“It isn’t about you. It isn’t personal,” Kendall said.

Serenity was upset, but it was unclear right then if she was angry or embarrassed. She’d gone after Kendall, but she seemed to pull back a little.

“I’m doing the best that I can,” she said. “I’m trying to get at the truth.”

Kendall knew better than to say what she was thinking, but she couldn’t stop herself.

“Look, I just don’t like your methods, Serenity.”

“My methods?”

Kendall allowed a slight glare of condemnation to zero in on Serenity’s unblinking eyes.

“Yes, your methods. I really don’t want to get into it. Can we leave it alone?”

“No. We can’t. I have a job to do too.”

Kendall looked out the window. “Fine. We all do.”

Chapter Thirty-two

October 15, 9 a.m.

South Kitsap County, Washington

A long gravel and mud road led to the parking lot and then a wide path followed a steep embankment to the pristine sandy beach at Anderson Point. The location was not for the infirm or the underexercised. It was so difficult to get to, and, despite its status as a county park, it had very few visitors. It was almost always deserted. Lovers came to have sex behind a burned-out cabin, hidden from view by a three-foot barrier of silver-gray beach grass, all blades bent away from the surfside. On the hottest summer days, mothers took their little ones there to dig in the sand and collect bleached-out clamshells while they listened to music on iPods or read the windswept pages of a paperback novel.

Mostly the park was empty, beautiful, and quiet as God had intended it to be. Mid-October brought a blast of cold air off the Colvos Passage, but that didn’t stop the diehards who jogged from the parking lot to the beach. On October 15, an early-morning jogger made his way down to the water, running the switchbacks at a better clip than he would be able to do later when returning to his car. Everyone, especially joggers, knew that the trip down to the beach was much easier than the steep climb back to the parking lot. He crossed over the grass-tufted dunes and faced out over the narrow passage that separated Kitsap County from Vashon Island. He heard a seal bark and watched some seagulls battle over something good to eat fifty yards down a beach strewn beautifully with grass, wood, pebbles, and, finally at the water’s edge, sand the consistency of cake sugar. The gulls were making such a ruckus that the jogger altered his course and worked his way down the beach, heading south. The tide was out a little, and his running shoes stamped the sand. He breathed in the air and was about to turn back when he noticed seagulls screaming at each other as one tried to fly away with its prize. Whatever it was, the bird dropped it and it fell to the beach.

Jesus, what’s that? he thought.

The jogger walked closer and bent over to get a better view. Was it the leg of a hapless sea star? He pushed at the object with the tip of his dirty blue running shoe. It was slender and wrinkled, with a tapered end and a tattered one. He nearly jumped out of his skin.

A human finger.

As he spun around with his back to the sound and dialed 911 on his cell phone, he noticed a cacophony of gulls twenty yards away, near a neat pile of driftwood. He made his way toward the squawking birds, as a tugboat passed a half mile down Colvos Passage.

This isn’t happening, he thought.

Cradled between two parallel logs was a human body.

A woman.

Nude.

Although he strained to see exactly what he was looking at, the jogger took a step backward, his heels sinking in the sand.

The 911 operator answered and he coughed out the words, “I found a human body, I think. Out here at Anderson Point.”

“You think so?”

“I know so, it’s just that…well, I found most of a human body.”

The corpse was missing more than a finger.

“This lady has no head.”

Over on the Key Peninsula, Melody Castile was lost in her thoughts again. She turned over her purse and let its contents fall onto the bleached maple kitchen table. A few coins rolled to the floor, but she paid them no mind. Nor did she take a moment to view the mini photo album that she carried wherever she went. Inside were the incongruent, nearly Betty Crocker-inspired photos of her with her husband and little boy. She fished through the brushes, the tissue, the car keys-everything that she carried with her-in search of the waterproof mascara that she was just sure was there.

And then she found it. She pulled the cap from the top to expose the slender wand and applicator. The makeup had been in her purse for some time-since the previous summer when she swam at the Gig Harbor YMCA.

Good, she thought, seeing that there was plenty of the dark pigment left. This should be perfect. She considered a coppery-red lipstick too, but dismissed it out of hand because she knew that her husband didn’t like the messy way lipstick sometimes transferred.

The oversize chest freezer in the Fun House was in the very back of the old mobile home, behind the false wall that allowed a modicum of discretion and security. Even if some kids wandered in to find out if it was a good place to get in trouble, they’d never find the mattress or the freezer.

Just boxes of things that weren’t worth bothering with.

It was a gruesome gathering. Kendall Stark, Josh Anderson, and Birdy Waterman stood over the headless corpse in the basement of the Kitsap County coroner’s office. Even Josh, who’d never missed an opportunity to make an off-color remark, was silent. The acrid scent of the deteriorating tissue and seawater was only too familiar.

Celesta Delgado.

Skye Hornbeck.

“If we ever doubted before, we have a serial,” Kendall said. “Don’t we?”

Dr. Waterman nodded as she worked her light over the dead woman’s torso.

“The question,” she said softly, “at least for now, is just who this is?”

Kendall nodded. “If she’s local and reported missing, we might be able to pinpoint who she is.”

Even without a head.

“Midnight Cassava,” Josh said. “She’s been missing since the second week in April. Or thereabouts. Hard to tell with her comings and goings. Hooker, you know.”

“Marissa,” Kendall corrected, ignoring the hooker remark.

The pathologist looked over her glasses at Josh and Kendall. “Did she have any children?” she asked

Kendall nodded. Suddenly she no longer smelled the decomposition of the body. “Yes, a little girl. She’s living with her grandmother now.”

“This woman has had at least one baby. See the stretch marks? Internal exam of the uterus will verify it. Her name wouldn’t happen to be Tasha, would it?” Birdy asked.

The beam of the light illuminated a wrist tattoo of letters spelling out T-a-s-h-a, each character separated by a tiny daisy.

Kendall thought of the little girl. Her mother was a prostitute and had died the kind of unspeakable death that no one, no matter how she lived her life, deserved.

Striations around the wrist were visible. Like the others, likely made by wire bindings.

“Was she restrained? Like Skye?”

“I can’t be sure,” Dr. Waterman said. “There’s some obvious freezer burn here. See that dark patch of skin along the arms?”

The pallid limbs of the victim had broad markings that ran from the shoulders to the hands. The right hand was missing the index finger.

“Why cut off just one finger?” Josh said. “I mean, if you’re going to lop off someone’s head for fun, why bother with a single digit?”

The pathologist shrugged. “My guess is that he didn’t mess with cutting off her finger. Those damn gulls did. Look at this cut. More of a tear, really. Not like the head.”

Indeed, the neck was the most obvious and shocking injury Kendall had seen. It was a blood-clotted stump. Tissue and vertebrae pushed upward like a mushroom from the remarkably clean cut that had severed the head from the body.