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?”