhere, but she never said so. She thanked the detective and went with a Port Orchard police officer to give her official statement.

A half hour later, Josh found Kendall in her office.

“How’d it go downtown?”

“A lot of to-do about nothing. Hooker went on a bender or ran off. Feel sorry for her mom, though. Nice lady. Kids are so much work, and you never know what you’re going to get.”

Kendall turned her attention toward her computer screen.

“You’re right about that,” she said quietly.

The conference room suddenly felt very uncomfortable as Josh Anderson broached the subject of recording and running a tap on the phone calls Serenity was receiving from the supposed killer. He conceded that the calls might be untraceable, but it was an option on an investigative list that was short. Too short.

Charlie Keller, however, would have none of it.

“We believe in cooperation, but that’s a violation of our rights to gather news independently. We don’t want Big Brother looking over our shoulders.”

“We could get a court order,” Josh said.

“We’ll fight it,” Charlie said. “And we’ll win.”

Serenity looked at Kendall, but both stayed quiet.

“Maybe,” Josh said, raising his voice a little. “But if there is a serial killer at work around here, your paper will look like you don’t give a crap about anything but your precious rights.”

Charlie’s face was red and the veins in his neck, night crawlers. “They are pretty precious. In this day and age, there’s no doubt that the government has its fingers everywhere they want to be. Get your disgusting wiretap. Get your court order. We’re not saying yes to anything.”

He looked at Serenity, who appeared anxious as she took in her boss’s tirade. She moved her gaze from one person to the next.

“I’ll do whatever Charlie says,” she finally said. She knew that he’d been involved in the Zodiac case in San Francisco, at least on the periphery. The papers there had been used as a conduit for messages between the purported killer and the police. Ultimately, Serenity felt, everyone had looked bad because the case was never solved.

After Charlie and Serenity filed out, Josh turned and whispered in Kendall ’s ear.

“I’ll work on her. I’ll get her to agree.”

Two hours later, Josh showed up in Kendall ’s office carrying a paper Starbucks coffee cup. He had, apparently, gone out. He could be a selfish jerk at times, but usually office protocol dictated that anyone who went out specifically for lunch or coffee would make the rounds to see if anyone wanted something.

“The girl said she’d do it,” he said.

“What girl?”

“Serenity Hutchins said she’d let us run a tap on her line. She had one condition, and I agreed to it.”

Kendall set aside the meager case file and studied Josh.

“What agreement?”

“She doesn’t want her boss to know. He’s a freak about it. She’s scared. I said we’d do it.”

Kendall hesitated a minute. “When?”

“Tonight. That pervert said he’d call her tonight.”

Chapter Fourteen

April 13, 8 p.m.

Key Peninsula , Washington

As she prepared herself for an evening with her husband, Melody Castile climbed into the shower and let the water run over her body. She set aside a pink plastic razor and some shaving foam and spread her legs. While Sam called for her to hurry, she went about the business of shaving her most private areas.

Although, she knew, there was no privacy whatsoever.

It had started with small things.

Melody wore her hair shoulder length when she and Sam Castile first met. He complimented her on the color and style, saying that he’d never seen a woman’s hair with such a sheen.

“Like the sun is shining through you.”

Three months into their relationship, Melody decided to surprise him with a new look. She had her hair shorn. She thought the haircut was stylish, sophisticated.

Sam hit her. Hard. “You’re stupid, Melody. You looked so sexy and hot before. Now you look like some boring chick from Bremerton. Pop out some kids, get fat, and be nothing.”

His words hurt, and she never cut her hair again.

Six months into their relationship, Sam asked her to drop the rest of her life and move in with him. He’d bought some property down on the Key Peninsula and was going to build a house. They’d live in a travel trailer down there, with no running water, no cell phone service, and no power.

Melody told her family about it, making it sound as though she and Sam were going to be living off the land as they built their dream house.

“He wants to use the actual logs on the property. Isn’t that cool?” she asked, her eyes sparkling with excitement.

Serenity, still at home, caught the disapproving looks of her parents. No one really liked Sam or thought that he was a good match for Melody. Even before they married a full year later, the couple had completely fallen off the family grid. When Serenity was still in junior high, she and her parents drove out to the peninsula to see the new house. They waited in the unfinished living room on lawn furniture for about a half an hour before Melody emerged from the back bedroom. She was so pale and thin that her mother gasped.

“Honey,” she said, “are you all right?”

Melody looked at Sam. “I’m fine. Just tired. It’s a lot of work to get this place in order. We barely have time to eat and catch our breath around here.”

A moment later Sam started the tour, pointing out all that he’d done and chiding his bride for being “Miss Lazy” and not doing enough to help. Melody laughed it off, but Serenity thought that there was no real laughter behind her eyes.

The bedroom was dominated by an enormous four-poster made of alder logs that had been peeled and oiled to a tawny sheen. A stuffed grouse fluttered in a corner; a deer head hung over the back window-trophies testifying to a man’s hobby. Serenity caught her mother’s eyes riveted to the headboard where two large steel hooks had been sunk into the wood and oily leather straps dangled. Everyone noticed the hooks, but no one remarked on them.

After the tour, Melody served ice tea and sandwiches. The conversation was a bit strained, and then at exactly 2 P.M. she stood up and thanked everyone for coming.

“I have chores to do now. So you’ll all have to go.”

“We’ve only been here an hour,” her mother said.

“And we’ve enjoyed every minute,” Sam said. “But Mel’s right. We’ve got things to do, and we have to get them done.”

Serenity went to embrace her sister good-bye, but Melody pulled back slightly. She’d never been much of a hugger, but it was a cold reaction that seemed in keeping with this strange afternoon visit.

“Something’s going on there,” she said in the car as they began driving home.

“The only question I have,” her mother said, “is why in the world anyone would want to live all the way out here in the middle of nowhere. It seems so remote.”

Her husband leaned his head out the window as he backed up, not wanting to hit a pile of lumber crowding the dirt driveway.

“Bingo. You’ve got the reason.”

For the next two nights, Kendall, Josh, and a tech named Porter Jones showed up in Serenity’s Mariner’s Glen apartment. They’d set up a feed that ran the phone through a listening and recording device. Of course, a tap could have been set up off location, but that would require a judge and there’d be a lot more heat about “freedom” of the press. Serenity didn’t seem to care about that right then. While she wanted to advance her career, she wanted to prove that the voice she was hearing was not some kook, but the voice of a killer.

A telemarketer called twice.

Josh looked at her. “You know, you can get on a ‘do not call’ list.”

“Thanks for the tip,” she said.

“Serenity,” Kendall said, “are you sure you’re getting calls on this line?”

Serenity’s eyes went cold. “Yes, I’m sure.”

“That’s what she says,” Josh cut in.

Kendall let out a sigh, but held her tongue. It was interesting that Serenity would have some new blog post or article just about every other day. Where was her source? Why hadn’t he called?

If he was real at all.

Kendall got up to take a break from the huddle around the dinette table. She stepped over the sleeping tabby cat, Mr. Smith, through the living room to the apartment’s sole bathroom. Next to the sink, she noticed an open shaving kit. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that Serenity Hutchins probably had a boyfriend.

“I didn’t know you were seeing someone,” Kendall said. “The shaving kit.”

Serenity barely looked at her.

“That’s my dad’s,” she said. “He stayed over last week.”

Chapter Fifteen

April 18, 11:15 a.m.

Port Orchard

It was a crystalline morning without the fog that had coated Sunnyslope for the past several days. Certainly the mist burned off by the early afternoon, but for morning people like Trevor Jones, the muslin shroud over the woods was a complete and undeniable downer. He longed for his home in the Midwest, where most mornings-no matter the season-started with a sky patched with blue. It seemed that when it wasn’t raining in the Northwest, it was foggy. At least on his days off. He threw a leg over his mountain bike, called for his Labrador, Cindy, and went for a ride. He thought he’d pedal through Sunnyslope, toward the Bremerton Airport, then maybe as far as Belfair, a town along the southern shores of Hood Canal. Cindy would see him only as far as the end of the driveway: The invisible fencing collar that she wore had reminded her that, as much as she’d like to go with Trevor, she had to stop.

“Sorry about the force field, Cindy!” Trevor said as he spun out toward the road.

The dog looked forlornly at him and then turned around.

“Good girl!”

Trevor had twenty bucks in his wallet, a bottle of water, and the conviction that at twenty-nine he was still allowed to take the time for a Saturday ride. He put in long hours in the metal shop at the shipyard, and outside of tipping back a few beers on Friday nights and video games during the week, this was the extent of his fun. His wife, Crystal, was back in their tidy home, sewing a top that she intended to wear to a luncheon at the Central Kitsap School District office, where she worked as an aide.

Trevor pedaled toward the entrance to the woods, then turned down a pathway that looped through part of the forest before joining the road near the airport. His heart was pumping as he went up a little rise, his wheels cutting into the coffee-black soil, his iPod on shuffle mode. He stopped to catch his breath at the top of the rise and took a drink of water. A breeze fanned the beads of sweat on his face.

He noticed a tangle of long dark hair draped over some old deadfall and assumed that horseback riders had been through the area.

As he took another sip, his eyes returned to the clump of hair. It was shiny and fine.

Too fine for horsehair.

He got off his bike to get a closer look.

It was a considerable clump, maybe fifty strands. It looked remarkable not only for its silkiness but also for the violence with which it had been removed. It was held together on one end by what looked like small patch of skin.

Jesus, he thought, recalling the article about the missing brush picker, Celesta Delgado, who had been featured in this latest edition of the newspaper. That brush picker must have been attacked by a bear. I’m getting the hell out of here.

But before he did, he took out his cell phone and punched in three digits: 9-1-1.

Kendall Stark looked down at the tuft of hair on the steel table in the center of Kitsap County ’s mini crime lab, a cinderblock-walled room that had the vibe of a sinister high school chemistry lab. The lab, with both rudimentary and sophisticated forensic science equipment, was the central location where all evidence was processed. On the far wall was an old aquarium used for superglue testing for latent fingerprints; black and infrared lights that could pinpoint the location of blood or semen on a garment; and a series of images that showed various blood-spatter configurations. In the event that something required more refined analysis, it was dispatched to the labs operated by the state in Olympia or even to the FBI.

