But this one had no one to speak for her or who her killer might have been.

Chapter Twenty-eight

October 1, 11:50 p.m.

Port Orchard

They had made love all night long, and as she positioned herself on the toilet in the darkness of his bathroom, Serenity Hutchins knew that she’d gone too far for the story. It wasn’t that she wasn’t attracted to him. He worked out, and, despite being old enough to be her father, he had a nice physique. The last guy she’d dated was much younger, but his body was a doughy mess. She finished going and debated for a moment whether or not she should flush. She didn’t want to wake him.

If I wake him, she thought, he’ll want to do it again.

She risked it. Whoosh! She squinted in the faint light coming through the mini-blinds as she washed her hands.

“Baby, come back to bed.”

“Coming. But Baby’s tired,” she said.

“We don’t have to go to work tomorrow,” he said as she moved toward him in the darkness.

“I do,” she said. “I have to get some sleep. I have an event to cover in Manchester. A salmon feed or something.”

He put his mouth on hers.

“Oh, Josh, don’t you have a crime to investigate?”

He nuzzled her. “ Kendall is working the hard stuff. I’ll just lay here and enjoy you.”

The face staring up at her was young and pretty. She had a slender nose and a mouth fuller on the lower lip that gave her a slight pout. It was very late, and the chill of an early autumn seeped through the windows as Margo Titus stepped back from her worktable. The face she’d painstakingly restored seemed more melancholy than most that she’d created. Margo never created a face that would cause someone to smirk: a cartoonish visage that somehow made a joke out of the victim. Some forensic artists offered up images that, while possibly very accurate, cast a distinctly creepy vibe.

Margo wanted the kind of countenance that spoke to the viewer. She sought an expression that triggered a genuine emotion of concern. This face looking up at her was a sad one. A heartbreaker. It was the face of a pretty young woman, one who had to be missed by someone.

Somewhere. But where? And by whom?

She looked at her wall clock. It was 4 P.M. She had time to finish up, get to Whole Foods, and have dinner going before her family assembled around the table. After working on the rendering with such deliberation, such intensity, she could still set it aside when it came to being a wife and mother. It wasn’t that the morgue photos were expunged from her memory, but they were stored in a place separate from the world that saw her as something other than a woman who draws dead people.

Margo scanned her artwork and prepared to send it via e-mail it to the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office. It would be quicker than a phone call, and she had to get going.

Kendall, I hope this helps in your investigation. There’s a little guesswork because of the tissue damage, but I think this should be close enough to get the attention of anyone who knew her-provided they see the rendering. Good luck. Let me know when you identify her. She deserves that, along with justice for her killer.

Before she pushed SEND her eyes lingered on the damage to the right breast. The cut looked so clean, so precise. It was as if a diamond of flesh had been removed from the dead woman’s breast.

Sweet Jesus, she thought. What kind of maniac would do that?

As he tore at her, ripping her underclothing, commanding her to do this and that, she flashed on how it had started. The first few times Sam Castile made a shopping list for Melody, she saw nothing interesting in it. He wanted a motion detector, a fourteen-foot steel chain, and four brown tarps. The items were mundane, utilitarian. Melody looked at her husband’s list, added a few things she needed for herself, and pointed her silver-colored Jeep in the direction of Home Depot and Costco. Sam Castile had made it clear that the tarps he required were not blue, which were the ones most commonly sold by local stores. The brown were certainly less conspicuous when placed over a leaky roof, a cord of wood, a chicken yard. He wanted the chains to be polished steel, not galvanized. He said galvanized links were weaker. The motion detector had to be top of the line.

“If someone’s out there, you know, lying in wait,” he’d said, “I want fair warning.”

He was concerned about her safety, or so she had first believed.

The motion detector morphed into a trio of the devices. One was affixed to the side of the house, casting a beam whenever an errant deer wandered by. The other pair stood guard along the winding driveway that meandered through the heavy fringe of salmonberries, sword ferns, and a tangle of ocean spray leading to the house.

“If you want to run a day care out here, babe,” he’d said, “you’ll need to make sure the kids are safe.”

In the beginning she’d believed her husband. She thought that Sam’s words of concern, his need for protecting her and the children, were genuine.

That, of course, was only in the beginning. But there was no day care. There was only isolation.

Sam installed motion detectors fifteen feet past the farm gate, which they kept chained tightly. Visitors hated the gate more than anything: there was no way of tripping it so that it would open without them getting out of the car, unlatching the chain that held it in place, swinging the gate open, driving through, and then getting out of the car to shut the gate. It was a colossal hassle by any measure. In the early days, at least, if Melody had any designs on sharing a cup of chamomile tea with a girlfriend from next door, the gate obliterated them.

No one came over unless they absolutely had to.

Her tuxedo mocha on her desk, Kendall Stark looked intently at the image of the Little Clam Bay victim as Josh Anderson strolled into her office.

“Hey, you,” he said, sitting down, “what do you have there?” He seemed more upbeat than usual, and certainly more upbeat than the moment called for.

“Margo’s rendering of our victim.”

“Let me have a look,” he said, reaching for the photo printout. “Good-looking girl. Sure doesn’t look like what we saw on the scene.”

“That’s the point,” Kendall said. “We’re looking at trying to find out who she is, not scare people away.”

“I know. I was talking to the sheriff yesterday. He thinks we should use this case to spark some better relations with the local media.”

Kendall took her eyes off the photo and studied Josh.

“I wasn’t aware there was a problem with local media. Are we talking about KIRO TV and what they said about our jail?”

“No. More local. Local like the Lighthouse.”

“I thought we were good with them,” she said.

“There have been some complaints. You know, from the publisher to the sheriff. Says we don’t give them a heads-up on anything. You know, blah blah blah, you only talk to us when we cover your stupid office pancake feed for Kitsap Crime Watch.”

“No one mentioned it to me,” Kendall said, taking a sip from her coffee.

“No biggie. Sheriff thought we should toss them a bone now and then. Maybe I could take this over to the paper myself.”

Kendall thought for a moment. Josh’s ulterior motive was so transparent, she wanted to laugh.

“I’ll give it to Serenity what’s-her-name,” he said.

“That’s all right,” she said, pulling the photo back from Josh’s grasp. “I’ll take it.”

Josh looked a little disappointed.

“She’s too young for you.”

“Who is?”

She scolded him with a cool look before answering. “Serenity Hutchins.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Kendall.”

Kendall nodded. “Never mind. I was only joking.”