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.