Kendall turned the clump of hair with her latex-gloved fingertip and reached for a tape measure. The strands were fifteen inches long and held together by a tag of human skin that had dried to pliable leather. Human Naugahyde. She rotated the sample once more under the flat overhead light.

“That the bicyclist even found this is a bit of a miracle,” Josh said, entering the room. “Has he been checked out?”

“He’s clean. Just sharp-eyed,” Kendall said.

“Our dogs turned up nothing more? Just this?”

“That’s right,” she answered. “Nothing else.”

She put the sample into a clear plastic envelope and fixed a bar-coded sticker with a name and case number to the bottom edge of the packet.

“Off to Olympia,” she said. The state lab was already running a DNA test against samples recovered from Celesta Delgado’s hairbrush and toothbrush.

“Must have been a knock-down, drag-out there in the woods. You know, a place so remote no one could hear her scream,” Josh said as he followed Kendall into the hallway.

“At least two people must have heard her scream,” she said. “Celesta and her abductor.”

She was right, of course.

Where was Celesta Delgado?

“Call for you, Serenity. On two.”

Serenity Hutchins nodded at Miranda Jacobs, who commanded the phones outside the editor’s and sales director’s offices for all it was worth. Miranda, who never knew a day when a low-cut top and short skirt weren’t appropriate for the office, was the gatekeeper, the story fielder, the person with the heads-up on anything worth buying out of the Lighthouse’s classified section before it even found its way into the paper.

Serenity set down her coffee and answered the blinking light on her office desk phone. She pressed the earpiece to her ear by lifting her shoulder.

“Article’s a little thin on the facts,” came a husky voice over the line.

“Most are,” she said. “Which one are you talking about?”

There was a short silence. The caller moved something over the mouthpiece, sending a static crackle sound into Serenity’s ear.

“The one about the brush picker.” Another silence. Another muffled noise.

Serenity let out a sigh. She’d been a reporter long enough to know that readers always expected more than deadlines sometimes allowed. It wasn’t as if there was any real information in the article, at least not anything that she could have really screwed up.

“Can I help you?” she finally asked.

“No, you can help yourself.” The tone was unpleasantly cold.

“How’s that?” she asked. “Did I make an error in the story?”

“Not an error of the kind you’re probably imagining. An error of omission, that’s all.”

Serenity could feel her blood pump a little. “Just who is this, please?”

A slight hiss, then: “I’m the one who could tell you everything that happened to her.”

His words came at her with the unmistakable air of authority, and they jolted her a little. Everything. That. Happened. To. Her.

Serenity looked around the room, trying to catch eye contact with someone-anyone. Miranda Jacobs had her face glued to her computer screen. No one else was in the newsroom.

“You’re an asshole to make a crank call like this. And I don’t care if you’re a subscriber.”

The voice on the phone laughed. “Oh, I’m not, Serenity. I’m a fan of your work. I just think you could use a little more depth in your reporting. Maybe I could tell you what happened. Like I did the other night.”

Serenity banged her stapler on her desk and finally caught Miranda’s eyes. She got up from her computer and started toward the young reporter.

“Who are you?”

“One who could tell you everything,” he said.

Her face was flushed by then. “Then start talking. Tell me what you think I should know.”

But the line went dead.

“Hello? You still there, creep?”

Miranda was standing in front of Serenity’s desk by then. “What was that all about? Are you okay? Did that guy say something awful to you?”

Serenity shook her head. “It was that crank caller. Said he knew more about the missing brush picker out in Sunnyslope.”

Miranda searched Serenity’s eyes. “You sure he was that crank?” she asked. “You look scared.”

Serenity relaxed a little and set down her phone. “Just a little unnerved. Did he call in on the eight hundred line?”

Miranda nodded. “Afraid so. Creepy and cheap.”

Calls coming through on the toll-free line were untraceable on the phone console’s ID.

“I wish those guys who get their rocks off calling in to the paper with bullshit theories about things would just get a life.”

“Did he have a theory on the girl?”

Serenity shrugged. “I think so. He said he could tell me everything.”

“Everything that was in the paper, I’ll bet. And, sorry, but you know there wasn’t much in there. No offense.”

Serenity hated Miranda a little more just then. The Lighthouse wasn’t the Washington Post, but she didn’t have to rub it in. She worked there too, for goodness sakes.

“Maybe you should tell the Sheriff’s Office?” Miranda suggested.

Serenity thought about it for a moment. “I suppose I could, but I really don’t have anything to tell them. We all get crazy calls.”

“That’s the truth.”

Miranda went back to answering the phone.

Outside of Gleeson’s Grocery, one of those locals-only mini-marts that was Key Center ’s primary gathering place, was a bulletin board. Before the Internet and even before the local paper started a Key section, the bulletin board had been the primary vehicle for yard boys filling in the long days of summer, loggers looking for extra work as homeowners sought to improve their views of slate-gray Puget Sound, and house-cleaners in search of “mobile home or mansion” clients.

The boy and his father went past the bulletin board without so much as a sideways glance.

Inside, Gleeson’s was packed with DVDs on one wall, a “hot case” of fried foods on the other, and a small bin of produce, mostly of the kind that kept well: onions, potatoes, and head lettuce. The rest of the store was laid out like a bowling alley, with long, narrow lanes and shelves of canned goods on either side.

Dan Gleeson smiled at the man and the boy, a warm look of recognition on his face.

“Haven’t seen you in a blue moon.”

Sam Castile smiled. “Been a while. Nice to have some time off. Me and the boy are going out on the boat.”

“Weather’s been rough lately.”

“Yeah, it has.”

Dan looked at Max, who stood silently beside his father. “What can I get you? Turkey jerky? Healthy stuff, you know.”

Sam answered for Max. “Nope, we want the nastiest, greasiest corn dogs you’ve got rolling around that hot case of yours.” He looked at his boy; the kid was smiling ear to ear.

A girl behind the cash register rang up the sale as the store owner handed over a couple of corn dogs and packets of yellow mustard.

The man’s eyes landed on the counter. Light-blue flyers were stacked next to a pink one that advertised a food drive at the fire station later that week.

“The girl’s dad brought those in. Said I’d hand them out. Posted one on the bulletin board too.”

Sam’s heartbeat quickened, but he didn’t show a trace of concern. “Never a dull moment around here.”

“You got that right.”

He took a flyer and promised to post it. The headline was in big handwritten letters:

Have You Seen Her?

“Look familiar?” Dan Gleeson asked.

Sam shrugged and started for the door, his son trotting after him with a mouthful of nearly incandescent yellow mustard and batter-dipped hotdog. “The young pretty ones all look alike to me.”

“That they do.”

As he got in his vehicle, he noticed the blue flyer on the bulletin board flapping in the chilly breeze off the water.

Have You Seen Her?

He had.

No matter what she told Josh Anderson or Charlie Keller, Serenity decided that it was in her best personal and professional interest to hold back one little tidbit of information from both detective and editor. She didn’t feel particularly great about the lack of disclosure, but the tradeoff seemed worth it somehow. The anonymous caller had confided a detail that was tantalizing for a young reporter hoping to make a name for herself-and looking to find a way out from this dead-end job. What he had revealed was etched in her memory.

“I popped my cherry on another girl,” he’d said.

Serenity, at home at her kitchen table with the TV playing in the background, set down her pen. Was it truth or lie? Exaggeration or fact? The caller was hard to read with complete certainty. His voice was husky, foggy.

“What do you mean ‘popped a cherry’?” she asked, although she was familiar with the expression meaning to lose one’s virginity. But this man hadn’t really been talking about sex: although he’d described what he’d done to the dead girl, it had been about violating her.

His pleasure, it was clear, was her pain. Her death was his orgasm.

“Done it before,” he’d said. “Will most likely keep doing it. Until I get it right, Ms. Hutchins.”

His words blasted a chill down her spine. He said her name, and it startled her. Of course, he’d sought her out, dialed her number. Wanted to tell her. Even so, that he had used her name to conclude the conversation seemed so personal.

Ms. Hutchins.

The pervert was slightly polite, which unnerved her even more.

Chapter Sixteen

April 19, 1:15 a.m.

South Colby

She was naked, running through the deep green of the forest. Overhead, she could see the contrails of a jet scratching the powder-blue sky. Could the people in the plane see her? She ran faster, her arms working like pistons as she propelled herself up an incline between a hemlock and a fir. Where to hide? Who could help her? Sweat oozed from her pores, and she ran faster and faster. Would she have a heart attack? Would she fall to the ground into the black mud, be sucked into the mire, lost forever? The woman was screaming as loud as she could, but it was for naught. There was no one to hear her screams. At one point she dared to look behind her, and she could see the form of a man rushing toward her.

“Help me! Help!”

“Babe, what is it?”

Kendall shot up in their bed; her husband had turned on the light and was putting his hand on her drenched shoulder.

“Oh,” she said, realizing where she was. Who she was. “Oh, Steven, it was so real.”

“A bad dream?”

She sat on the edge of the bed, looking out across the black waters of Yukon Harbor through the window, its antique glass rippling the view.

“Yes. I was running from someone.”

“You’re safe now.”

She blotted her face with the sleeve of her robe. “I know, but it was so real.”

“Just a dream,” he repeated.

Kendall knew he was correct, of course, but she didn’t tell him the part of the dream that seemed so troubling, so very disconcerting. It wasn’t that she was running from someone. She wasn’t herself in the dream at all. Kendall was sure that the woman in her dream was Celesta Delgado.

“I’m going to get some water,” she said, heading toward the door.

As the tap ran, Kendall thought of the woman she would never meet. Coworkers at Azteca adored her. The owner of the brush shed had not one single harsh word for the young woman. And, of course, Tulio Pena had insisted from the very beginning that something very dark had occurred that afternoon in the woods. The clump of hair all but confirmed it.

