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.