He splashed some Crown Royal over a couple of cubes of ice. More, he thought.

Another splash.

He rolled the smooth, sweet alcohol in his mouth and down his throat. He could feel the slight burn of the whiskey as it sent a shock wave of warmth through his body. The ice crashed against his lips as he swallowed more.

The anchorwoman, a striking blonde who’d been on the air since he was a teenager, announced the next story.

“They are calling her Jane around the morgue in Kitsap County, but they know that’s not her real name. The county coroner is hoping that someone watching this broadcast can help identify her…”

The TV showed a body of water, and a reporter, a black male in a puffy orange vest that made him look more road improvement worker than journalist, started to speak.

“Two Port Orchard boys skipping school two weeks ago found her floating right here in Little Clam Bay.”

Cullen poured another shot, keeping his eyes fixed on the screen. When Skye’s Siamese cat, Miss Anna, rubbed against him, he ignored the impulse to pick her up.

“She was young, in her twenties. She was wearing-”

Cullen set down the glass, missing the tabletop. The tumbler shattered, and Miss Anna ran for a place under the table.

The clothes look as though they could be Skye’s. The age is right too.

His heart raced. He disregarded the broken glass and stared at the TV.

“…the young woman’s injuries were so severe that a forensic artist was brought in to re-create what she might have looked like in life.”

A woman identified as the coroner came on the screen. Birdy Waterman held up a drawing. Cullen felt relief wash over him. The image was all wrong. The girl in the rendering had a kind of vacant stare. She wasn’t vibrant and full of life.

Of course, he told himself right away, she was dead.

“This is an artist’s representation of what our victim might have looked like. It isn’t a photograph of her,” Dr. Waterman said. “If you are missing someone who approximates this image, please contact the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office.”

The blond woman came back on and read a phone number. Without even thinking, Cullen Hornbeck wrote it down.

It can’t be her. She isn’t dead. She just can’t be.

It passed through his mind that he might not have the courage to dial the number. Not knowing still meant hope.

Chapter Thirty

October 7, 10 a.m.

Port Orchard

Kendall Stark and Josh Anderson fielded the calls after the story featuring the Little Clam Bay victim rendering ran in the Lighthouse and on TV. Calls came in fits and starts throughout the morning and into the afternoon. Sometimes it was clear that the person on the other end of the line was heartbroken or an attention seeker. Sometimes a little of both.

“Looks like a girl I worked with at the Dinners Done Right on Bethel Avenue.”

“My sister has been missing for two years. Might be her.”

“My aunt.”

“Best friend from high school. I think.”

“My daughter.”

There were dozens of such calls. But only one had some information that promised some real potential.

It was from a man in Vancouver, British Columbia.

“Was the blouse a Trafalgar?” he asked. “My daughter’s missing. I saw that the girl you found was wearing a green blouse.”

Kendall looked at the list of clothing found on the victim.

“Sir,” she said, “how long has your daughter been missing?”

“Three weeks yesterday,” he said. “Is it my daughter that you’ve found?”

Kendall could hear the man’s heart shattering.

“I don’t know. But the blouse is a Trafalgar. Can you come to Port Orchard?”

Kendall had seen the all-consuming look of loss on the faces of others who’d sat in the waiting room, next to the array of magazines on a glass-topped side table. The magazines were well worn but barely read. They were brought in by thoughtful staff members, the address labels neatly removed with scissors. Cullen Hornbeck sat slightly stoop shouldered, as if the air had been let out of his body and he’d refused to take in any more oxygen. His eyes were black buttons, unblinking and sad.

“Mr. Hornbeck?” she asked as she stepped into the room. “I’m Detective Stark.”

He stood and extended his hand.

“Yes, I’m Cullen.” He looked around, catching the eye of the only other person waiting to see law enforcement, a gray-haired woman with a peeled orange and a People magazine. The woman went back to her reading.

“Thank you for seeing me,” he said.

“Of course, Mr. Hornbeck. We’ve already sent for your daughter’s dental records. We should have them this afternoon.” She looked at her watch. “Or they could be here even now, waiting in the coroner’s lab for log-in.”

She motioned for him to follow, and the pair meandered through the lobby, behind the receptionist’s desk, past several unoccupied cubicles. She opened a door and led him inside a grim little room with two chairs and a black metal table.

“Coffee?” she asked.

“No, thank you, Detective.”

“All right, then.”

“It has to be Skye,” he said. “The girl you found.” His tone was slightly demanding, and Kendall found it a little off-putting. It was almost as if he was insisting that his daughter be identified as the Little Clam Bay victim.

“Sir, as I told you on the phone, we won’t know until we compare her dental records or barring that, DNA from your daughter. You brought her toothbrush?”

“Yes,” he said, his eyes welling with tears. “Right here.” He pulled a bright red toothbrush clad in plastic wrap from his breast pocket and slid it across the table. “I also brought her hairbrush. I know that sometimes that can be helpful.”

“All right. Thank you.”

“Detective, you’ve never asked me why I know that the dead girl is Skye.”

“You saw it on the news.”

Cullen shook his head. “No, that’s not all of it. That’s not how I found you to call. It’s deeper than that.”

He looked at Kendall, wondering how many times she’d been faced with a man in his shoes.

“How is it?”

He took a breath. “I saw her picture on the missing girls’ Web site.”

Kendall was unsure what Internet site he was referring to.

“Sorry? Someone put up a photo of your daughter to help get the word out that she’s missing?”

“No,” he said. “Someone put up a photo of the body you found in Little Clam Bay.”

Kendall had known several cases in which armchair detectives-or cybersleuths, as they liked to call themselves-had put up victims’ photos, sometimes gruesome and offensive images, with the hopes that they’d strike lightning and glean a nugget of truth from the gawkers that flock to such sites. She knew that despite the confiscation of their phones, the images that Devon and Brady took of the dead woman had been floating around the Internet like a heartbreaking calling card.

“I have this feeling in my gut. It is like the blade of a knife stuck in so deep that it presses against my spine. I know that my daughter is dead. I know that she’s never coming back.”

He pulled out a photograph and handed it to her.

It was a pretty young woman wearing the green blouse.

“She’s pretty. Very pretty.”

“Smart too.”

“Where’s Skye’s mother? Has she heard from your daughter?”

Cullen shook his head. He had a hangdog expression that made Kendall want to proceed with gentleness.

“Maybe she knows something.”

“I doubt it. The woman only knows one thing-and that’s how to live her own life, unencumbered. She never loved Skye.”

“I’m sure you’re wrong, Mr. Hornbeck. All mothers love their children.”

“Look, all mothers are supposed to love their children. It is supposed to be automatic, natural. But it isn’t so.”