She drained her glass, set it next to the sink, and went back to the bedroom, stopping only for a moment to check on Cody. She wondered if her son’s mind ever conjured up such frightening images as she just had. Were his dreams empty, blank? Was autism a cocoon that kept a person buffered from the pain of the world around them?

Is it better to know fear, she asked herself as she pulled up the covers next to Steven, who was fast asleep, so that you can appreciate love and the safety of those around you?

In her job as a detective, Kendall had seen terror and its opposite over and over. She wasn’t sure if she had the answer to her own question.

The row of flowering cherry trees had dropped a blushing blanket of snowing petals on the ground outside the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office. Several cars circled the front of the building trying to find a place to park in response to TV reports that a Navy aircraft carrier was coming into Bremerton that morning. A small group of people, Kendall Stark among them, gathered to observe the ship as it came into view. She stood with coffee cup in hand, feeling rushed and tired at the same time. She wore tan slacks, a crisp white shirt, and an ice-blue sweater, her hair a little more spiked than she liked, given a night of slumber interrupted by the dream of the frightened young woman.

Later, Kendall would recall the dream, wondering if it had been something more than the workings of a mind trying to solve a problem.

Serenity Hutchins, clunky old newspaper-issue Nikon camera in hand, nodded at Kendall as their paths crossed in front of the Kitsap County Administration Building.

“Here to take some shots of the carrier?”

Serenity smiled. “That and whatever else they tell me to do. Jesus, I know Keller won’t run this story anyway-not if there’s some major breaking news about a missing llama in Olalla or something.”

Kendall retuned the smile. “Nice job on the Delgado story.”

“Thanks. Any update?”

Kendall shook her head. “I’ll let you know. But between you and me, nothing.”

“I got another call from the weirdo the other day, saying he knew something. I called Josh-Detective Anderson-about it.”

“I heard,” Kendall said. “I’m sorry that you’ve been getting those. It can be very upsetting. I know.”

Serenity slung the camera strap over her shoulder. “Our jobs are sort of alike in that regard, Detective.”

Kendall sipped her coffee as they walked toward the front door of the Sheriff’s Office building, pink petals swirling underfoot.

“You’re right. We both want the answers to the really hard questions, don’t we, Serenity?”

The reporter raised her camera to take a shot of the fading cherry blossoms.

“Yes. But in my case, I have to take on whatever my boss says is important.” She looked at her watch. “Like the new dry cleaner opening up on Bay Street. I can’t afford to dry-clean anything on my salary, but off I go.”

Serenity Hutchins was like any other person in Port Orchard, Kendall reflected: she was doing what she needed to until that big break came.

As Celesta Delgado had.

A few minutes after returning to her desk, Kendall ’s phone rang.

The caller identified himself as Bernardo Reardon, a detective with the Mason County Sheriff’s office. He prattled on for a few moments in the congenial way cops do before cutting to the chase.

“You might want to take a drive over here,” he said. “I think we might have found your missing brush picker. Or rather, what’s left of her.”

The last words pierced her heart.

What’s left of her.

“What makes you think it’s our missing woman?”

“Height, weight, age-it’s all good. Of course, it could be someone else, but if so, no one’s reported this lady missing.”

“I see. Decomp?”

“I’ve seen a lot worse. But like I said, come on over and take a peek. We’re about done with processing what we can.”

Kendall ’s eyes landed on the poster that the Kitsap Crime Stoppers had made, with its lovely photo of a beaming Celesta Delgado. It offered a one-thousand-dollar reward.

A life was worth more than a thousand dollars, she thought.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll see you in an hour.”

“Can’t wait,” the caller said.

She found Josh Anderson chatting with a young woman who worked logging evidence in the property room. She was laughing a little too loudly to be discussing business, so Kendall felt no compunction about interrupting.

“Ride out to Mason County with me?” she asked.

Josh turned away from the woman, and it was obvious that she was only too glad for the break in whatever story he was telling. She returned to the work she had been doing before Detective Anderson showed up.

“Sure. What’s up, Kendall?”

“Delgado.”

He studied her face. “Not so good, huh?”

Kendall shook her head. “I’m afraid not.”

Chapter Seventeen

April 20, 10:30 a.m.

Shelton , Washington

The Shelton, Washington, Chamber of Commerce likes to brag that the city of more than eight thousand is the “Christmas Tree Capital of the World.” In fact, the town has always been about trees, Christmas or otherwise; for a century, it exported logs and lumber, long before firs festooned with tinsel were thought of as a commodity.

The city is quintessential small-town Pacific Northwest, with past glories based on once-abundant natural resources now supporting attempts to coax tourist dollars. Every spring, the past is celebrated with the annual Forest Festival, with food booths, logrolling, and chain-saw competitions.

It was the festival that reminded the people that Shelton, Mason County, had been established on the southernmost edge of Puget Sound for a purpose. Smoke still curls from the Simpson Lumber Company’s mill. Old-timers and current employees take a deep breath whenever possible. They know the plume smells like house payments, new cars, and kids’ college educations.

The last time Kendall Stark had been to Shelton was the previous January, when she attended a candlelight vigil for a little girl who’d been raped and murdered by her neighbor, a registered sex offender still at large. Kendall had gone with her sister and some friends, not because they knew the little girl, but because her story had been so heart wrenching that they simply couldn’t stay away. She came in her street clothes, of course. She didn’t want to attract attention; she just wanted to hold one of those cheap, drippy candles to tell the world that Rikki Jasper would not be forgotten. Kendall remembered how she’d looked at the crowd and wondered if the perpetrator was among them.

Thoughts, she was sure, that also consumed the law enforcement officers who oversaw the case.

Kendall parked the SUV in a visitor’s spot in front of Mason General Hospital on Mountain View Drive, the city’s hospital and morgue. Moments later, after a receptionist buzzed him, Detective Bernardo Reardon came for the Kitsap County homicide investigators. He was a tall, thin man, with a Fu Manchu mustache and dark plum-pit eyes. He smiled broadly as he walked toward the sitting area, where Kendall and Josh had been waiting on some upholstered chairs next to a dying philodendron and a surly receptionist who was busy chewing out her boyfriend.

“Look,” the receptionist was saying, oblivious to her visitors, “there are plenty of other fish to fry around here…”

Bernardo rolled his eyes. “Welcome to Mason General Hospital and our morgue. Come on back,” he said, and they followed him to a private room where friends and family waited to identify the deceased. It was stark and empty, and smelled of alcohol-based cleaner.

He motioned for the pair to sit, and tapped his fingertips on his file folder.

“The vic was found by some birdwatchers at the Theler Wetlands,” he began.

The Mary E. Theler wetlands were at the head of Hood Canal, an elbow of salt water that protruded into the rugged interior of Kitsap, Mason, and Jefferson counties. A favorite of day-trippers and bird-watchers, the saltwater marsh just outside Belfair was traversed with a web of elevated boardwalks. Kendall, Steven, and Cody had been there several times, with Cody tucked snugly into his father’s backpack, back when nature walks seemed to hold his interest. Sun on his face. Birds in the water. The movement of the reeds along the shore.

It was a lovely place to visit, and, apparently, to dump a body. At least, a killer thought so.

“We’ve got a touch of decomp going, so be ready for that,” he said, looking mostly at Kendall. “I can still smell her from here. Anyhow, she matches the description of your missing brush picker. Pathologist has already swabbed and examined for trace, but like I said, she’s a mess.”

Josh jangled the change in his pocket, a habit that he had whenever he was bored or a little anxious. “Sounds good. Where do you guys break for lunch around here?” he asked, more concerned about his stomach than the dead girl they were about to see.

Kendall shot him a look, but he deflected it by mouthing, “Low blood sugar.”

“Logger’s Bar and Grill is always good,” Bernardo said, opening the door to the morgue.

He handed the Kitsap detectives face masks but wasn’t fast enough. The scent of the dead surged forward, and Kendall felt her stomach stir. She shot a cold stare in Josh’s direction.

“How could anyone even think about lunch? Now or ever?”

Reardon responded first: “Detectives, one word of warning: our victim has no hands.”

The dead woman had been laid out in a dark blue body bag, which was split open like an oven-roasting bag to keep the putrid juices from spilling out onto the table, and to the floor. Long dark hair curled around her face and the nape of her neck. Even in that condition, it was clear that the victim had once been a pretty young woman. Her eyes were half-open, seemingly staring upward at the fluorescent lights overhead.

Kendall thought of her dream of the woman running through the darkened forest the night before. What had the woman seen before she ended up on that table, so far from home?

Bernardo peeled back the edge of the plastic body bag obscuring the victim’s arms.

“The other one’s the same,” he said, indicating where her hand had been excised from her wrist.

“Looks pretty clean,” Josh said, bending closer to get a better view. “That’s what the pathologist said. No hesitation with the cut here. This wasn’t some mad, frenzied stab job, but a clean cut.”

Kendall didn’t dare turn away, although it passed through her mind that no one should have to see whatever the monster had done to the woman she knew had to be Celesta. She didn’t use her name. It seemed easier to call her “the victim” or “the body” when the trio went about their business.

“Can I see the victim’s other arm too?” she asked, her voice slightly muffled through the mask.

“Suit yourself,” Bernardo said, walking around to the other side of the table. “Just as ugly.”

“Did your pathologist indicate if the victim was alive when this injury was incurred?”

The clinical talk was the best. Kendall plucked the words out of a textbook when she really wanted to say “Did she suffer?” or “Did the sick, twisted piece of garbage who did this to her do it after he killed her?”

“Postmortem. Almost a hundred percent sure.”

The answer brought a little relief.

“Did you find the hands?” Josh asked, stepping closer to get a better view of the injuries to the body.

“Nope. And believe you me, we looked. Don’t want some kid feeding a bag of day-old bread to some ducks to turn up a finger or something.”

“When you say your pathologist indicated no hesitation, are you suggesting someone with unusual skill?” Kendall asked.

“Hunter, butcher, surgeon. You know, the kind of people who know how to move a blade.”

Kendall looked over at Josh. “Logger or maybe brush cutter?”

Detective Reardon shrugged. “Could be. But one twisted perv, for sure.”

