“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.”