Josh spoke next. “Any other injuries?”

“Pathologist says the girl was likely raped and tortured. Vaginal and anal tearing. Some ligatures on the ankles too. Hard to say about the wrists, for obvious reasons.” He indicated a crescent of darkened skin on the body’s right breast.

“Looks like some damage inflicted on the vic’s breasts,” he said, pointing. “Almost a perfect half circle, like a big hickey.”

Kendall felt a wave of nausea work its way from her stomach, but she steadied herself.

“How long has she been dead?”

“A week, maybe less.”

“Celesta Delgado,” Kendall said, finally saying her name, “has been missing for more than a week.”

Josh broke his gaze at the corpse and looked at Kendall.

“Maybe she was kept somewhere?”

Chapter Eighteen

April 20, 1:30 p.m.

Shelton , Washington

Word traveled fast. Alarmingly so. Tulio Pena stood outside the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office smoking the stub of his last cigarette. The second he saw Kendall Stark, he dropped it and twisted the butt into the sidewalk.

“Detective Stark,” he said, “was it Celesta? I heard they found someone, a woman’s body.” He was shaking and wrapped his arms around his torso, steadying himself.

Preparing for the worst.

Kendall shook her head. “No, Tulio. We don’t know anything.”

“The reporter called me. She says it was Celesta.”

“We don’t know who Mason County found. We’ll have to run tests.”

His black eyes were wet. “I want to see her. To make sure.”

She moved closer and put her hand on Tulio’s sagging shoulder. “Look, I know you’re hurting. But trust me, please, you don’t want to do that.”

“Trust you?” he repeated. “Trust you? I trusted that you’d find Celesta.”

Kendall ignored the blame in his anguished voice. “Tulio, go home. I will call you when we know something.”

“Detective, please. Please, if it is her, promise you will find out who did this. You will find him, right?”

Kendall wanted to give him the answer that he deserved, that all loved ones do. She wanted to tell Tulio that she would do whatever she could. She wasn’t alone in her desire to figure out what had happened. The Mason County Sheriff’s Office was working the case too. There was no way of knowing where exactly the crime had been committed, let alone by whom. Josh had insisted it was a turf war between rival brush pickers and that Celesta was a casualty. The missing hands bolstered his theory. Kendall, however, wasn’t so sure. While it was possible that Celesta had been sexually violated as a part of some ritualistic torture, it seemed unlikely.

“Whoever tortured her and cut off her hands did it because he enjoyed it. Rape and that kind of behavior are incongruent with your idea that she was killed over a bunch of floral greens. Get real.” she’d said to Josh.

Josh Anderson hadn’t argued, because he had no convincing counterpoint. Instead, he’d just dismissed what had happened out in Sunnyslope on that warm afternoon.

“Whoever did it has moved on to harvest somewhere else. They don’t have a green card. They don’t leave a trail. They just fade into the woods. That’s what happened with whoever killed Delgado.”

It passed through her thoughts, but Kendall didn’t want to say it aloud. At least not to Josh Anderson. By the time Celesta’s body had been found in the Theler Wetlands, she already doubted busboy Scott Sawyer’s story of trouble between Tulio and Celesta. And yet, there had been the purported threat. If Celesta ever touched another man, Scott said, Tulio would make her pay. Kendall had talked with others at the restaurant, friends of both, and none thought Tulio would ever hurt Celesta. He was incapable of harming her in any way, let alone mutilating the body in such a grotesque manner.

As spring gave way to summer, a flotilla of boats gathered in Sinclair Inlet, and beach fires on the shores of Bainbridge Island sent a spray of orange light across the water. Summertime in Kitsap County was a mix of hot days tempered by rain on the occasions that most often count: Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day.

There were no more calls to Serenity from the man who’d proclaimed the vilest of pastimes. Charlie Keller had told her to keep on the story, but there was nothing more to do unless there was some kind of break. Midnight Cassava’s case went ignored, the assumption made by Port Orchard and Kitsap County law enforcement being that she’d run away. A third jurisdiction, the Bremerton Police, filed a report about a bloodied purse being found near the Parkade.

No one said much more about Celesta.

Except Tulio. He and the others who wanted to know what had happened out in the woods leveled charges of class and racial bias.

“If she were a white girl,” Tulio said in one of his weekly visits to Kendall or Josh at the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office, “you’d know who did this to her.”

Kendall was offended by the remark and told him so.

“Look, Tulio, don’t ever say that to me. I want to know what happened to her as much as you do. I don’t care if she’s from El Salvador or Seattle.”

Tulio balled up his fists as though he was going to pound the desk, but thought better of it. He relaxed his hand. “Then why haven’t you caught who did this?”

Kendall didn’t want to tell him that her partner still believed Tulio had killed his girlfriend.

“Sometimes these things take time. We’ll find out.”

“If you don’t, then I will,” he said.

Kendall didn’t know exactly what Tulio meant, so she didn’t push as hard as she might.

“We’ll do our job. Leave it to us.”

Chapter Nineteen

September 18, 8:45 a.m.

Port Orchard

Serenity Hutchins looked at the newroom’s old clock and let out a sigh. It was almost 9 A.M. She glanced around to make sure no one noticed her overt boredom, especially since only a single hour of the workday had passed. She checked her notes, hoping that there was something stimulating there, something that didn’t require a jolt of caffeine to get her going. There wasn’t. She had a half hour to finish her story on the delay of the road improvements that the city of Port Orchard had promised to downtown merchants in time for the holiday shopping season.

She faced her computer screen head-on and tried to come up with a headline for her article. Then she typed:

County Shortfall Means Grinchy Holiday

It seemed a little over-the-top, but in her job as a reporter, writing humorous or subversive headlines was one of the few things with which she could amuse herself. Sometimes she slipped in a little inside joke. Now and then she purposely misspelled the name of an individual who’d rubbed her the wrong way.

“Sorry, sir,” she’d recently said to an angry man she’d tussled with at a community meeting, “I have no idea how that happened.”

The man’s first name was Bob, not Boob, of course.

“I have an idea,” he said, irritated and puffing into his phone on the other end of the line. “I don’t like your attitude. I’d like to talk to your editor.”

“It was an unfortunate typo,” she said, loving every minute, her fingertip hovering over the button of her editor’s extension. “Transferring you to the boss now.”

She didn’t wait for his response: she just clicked, and away he went. Mission accomplished.

Charlie Keller liked her, and she knew it. He’d chide her but back her up. He always did; he was that kind of editor. Once, after a heated confrontation with a churchgoer who objected to the paper’s coverage of a South Kitsap High club for teen moms, he famously told his staff, “Newspapers would be a great business if we didn’t have readers to consider.”

Serenity didn’t want to go to the county animal shelter to do an article on the dog or cat of the week. She didn’t want to stop by St. Vincent de Paul on Bay Street to find a heartwarming story that showcased the “caring nature of our community.” Growing up she’d read so many thousands of stories in the Lighthouse that she had scarcely given a thought to the fact that real people had to compile that information. Tedious facts. Boring. So mundane and appearing so regularly, Serenity wondered if they could just retype the same old papers and send them out the door.

From her desk, she watched Charlie set down the phone. The editor in chief was wearing his hopelessly out-of-date brown wide-wale cords and a cream-colored turtleneck that molded to his beefy chest. Unflattering as it was, it was his fall look.

He looked more excited than angry when he glanced over the newsroom. Good. Bob, or Boob, hadn’t made him mad. He fixed his eyes on the two other reporters. One was playing solitaire on her PC, and the other was struggling with the school lunch menu: apparently, it changed just enough from week to week that it could not be cut and pasted. It had to be retyped, word for word.

“Get your butt over to Little Clam Bay out by Manchester,” he said, approaching Serenity. “Some kids found a floater.”

Her phone buzzed with a text message, and she looked distracted.

“A body, Hutchins,” Charlie said, his eyes studying hers, seeing the glimmer of excitement that bad news always elicited in die-hard reporters. “A dead girl.”

She glanced at her phone. “Going now,” she said, taking her rust-colored cardigan draped over the back of her chair, her purse, a reporter’s notebook from the office supply cabinet, and her camera. Her heart started to beat a little faster with each step. She’d heard the term floater before, of course, but the very idea that there could be a dead body bobbing in the waters of Little Clam Bay seemed-she hated herself a tiny bit for the thought-too good to be true.

Nothing ever happens here, she thought. Except maybe today.

Serenity took a cigarette from her grandmother’s antique case and lit up as she dodged a few light raindrops in the parking lot. Her new boyfriend smoked, so she had taken up the habit in self-defense: to protect herself from the ashtray-kiss syndrome.

She noticed she’d left on the lights of her black 1999 Toyota Tercel, a temperamental car if ever there was one. She’d dubbed it “ Hiroshima ’s Revenge.”

You better start! We’ve got a floater today!

She turned the key, a slow grind, and then…success!

Her phone vibrated with the unanswered text message.

DEAD GIRL LITTLE CLAM BAY.

Seven miles out of town, the Little Clam Bay neighborhood was a Northwest crazy quilt of housing. Expensive custom homes were perched on the water’s edge and backfilled with double-wide trailers skirted in plywood and kept dry with a patchwork of blue and silver plastic tarps. The bay was a narrow little inlet the shape of a shepherd’s hook that reached in from Puget Sound and jutted through a cedar- and fir-trimmed landscape. At high tide it was a body of blue dotted with floating rafts, docks, and seagulls. On the flip side of the tidal schedule, the bay drained nearly dry. In summer, with the sun bearing down on the soggy bay bottom, the neighborhood smelled of rotting fish, seaweed, and the garbage that had been sucked in through the narrow channel and left scattered on the muddy floor. Sometimes careless boaters dumped garbage overboard in Puget Sound, and if their deposits hit the currents just so, Little Clam Bay, with its sluggish water flow, became a saltwater dump.

On the morning of September 18, Devon Taylor and Brady Waite decided that they’d skip school rather than force themselves through another state-required language assessment test conducted at Sedgwick Junior High. At fourteen, Brady and Devon were on the edge of trouble whenever the mood struck, which was often. It was nothing big-mostly skipping school and acting out in class when they bothered to slide behind back-row desks. They’d smoked some pot now and then and tried coke once, but ultimately the pair preferred video games and skateboarding to drugs.

Girls were also of great interest, but neither had plucked up the courage to ask one out.

They’d set up a kind of private clubhouse at Devon’s, in a garden shed on the Taylors ’ lawn, which undulated down to the water’s slimy edge. While they waited for Devon’s mom to leave for her nursing administrator’s job at the naval hospital in Bremerton, they smoked a couple of cigars they’d stolen from Brady’s stepfather’s secret stash.

“Even if I get in trouble for taking his stogies,” Brady said between hacking coughs, “my mom won’t be too mad. He’s not supposed to smoke anyway.”

“Your mom’s a bitch,” Devon said.

Brady’s eyes puddled, and he let the smoke curl from his lips.

“Everyone’s mom is a bitch. That’s just the way it is, dude.”

Devon didn’t argue. “Speaking of moms. I wish mine would get her ass out the door. Cold out here this morning.”

“Yeah, it is.” Brady looked out the greenhouse window at the water. “Does this swamp ever freeze up?”

“It isn’t a swamp, though it smells like one half the time. Only around the edges and not very much. Maybe froze twice since my dad moved us to Port Zero from Tacoma.”

Brady seldom mentioned his father, and Devon took the opportunity to pounce on the subject.

“Ever hear from him?” he asked.

Brady took another puff before answering. “He calls Mom and she puts me on with him, but I can tell he’s only talking to me because he has to. He doesn’t give a shit about me.”

“My dad’s an asshole, but I guess having him around is better than nothing,” Devon said.

Brady filled his mouth with more smoke and held it a second before attempting a smoke ring.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right, dude,” he said.

A beat later, the boys turned in the direction of the sound of a car’s ignition turning over.

“Finally!” Brady said. “She’s leaving. Let’s go inside.”

Devon flipped the latch on the door to the garden shed, sending a layer of smoky air outside. He looked over at Brady-alarm had suddenly filled his eyes.

“Jesus, someone is going to see the smoke.”

Brady ignored his friend; his eyes stayed fixed on Little Clam Bay.

“You sick or something?” When he didn’t answer right away, Devon followed his best friend’s sight line to the water. “What is it?”

Brady didn’t say so, but he wished right then that he hadn’t skipped school that day. He pointed at the water.

Devon ’s eyes widened. “Jesus, is that what I think it is?”

The boys walked closer, stepping on the frosty planks of the dock, their white and red Skechers slipping a little under their feet. Devon let his cigar fall into the water, making a sizzling sound as its hot cherry tip went black.

“We better call 911,” Brady said.

Devon tugged at his buddy’s hooded sweatshirt. “We’re going to be in big trouble, you know.”

“No shit.”

“Maybe we should just pretend we didn’t see it and just go inside and watch TV or something.”

Brady shook his head. “But we did. And we have to tell.”

His buddy was correct. In a morning of doing all the wrong things, they had to do what was right.

Chapter Twenty

September 18, 9:02 a.m.

Port Orchard

Kendall Stark has just eased into her preferred parking slot-close to the overhang that kept renegade smokers from the Sheriff’s Office and jail dry during the long drippy Northwest autumns and winters, when she saw Josh Anderson grind out a cigarette and approach. He had his cell phone stuck to his ear. The morning had been a difficult one, following one of Cody’s restless nights. After a week in his new school, there were doubts that he was adjusting, and she and Steven argued over it. Cody, who usually did not betray emotion, was always aware when his parents were at odds. Words or tears were not the barometer of trouble in the Stark family. A night without sleep was.

Cody, what do we do? How do we help you? she’d asked over and over inside her head as she sat in his room, by his bedside.

She rolled down her window.

“Some kids found a dead body in Little Clam Bay,” Josh said. “Female, they think. Didn’t want to get too close. Body’s still out in the water. Coroner’s en route.”

“Nice way to start the day, Josh,” she said, realizing that any hope for a better morning had been jettisoned.

“For the kids or us?”

“I was thinking of the woman,” she said.

“Well, the kid who called CENCOM was crying. Worried not only about the body but about the fact that he’d skipped school today.”

“Nice,” she said. “That’ll teach him a lesson.”

“Take your car?” he asked. “Mine’s in the shop again. BMWs are so damn touchy.”

“Get in,” she said. Josh never missed an opportunity to remind someone-anyone-that he drove an expensive car. Expensive, but always in the shop or the detail center. Josh Anderson practically needed a bus pass to get to work.

Kendall unlocked the passenger door and scooted aside some papers from Cody’s school, and Josh slid inside. He immediately cracked the window to let the air come in and suck away the condensation. Kendall always seemed to keep the inside too warm for his liking.

“Hey,” he said. “Did I say good morning?”

Kendall glanced at him as she backed out and turned onto Sidney Avenue. Rain pecked at the windshield, and she turned the wipers to the intermittent setting. “If we’ve got a dead woman, I’d say the morning’s not so good,” she said.

“You’re right.” His tone was utterly unconvincing.

Kendall Stark wasn’t one of the detectives who got an adrenaline rush from the news of death. She’d tracked killers before. Catching them was the rush. Never the pursuit. And never the start of a case. The beginning of a case only seemed to remind her how fragile life was and how, in an instant of someone’s choosing, it could all be taken away. She felt awash with sadness. Not Josh, though. He was nearly giddy. Kendall had seen that look on his face before. It was as if real life kicked in and stirred him only when it came with a measure of tragedy.

“Jesus, Josh, you don’t have to be so happy about this.”

He looked at her but avoided her eyes.

“Not happy. Just ready to get a little action going. We could use some around here. A homicide gets my juices flowing. Been boring around here all summer.”

If she hadn’t been driving, Kendall would have slapped him just then. “You don’t even know if it’s a homicide.”

“It is.”

“How can you be so sure without even seeing the body?”

“Because we’ve had no reports of anyone falling off a boat or off a dock. The only floaters we ever have in Puget Sound are drunk swimmers or kids who were left unattended. We know about those. This isn’t the season for that. If the floater fell off a boat, someone would have called it in. She’s a murder vic. Betcha a beer.”

Kendall didn’t bet.

“We’ll see,” she said.

In a very real way, the boys, the sheriff’s detectives, and the dead body were bound forever. The five of them would always be connected by what had transpired that morning. Forever. In the summers when he would finally have a girlfriend, Devon would lie out on the dock and think of the dead body. Whenever Brady came over, they’d probably relive the morning they found it. Kendall would never drive by Little Clam Bay without recalling what had been discovered there.

Even Josh Anderson would point it out to those he sought to impress-a lover or even a young officer.

A van with a deputy from the Kitsap County Coroner’s Office pulled in behind them and started to unload with the kind of speed that might have indicated a rescue rather than a recovery effort.

“You’re the police, right?” Devon asked Kendall and Josh after they’d parked in the driveway. “The 911 operator said for us to stay put until you got here. Are we in trouble?”

Brady spoke before either detective could answer.

“We’re supposed to be in school,” he stammered, although it was unclear whether it was due to the chill in the air or the dire circumstances of their meeting.

“We leave that to your folks,” Josh said as he watched a diver emerge from the black waters of the glassy bay. “You boys sit tight for a second, all right?”

“Where?” Devon said.

“Just stay here.”

“Yes, sir. Will do,” Brady said. The boys took a seat on a metal garden bench.

Kendall retrieved a pair of rubber boots from the back of her SUV and bent down to fasten them.

“Shoes are going to get ruined,” she said, drawing her gaze down the wet lawn and glancing back at Anderson ’s black leather lace-ups.

He shrugged. “No kidding. I might have to expense them. They’re almost new too.”

Kendall doubted that. Josh was many things, but despite his oversized ego and reputation as God’s gift to women, he was no trendsetter. He’d worn the same pair of shoes for the past two years. However, he never missed a chance to fatten his wallet at the county’s expense.

A shiny red Volvo lurched into the driveway, and Belinda Taylor scurried from the car to the water’s edge.

“What’s happening here?” she called out. She was a tall woman clad in a Burberry raincoat and leather boots that sank into the damp lawn like a gardener’s aerating tool.

Step. Squish. Pull. Step. Squish. Pull.

“Mom!”

“Don’t ‘Mom’ me!” she said. “You are so grounded for skipping school!”

She turned to Kendall. “What’s going on here? The boys are truant. They’re not felons. What gives with the entire Sheriff’s Office camped out on my front yard?”

“Mrs. Taylor,” Kendall said, “I’m afraid the boys have made a frightening discovery.”

She looked over to where Josh Anderson was crouched next to a body. Ms. Taylor instantly knew what she was seeing, even at fifty yards away. She worked in a hospital. She’d seen her share of stiffs, though not in her own backyard.

“They found a body floating in the bay,” Kendall said.

Belinda Taylor’s face went a shade paler. She reached for her son and pulled him close. Ordinarily, with his best friend present, Devon would have resisted. Right then, despite his age, a little motherly reassurance felt pretty good.

“Mom, I’m sorry we skipped school.”

“Ms. Taylor, it was my idea,” Brady said.

She shook her head. “That’s not important. What’s important is that you need to tell the detective what you boys saw. We’ll deal with the other issue later.”

A black Tercel in need of a new muffler pulled in behind the coroner’s van. The detectives looked up and offered a slight nod to Serenity Hutchins as she stepped out of her car.

“The reporter is here,” Josh said, letting out an exasperated sigh. “I’ll handle her.”

Kendall made a face. “Be nice.”

Serenity started toward them, but Josh intercepted her before she got close enough to see what was going on.

The teens told Kendall that they had no idea who the victim was. In fact, they were a little embarrassed to admit they really hadn’t gotten close enough to see her features clearly.

“It kind of creeped us out,” Devon said.

“Big-time,” Brady said.

Even if they had found the courage to get a closer view, it was apparent to everyone within ten feet of the body that there was one major obstacle.

The victim had no face.

Kendall made a few notes and looked back at Josh and Serenity, who were still talking.

Jeesh, she thought, we’ve got a dead woman down here. Can’t you give a quick quote and tell the reporter to back off?

She left the boys and Ms. Taylor and joined a pair of coroner’s assistants as they hoisted the corpse into a body bag.

The woman was about twenty. She was white, with small hands and thin ankles. She wore no shoes. Her blue jeans were tiger-striped on the crotch, markedly visible even with the fabric sodden with seawater. Too perfect to be the casual striping of an expensive pair of jeans that had been crafted to look old. She wore a pale green top that had been carelessly buttoned: the top button had been fastened to the hole in the second position. The blouse was cotton and had absorbed blood in two patches aligned with the dead woman’s breasts. A cursory examination of the body indicated nothing out of the ordinary that might help ID her quickly. No special jewelry. No tattoos were visible. No purse and no wallet.

No nothing.

Whoever the young woman was, whatever she’d been in life, it would be up to an autopsy to tell her story.

“Tell Dr. Waterman I’ll be around for the autopsy in the morning,” Kendall said to one of the assistants. Dr. Waterman’s place was the county morgue.

“Jesus,” Josh said, “and I was beginning to think our dry spell would last into the holidays.”

The summer had only brought one other murder: a Port Orchard teenager had been stabbed by his brother over a twenty-dollar bill. Before that was the springtime murder of Celesta Delgado, the Salvadoran brush picker who had apparently been killed by a rival over salal and huckleberry.

“Yeah,” Kendall said, “you were wishing yesterday for something other than a gun or drug case. Looks like your prayers have been answered.”

Chapter Twenty-one

September 18, noon

South of Port Orchard

The drive from Little Clam Bay took longer than the trip there. The county evidently had some money in its coffers, because a couple of flaggers in orange vests were planted on Little Clam Bay Road as a yellow backhoe prepared to cut into the ditch. A row of twenty-four-inch drainpipes sat on a flatbed truck parked off to the side; at least, it was supposed to be off to the side. It jutted out into the roadway just enough to turn a two-lane into a one-lane.

Kendall rolled down her window and addressed the flagger, a woman of about twenty.

“Can’t we just scoot by? I think I can make it.”

“Sorry, but no. Yesterday’s rain did a number on the shoulder. Be about five minutes, max.”

Kendall pushed the button to raise her window. Rain had sprayed over her left side. As the car idled, she looked over at Josh, who was lamenting his ruined shoes and how he was sure to catch a cold. He’d unlaced his shoes in an effort to speed up the drying process.

“Turn the heat up, will you?”

Kendall obliged.

“She looked young,” she said. “Maybe a teenager.”

“The flagger?”

“The victim,” she said, knowing that he was just playing with her.

“Yeah. She was.”

“What do you make of the boys, Josh?”

“Young and dumb and full of…you know the rest,” he said. “Just unlucky enough to skip school and more scared that their parents would find out they’d been smoking cigars than they were about getting in trouble for cutting class.”

“ Devon made a big point of saying that we’d find his DNA on the cigar he dropped in the bay.” The flagger waved them on, and Kendall put the car in gear. “Maybe she was a student at their school,” she said.

“Doubtful. They go to junior high. That girl looked older. But we can check it out. Let’s get back and run the missing-persons database and see what pops up.”

“I’ll be surprised if she’s from around here,” Kendall said.

“Why’s that?”

“Because she looked like a girl who’d be missed, that’s why. The people around here call us if their kids are an hour late from the movies.”

A sly grin broke out over his face. “That they do.”

Kendall nodded without remarking.

“Let’s run by Sedgwick,” Josh said. “We ought to check out the boys’ story, and it’s on the way.”

John Sedgwick Junior High was one of those immense edifices that looked authoritative and utilitarian at the same time. Its chief bits of architectural interest were the four pillars that flanked the front of the building: they were massive tubes of painted concrete. That was it. Form, no style. When Kendall Stark and Josh Anderson made their way toward the front door, a kid called out.

“You here about the dead body?”

Kendall turned toward the voice. It came from a skateboarder in low-slung black jeans, a blue hoodie, and a chain that went from, presumably, his wallet to his belt loop. He had dark blue eyes and the faint tracings of a mustache that he’d obviously been nurturing to look older, and maybe a little tougher. She recognized Matt Gordon despite his attempt at facial hair.

Josh looked at Kendall. “You know that kid?”

“Shoplifter, but not a good one.”

“Officer Stark,” the teen said, “we all know.”

She didn’t correct him by pointing out that she now carried a detective’s shield.

“How’s that?”

Without saying a word, Matt Gordon poked at the keys on his phone and held it out.

On his iPhone screen was an image of the tragic scene they’d just left at Little Clam Bay. Kendall noted the time stamp: twenty minutes before the Sheriff’s Office had been notified.

“ Devon and Brady need a lesson on priorities,” she said to Josh.

“Huh? Brady blasted it out this morning,” Matt said. “Let me show you another.” The kid was grinning nervously now. Kendall had cut him some slack on the shoplifting case, and he was trying to be a good citizen. “Here.”

This time it was a photo of Kendall and Josh leaning over the body.

“That’s how I knew it was you and why you were coming, Officer Stark.”

“Any more out there?” she asked, her tone flat to mask her anger.

“He texted everyone that he was putting up an animated slide show on his MySpace later. Kind of cool that someone died around here, and we can watch how you solve the case. Like CSI. My mom loves that show.”

Jesus, what’s with these kids around here? Is everything a joke? she thought.

“Thanks, Matt. And by the way, it isn’t cool that someone died around here. This is very serious and sad business. I’d appreciate it if you’d remind people of that. Okay?”

“Yes, Deputy. Will do.”

Josh spoke up. “It’s Detective Stark. She’s a detective now. Not a deputy.”

Kendall suppressed a smile. It was the first time that Josh had done that. For a man who was a relentless self-promoter, he simply didn’t believe in building up someone else, because if someone was his equal, it diminished him.

She turned to the boy. “By the way, I’ll need your phone.”

The Kitsap County detectives went past the hideous cement pillars and into the administrative offices, where they had a brief conversation with the school’s assistant principal, a nervous man with caterpillar eyebrows who was about to consume a limp chef’s salad. It was doubtful that anything but an inquiry from the Sheriff’s Office could have interrupted the meal.

Gil Fontana set down his plastic fork and verified that Devon and Brady were decent students, not overly prone to mischief.

“Those two are harmless,” Gil said, “given what we deal with around here.” He looked down at the contents of an open file folder to refresh a memory that couldn’t possibly have held any real awareness of those boys: there were hundreds like them at the school. “Let’s see, they’ve skipped school only twice before and never have been the subject of any major disciplinary action.”

“Any female students reported missing in the past few days?” Kendall asked, looking past Gil as he fidgeted in his leather office chair. A poster on the wall indicated that John Sedgwick Junior High “celebrated” tolerance, diversity, and sensitivity.

“No female students missing. A few out sick, but junior high girls take advantage of their cramps to miss school.”

Kendall thought of saying something like “cramps” were no laughing matter for a young girl and that he needed to rethink a few things.

The poster caught her eye again.

“I see that you celebrate sensitivity here,” she said.

Gil plastered on a smile. “That’s right. The state requires it.”

Kendall stood. “Good. Too bad it has to be required. By the way, you’ve got a problem here, Mr. Fontana. A young woman’s death is not something to be celebrated on MySpace or Facebook or Twitter, for goodness sake. Those boys-who you seem to feel are no problem-have some serious issues.”

The assistant principal’s face turned scarlet. “What are you getting at, Detective?”

“Aren’t you concerned that they broadcasted a photo of a dead body to everybody in this school?”

Josh followed Kendall to the door. He didn’t say a word, but he clearly was loving the exchange.

“These are the times we live in,” he said, a discernible smirk on his face.

Kendall masked her anger with a smile. “At least I doubt you’d want the school to be known for that kind of thing. Am I right?”

“What was that all about?” Josh asked as they got back in Kendall ’s car.

“Seriously? You don’t think the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket? It’s like a school full of sociopaths.”

“I guess so,” he said. “I never thought of it that way.”

“Well, you should. How would you like it if someone took a photo of your son like that and sent it around for a bunch of gawkers?”

“I wouldn’t. You’re right, Kendall. I wouldn’t at all.”

Serenity Hutchins slid back behind her computer. Charlie Keller was stomping around the office like a beat reporter in one of those 1940s movies that glorified the “scoop.” She wondered for a minute if her boss could possibly be that old. Her archrival, Joy-whom she called “Joyless” behind her back-was fuming in the corner that she was stuck doing that season’s “Fall into Halloween” Web blitz, an assignment that reeked of getting under the covers with advertisers. The paper’s copyrighted Spooky McGee character, a pumpkin-headed seagull, implored shoppers to head for the sad little mall at the base of Mile Hill Road. Joy was stuck with coming up with content to support the program.

She had already used BUOYS AND GULLFRIENDS, HEAD OVER TO THE MALL as a headline, and she wanted to die.

Joy looked up, her face contorted in an unattractive grimace. “Serenity, you need any help?”

“No, thanks, I’ve got it handled. Besides, you’re up to your neck in work yourself.”

Joy sighed. “Not what I thought I’d be doing when I graduated from journalism school,” she said.

Charlie’s deep voice boomed from across the newsroom. “We all have to start somewhere.”

But we don’t have to end up here. Like you, Serenity thought, but didn’t say it.

“How’s the dead girl story?” he asked, now at her desk. “This is front-page, Hutchins. And as you know, we don’t get a lot of front-page stories around here.”

Serenity didn’t say so, but it troubled her that her mood had shifted from boredom to the rush of excitement that came with the discovery of the dead woman in Little Clam Bay.

“I’m on it. Nothing much yet.”

She’d tried to get the detectives to tell her something about the case. Was it even a homicide or just a boating accident? No one would say. She talked to the boys and their mothers for about ten minutes, but there really wasn’t much she could write about that. She stared at the empty window of her computer screen.

“We want to lead with the dead body,” Charlie said, now hovering. She could feel his hot coffee breath on the back of her neck.

“Figured that,” she said. She half expected him to give her some kind of lecture about how things were done “back in the day.” She liked Charlie all right. He was smart, was an excellent writer, and seemed compassionate enough. But he didn’t seem to get the irony that he’d landed a final gig at a paper that was one step above a shopper.

“It’ll be short. I took some photos of the kids who found her, but I didn’t get much out of them. The detectives-Stark and Anderson-gave me the brush-off, pending the coroner’s report. We might not have much in the way of any real info. No who, what, why, anyway.”

“Okay. Do your best. I need it in an hour.”

Serenity dialed Detective Anderson’s number, but it went to voice mail.

“Detective, it’s me, Serenity. I need whatever you’ve got. Keller’s riding me hard right now. Let me know something, okay? Call me on my cell. You’ve got the number.”

Serenity looked at her computer screen. The story for tomorrow’s front page was thin, but what more could she really say? She had agreed not to identify the boys. The detectives had given her next to nothing. A body was found. That was it. The subject was so tragic, there was no room for clever wordplay in the text. She had to stick with the facts.

Body Found Floating in Little Clam Bay

Two local boys found the body of an unidentified young woman floating on Little Clam Bay yesterday morning. The boys, both 14, were skipping school when they made the grisly discovery in the water fronting 1527 Shoreline Road.

“We weren’t sure if what we were seeing was really a dead person,” one of the boys said. “She was out there floating. It was pretty random that we discovered her. We, you know, shouldn’t have been there.”

Neither the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office nor the coroner’s office had any immediate comment.

After dropping the file into a folder on the server, Serenity swiveled in her chair and got up to leave. She decided she’d head across town to the Sheriff’s Office to find out what she could. More than anything, she hated being ignored.

What did it take to get a decent story around Port Orchard, anyway? She asked herself.

Later, the admonition “be careful for what you wish for” would come to mind and haunt her dreams.

Chapter Twenty-two

September 19, 10:15 a.m.

Port Orchard

The house at 704 Sidney Avenue had a history both mundane and macabre. It was a place that passersby and drivers skirted past, disinterested. Certainly, in its eight decades of existence it played out a thousand family dramas and joys. Most places that old have. Babies were born. Kids went to school. Teens went to the proms. Memories were made.

All of the things that make a house a living thing had transpired there.

Yet, this place was a little different. There was a touch of strangeness and darkness about the house as well.

One time in the 1990s, a woman who stopped by the house and spoke to the present occupants told a tale of her mother’s suffering with cancer.

“Dad couldn’t stand her constant crying all night,” said the visitor, who had once lived there. “So we set her up in a tent in the front yard. Dad put her out there so he could get some sleep. Seems a little cruel now when I think of it. But back then, it was a good solution.”

Not surprisingly, others who lived there reported that the house with an obscuring tree that had been lovingly planted by the first owners had a weird, sad vibe. Most who felt it did so only after learning that the place was the final stopping point for the dead of Kitsap County.

The house adjacent to the Sheriff’s Office back parking lot was the Kitsap County Morgue. It is doubtful that any other morgue in America was quite as homey.

The coroner’s offices were upstairs in what had been a dining room, living room, two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen with a battered blue linoleum floor. Throughout the house, with its coved ceilings, pale gray paint, and thick-cut moldings, were the remnants of the dead. The staff stored formaldehyde-soaked tidbits of people in plastic bags set in large plastic tubs like the ones families use to store Christmas decorations. A built-in nook held teeth and a floating finger in small jars. Each body part was a clue to the unthinkable things that people did to each other. Despite the accoutrements of death, the upstairs was a staid, quiet office. Phones were answered, mail sorted, budgets balanced. If things were a little disordered, it was because the space was so small.

And body parts took up a lot of space.

Downstairs, however, was where the work that leaves a Rorschach pattern in crimson on a pristine white lab coat was done every time a stiff rolled in on a gurney. Early in the morning after the Little Clam Bay body was found, forensic pathologist Birdy Waterman put on her scrubs in the small dressing area in the converted garage that was a most unlikely autopsy suite. She checked the body logbook on a table next to a chiller that held six bodies at the time. It had only been full once or twice in the county’s history. While a couple of hundred bodies were autopsied every year, they were dispatched to funeral homes-mostly for cremation-within twenty-four hours of their arrival on Sidney Avenue.

“Move ’em in and move ’em out” was a phrase favored by the county coroner, an affable fellow named Kent Stewart who’d been elected to the position for a dozen years. He was more than an elected glad-hander. He was also a skilled manager of an ever-shrinking budget. The day before the dead body from Little Clam Bay had come in, Kent purchased four new office chairs from Boeing’s surplus store south of Seattle. The total cost was $28.

If Kent Stewart was the “face” of the coroner’s office, Birdy Waterman, a forensic pathologist, was the chief cook and bottle washer. Her hands were on everything. That was fine too. Kent only occasionally came downstairs to see what was happening in the morgue-mostly in the summer, when a decomposing body sent a stench up through the floorboards.

“Downstairs is your domain,” he said time after time. “Call me if you need me.”

With the exception of days that started with an autopsy, Kendall Stark never wore jeans to work. That morning as Steven organized Cody’s things for school, she packed an overnight bag. She moved around their bedroom, silently, gathering up a pair of slacks and sweater that she could wear while Dr. Waterman completed her examination.

Steven emerged from the bathroom and looked at the bag she’d filled.

“I was going to tell you to have a nice day,” he said, thinking better of it.

She pressed her lips into a slight smile. It was meant to acknowledge his support.

“I could barely sleep last night,” she said. “All I could think about was that dead young woman.”

“I know,” he said. He stepped closer and looked into her eyes as he held her hands.

“That’s what makes you good at your job, Kendall. You give a shit. Not everyone does. Some people sleepwalk through their lives, never really noticing why they’re here.”

She knew he was right, but she also wondered if he was talking about his own work. He’d been down about it, telling her not long ago that he “hadn’t dreamed of this life, this job” when he was a little boy. She’d tried to support him by reminding him that he was so good at selling ads.

“A trained chimp with half a personality could do what I do,” he’d shot back. His demeanor was slightly sardonic, but not so much that Kendall could be sure just how he really felt. She was left to wonder. When Steven talked about his disappointments in life, was he talking about her? About Cody?

She picked up her overnight bag.

“When I think of why I’m here,” she said, “I know it’s to help people, to bring the lost back home.”

Steven kissed her and playfully touched her hair. “You’ll find out what happened to the girl,” he said.

She didn’t say how she felt about Celesta Delgado and how she’d failed to find her killer. Mason and Kitsap counties postured over who owned the case: the jurisdiction in which she had gone missing or the one where her body was found. She didn’t tell Steven that she’d had an encounter with Tulio Pena at the Albertsons supermarket on Mile Hill and how he’d accused her of not caring, of giving up.

“I’ll do my best,” she said. “See you tonight.”

Chapter Twenty-three

September 21, 9:30 a.m.

Port Orchard

Birdy Waterman looked up as the frosted-glass door swung open.

“Morning, Detective,” she said, as Kendall let herself inside.

“Sorry I’m late,” Kendall said taking off her jacket and hanging it on a hook near the logbook.

“You’re not late. Just in time, in fact.” Birdy rolled on a pair of gloves. She looked at the overnight bag. “Oh, goody. Why didn’t you tell me we were having another sleepover?”

Kendall smiled back. “A surprise,” she said.

“Where’s Anderson?”

“Good question, Doctor. He said he might be late, so I waited for him at the office. Never showed up.”

Kendall went into the small dressing room and put on a set of scrubs, emerging a few moments later to ask the question that had haunted her after seeing the body.

“What happened to her face?”

She stopped a few paces behind the pathologist as Birdy unlatched the enormous refrigerator and rolled out a sheet-covered corpse to a space on the far side of the room.

“The catchall is ‘animal activity,’ and I suspect I’ll be able to pin it to a seal. There are some teeth marks where the nose was excised.”

She watched as Birdy gently peeled back the pale green sheet.

“See here?” Birdy said, pointing with her gloved index finger. “Those small tears form a pattern. Each is spaced two inches apart.”

Kendall leaned a little closer to get a better view. She took in the acrid scent of the corpse, which made her stomach roil only a little. Then it passed. She found it strange that the sight of the body had such a fleeting impact. Certainly, she’d already seen the woman at Little Clam Bay, but in the outside world the smell of the dead can be somewhat ignored on a cool damp day. Not possible, she knew, in the confines of the morgue, where bright light, sterile surfaces and the faint odor of cleaning supplies can’t completely foil the assault on a person’s olfactory senses.

“I’m thinking a sea lion pup,” Birdy said, barely glancing back at Kendall. “Humans aren’t really good eating, of course, and even an orca will pass one up. Sharks too. I think a pup did a little nibbling here and there and then gave up. Animal DNA could confirm, of course. Did I tell you about the body found in the woods by the golf course at Gold Mountain? Had to take bite impressions to the University of Washington. Turned out it was a bobcat, not a cougar.”

“I guess that would make a difference,” Kendall said, somewhat tentatively.

Birdy looked at the detective. “Actually, you’re right. It did. Bobcats are aggressive only to a degree and can be fended off with a well-placed poke of a nine iron. An angry cougar, however, is another matter.”

Birdy lowered an overhead lamp and took a pair of chrome Fiskars, sliced off the woman’s clothing, and deposited it into clear plastic evidence bags. While trace evidence was always possible, it was highly unlikely on the outside of the clothing. The body had been in the water for a while, at least a couple of days. Sometimes hairs and fibers were protected in the interior of a garment. That, both women knew, was a long shot. The choppy waters of Puget Sound were like a Kenmore washer on a heavy-load cycle.

The pathologist took a succession of digital photos, some with flash, and others without.

Kendall used a Sharpie to mark the bag for the sliced jeans, then another for the now-shredded green blouse. She’d take them back over to the crime lab for drying before any additional examination. Drying would preserve evidence and make the stink of the clothing somewhat bearable.

Feeling strands of her long black hair fall from the band of her disposable head covering, Dr. Waterman stepped back from the autopsy table. She took off a glove and tucked in the stray locks.

“There will be no contamination on my table,” she said, putting on a clean glove.

Kendall nodded, although the remark seemed more for the pathologist than her audience.

As she worked in her basement autopsy suite, Birdy Waterman spoke in measured tones, her voice betraying no emotion. It didn’t matter. She’d conducted hundreds of autopsies and knew that each one was a professional obligation and a personal burden: each one broke the doctor’s heart.

“…the victim, a well-nourished female age seventeen to twenty-five, five feet, two inches in height, 110 pounds, dark blond hair, blue eyes…”

She hesitated as she thought of a way to clinically describe the horror of what she was seeing. “There are no facial features, likely due to animal activity, postmortem…”

She noted that there were no distinguishing marks on the woman’s body.

She didn’t get the tattoo urge that so many of her age had, she thought.

The condition of the victim’s teeth indicated reasonable if not excellent dental care. The dead woman or girl was not a meth-head. She was clean, well cared for. Dr. Waterman swabbed the dead woman’s mouth and clipped her soft, unpainted fingernails, and Kendall collected each snip into poly bags.

“I don’t see anything under the nails, but you never know what your guys can find in the lab,” she said.

Kendall nodded. “I’m always amazed at-and appreciative of-how the smallest things can point to a killer.”

Next, Dr. Waterman focused the beam on the victim’s ears, then cheeks, a part of the face that still remained relatively intact. She swabbed again. Fibers and hair had adhered in a couple of places on the cheeks. She swabbed more.

Adhesive, she thought, before catching Kendall ’s eyes. “Our victim might have been restrained or gagged by some kind of tape.”

“Photo?”

The pathologist stepped back to allow Kendall to get closer for more photos, macro views of faint gummy striations.

“Okay, now for the reason she’s here on my table,” she said as she flexed the woman’s wrists and noted the dark bands of contusions that encircled them.

“Victim shows evidence of ligature on both right and left wrists.”

For the first time Kendall noticed parallel lines of dirt and bruising. Faint, yet there nonetheless. Her camera’s shutter sounded six times in rapid succession.

“She was tortured. Held captive. This is too brutal for some sex game gone bad.”

She was referring the case of Sheila Wax, who had died the year before when a so-called breathing game went too far. Kendall had worked that case.

Birdy ran a stream of water over the nude torso. Dark, congealed blood ran along the drainage gutter of the table.

“This is far more than torture,” she said, locking her eyes on Kendall. “Victim’s areolae on both breasts have been excised,” she said.

Kendall felt the familiar shudder of sickness that sometimes came in the basement autopsy suite, no matter how seasoned she believed herself to be or how prepared for the aftermath of murder. She steadied herself while Dr. Waterman pointed to the edges of the wounds.

“See this?” she asked, taking the tip of a scalpel and lifting the pale skin. “A cut, not a tear. Definitely not animal activity, like the face.”

Kendall studied the wounds. “Postmortem, like the animal activity?”

“Hard to know for sure, but when I see things like this, I pray to God that the victim was dead before whoever it was took it upon himself to cut her. We had a case a few years back in which a man hacked off his wife’s hand and then drove her to the hospital.”

“How thoughtful.” Kendall took some more photos.

Birdy turned her attention back to the corpse. “This is the work of a sexual sadist. He bound, gagged, defiled, tortured, and cut her, and kept part of her body for a souvenir.”

Kendall knew what the pathologist was getting at. “Someone who commits this kind of crime doesn’t just stop.”

“That’s right, Kendall. Someone who does this has to be stopped.”

Finally, the beam of the pathologist’s handheld light found the woman’s vagina. It was just another invasion of the dead woman’s privacy that had begun when the two boys skipping school had found her and sent out photos to their friends at school. For Dr. Waterman, probing in a woman’s most private area was the necessary evil of finding out what had happened, and it always felt like a violation, no matter how many bodies she’d autopsied.

More photos. Flash!

Next she bent her knees slightly, bore down, and rolled the body onto its side, then onto its stomach. She walked to the end of the autopsy table and gently spread the woman’s legs apart.

“Indications of trauma in both anal and vaginal cavities…”

Dr. Waterman winced a little and amended words: “Severe anal trauma…”

The exterior exam complete, Dr. Waterman went for the garden loppers that she’d purchased on her expense account at the local Ace Hardware off Mile Hill Road. The bright-green-handled loppers were the ideal tool for cutting through the ribs. While Kendall looked on, the doctor made her Y-incision from shoulder to shoulder and down between the mutilated breasts. Then she reached for the loppers.

Kendall watched, listened, and wondered.

Who did this to you? Who are you?

Kendall always thought of the dryer in the Kitsap County property processing room as a “clothesline of death.” She carefully logged in the victim’s clothes and hung them in the dryer. It was a bulky piece of equipment that functioned more like a warming oven than a spin dryer. Clothing hung limply until it dried to crispness. Body fluids and, in the case of the Little Clam Bay victim, seawater would provide a stiffness like starch.

Heavy starch.

“How’s our girl in the morgue?”

It was Josh.

“She’s still dead,” Kendall said, a little irritated that he’d missed the autopsy. While it wasn’t required to have two investigators there, murders were so infrequent in Kitsap County that an extra pair of eyes and hands would have been useful.

“Anything out of the ordinary?”

Kendall closed the glass-fronted door. “You mean like the fact that some freak cut off her nipples, raped her, and tortured her? That kind of out of the ordinary?”

“You seem pissed off at me.”

Kendall peeled off her latex gloves and threw them in a receptacle.

“I could have used you there, Josh.”

Josh murmured something about being sorry before he made his excuse.

“I had an interview with the paper that I couldn’t get out of. They’ve been hounding me. I’m getting a feature story. Probably front page.”

“I doubt that,” she said, heading toward the door.

“Huh?”

“A dead woman trumps a self-centered cop any day.”

Chapter Twenty-four

September 21, 1:30 p.m.

Port Orchard

Later that afternoon, Kendall Stark fixed her eyes on the autopsy report as Birdy Waterman went about her business going through the department’s supply manifest for new orders. She was low on blades and the heavy needles used for the sometimes hasty and careless suturing of a victim, post-autopsy. Birdy wasn’t like many of her contemporaries who had graduated from medical and law school with the full acceptance that the dead they’d see in the course of their careers should only be viewed as evidence, nothing more. She had gone to medical school at the University of Washington on a scholarship for Native Americans. She never said so, but she was more concerned about helping the spirits of the dead find their way home. A clean autopsy, given with love and respect, was preferred over the crime-fighting approach of so many. She was a scientist, to be sure, but a compassionate one who knew that life was a continuum and death was not the end. For that reason Birdy always ordered the finest-size needles she could, even when the medical supplier didn’t see the need for the tiny stitch.

Kendall looked up from the sheaf of papers. “You’re certain that missing tissue from the victim’s face was postmortem?”

Birdy stopped making hash marks on the supply list. “There are some indicators that she’d been battered on her face, but it’s hard to say with complete certainty.”

Kendall locked her eyes on the pathologist. “Cause of death?”

“Manner of death: homicide, for sure,” she said. “But she’s been in the water for some time, and it’s hard to say if she was suffocated or strangled. I’m concluding asphyxiation. Found adhesive around her cheek area, indicating she was gagged with tape, most likely good old duct tape.”

“Tortured?” Kendall asked, although she knew the answer.

“Raped vaginally and anally. No semen. My guess is the perp wore a condom.”

“Considerate of the bastard.”

“More likely careful. At any convention of my ilk you’ll find a symposium on the CSI effect. Perps are boning up by watching forensic TV shows to find out how to avoid detection.”

“So I’ve heard,” Kendall said. “We can thank Hollywood for that.”

Birdy nodded, and Kendall followed her into the chiller, indicating she had something she wanted to show her. She held up the dead body’s right arm. “See the discoloration there?”

Kendall noted the faint purple and black striations that ringed the thin, delicate wrists.

They’d discussed them at the autopsy.

“Wire, not rope. You can see how the binding dug into the skin, nearly slicing it?” She flexed the wrist and nodded for Kendall to come closer. “You don’t even need a scope to see that despite the fact that the water plumped her skin up a bit and softened the grooves, there are several rows of indents.”

“I see. Bound with wire. Postmortem too?”

Birdy let the wrist rest on the stainless table. She set it down gently, as though the body could still feel the chill of the metal.

“Not at all. My guess is that she was bound with wire for a time, and then the wire was removed. There was some tissue healing. Then, of course, she was put out of her misery by the perp.”

Kendall felt a chill and pulled her sweater tighter around her torso. She let her hands retract tortoiselike into her garment’s long sleeves.

“Are you saying she was held captive?”

“Stomach is empty. In fact, I have no indication that our victim has eaten anything for at least five days. Nothing.”

“Anything that will help ID her?”

Birdy shook her head. “Not really. No tattoos, decent dental work, no nothing that would give us a leg up to run any kind of check in the system. Anyone matching her in your missing-person’s database?”

Kendall shook her head. “Not so far.”

“There’s also this,” Birdy said, pointing to some tiny specks lifted from the victim’s vaginal walls. It was hard to say exactly what they were. Dr. Waterman narrowed her focus as she twisted a swab into the light next to her autopsy table. There were six small flecks. They appeared opaque, not transparent or translucent. It was hard to say what color they were. One side seemed off-white; the other a reddish hue. She deposited the swab into a plastic bag and secured it.

“This one’s for the lab team in Olympia,” she said. “Who knows where this will lead, but in the meantime you might need some extra help to ID this one. Help of the artistic kind. Who is this girl?”

In the basement of the tidy white house on Sidney Avenue, Birdy Waterman covered up the morgue’s sole dead body while Kendall Stark looked on. The two of them silently pushed her into the chiller.

Neither woman spoke, although both were thinking the same thing.

You were someone’s daughter, sister, maybe even a wife. You are being missed by someone. Someone out there-besides the killer-is wondering where you are right now.

If no one claimed the body in a week, they’d bury her in a Port Orchard cemetery, in the no-man’s-land that local law enforcement from Seattle to New York called Potter’s Field.