Josh didn’t like what he was hearing one iota. “Sounds like you really don’t think we can do the job,” he said.

Jim shifted his frame in his chair. “Not that at all. We’re getting pressure. And I’m not just talking about the Lighthouse.”

Kendall knew that he was referring to Serenity’s latest story and the accompanying editorial that called for the obvious: JUSTICE NEEDED FOR CUTTER’S VICTIMS NOW.

“Who’s leading the task force?” she asked.

“The FBI has enough to do with their terrorism investigation in Blaine,” he said, referring to an Iraqi national who had been caught at the Canadian border crossing with a trunk load of plastic explosives and a schematic of Seattle’s Space Needle, “but to answer your question, they’re leading.”

“Jesus,” Josh said, “we’ve just started here, and you’re letting us get stepped on.”

The sheriff tightened his mouth and munched on his response. “We blew it with Delgado, and everyone knows it. We have to pay the price for our blunder by eating a little dirt.”

Kendall looked at Josh. He was fuming.

“It was a mistake,” she said. “And I’m sorry about it.”

Josh looked out the window. He’d been written up for outbursts in the past. He’d been to anger management training. He counted to five. There was no need to count to ten.

“Fine,” he said.

A discernable pattern marks the surge of Puget Sound. Most currents follow the ebb and flow from the Strait of Juan de Fuca, that choppy channel of Pacific blue that isolates Washington from Vancouver Island. The currents are swiftest there, petering out considerably as islands and peninsulas impede the natural movement of tidal waters.

Kendall maneuvered her SUV into a tight space in the visitors’ parking lot adjacent to the Veterans’ Home in Retsil, only a few minutes east of Port Orchard. From the water, ferry passengers on the Bremerton-Seattle run caught a glimpse of the building, looking stately and grand on a bluff that soared above the lazy tide lines of the beach that scurried over to Rich Passage.

Kendall reviewed the locations of where Celesta, Marissa, and Skye’s bodies had been discovered. While nothing was absolute in the investigation, she and Josh shared the general feeling that the killer lived in the northern part of Kitsap County.

“Shoving a dead woman into the water is a nighttime activity,” Josh had said after a short meeting with the sheriff and a speakerphone connected to members of the task force. “The killer cruised to the Theler Wetlands and plunked Celesta where he thought no one would find her-in the shallows near Belfair. Reedy there. Weedy there.”

“He didn’t really hide her,” Kendall said. “He wanted us to see what he’d done.”

Josh shrugged. “Maybe. But my gut’s been at this longer than you, and I don’t agree.”

Kendall found her way across the lot to the front entryway of the Veterans’ Home. She had a date with an old family friend.

Peter Monroe was eighty-seven-a still-with-it eighty-seven-and lived on the second floor in the remodeled section of the nearly century old institution. He was reading Clive Cussler’s latest tale by the window when she appeared in the doorway. He looked up and moved his book to his lap. His hands were twisted into gnarly kindling; his eyes were now faded denim. He slowly got up and gave Kendall a hug.

“Hi, Mr. Monroe,” she said as warmth came to his white-whisker-stubbled face. Though he told her after high school graduation that she could call him Pete, she never could do it.

“How’s my favorite marine biology student?” he asked, a reference to the classes he had taught at the university before retiring at seventy-nine.

“I’m fine,” she said. She’d taken a couple of courses from him out of personal interest, but also because she’d known him growing up in Harper. The Monroes had lived down the street from her family’s home on Overlook Road. “Still looking at the water from my front window and appreciating all that goes on under its surface.”

“You said you wanted to talk about currents.” He lowered his rimless glasses and looked at her. “What’s this all about?”

As Kendall pulled a folded paper from her black leather shoulder bag, she noticed a framed photo of Mrs. Monroe on the bed stand. She’d been gone for at least ten years. She felt a flush of sadness. He’d been alone a good long time. He had children, of course, but she wondered if they visited often. It was too personal to inquire, so she didn’t ask about them.

He took the paper and moved it into the sunlight, and Kendall sidled up next to him, so she could view her chart as he did. “The red dots are the locations where the bodies were recovered,” she said. “I’m wondering how the killer can get around so easily, dumping victims without any detection. They’re not really a cluster of dump sites.” She stopped herself.

Kendall hated that she’d even used the word “dump,” as if the women were nothing but trash.

“Hood Canal is interesting,” Pete said, sliding his glasses back up the bridge of his nose to get a better look at the swirling rings laid out by an oceanographer and a cartographer. The rings were spaced at varying widths, like the lines on a piece of driftwood. “I used to go shrimping there with Ida and the boys.”

“Those were happy times,” Kendall said, catching the look of a specific memory in his blue eyes.

Pete peered at Kendall over the brims of his glasses. “Yes, but that’s not why you’re here. You’re wondering if the perp-that’s the word you detectives like to use-went all the way to Belfair to drop off Ms. Delgado’s remains?”

Kendall hadn’t used Celesta’s name, nor was it on the map. Just Victim One, Victim Two, Victim Three. Mr. Monroe still read the paper. Good.

He went on. “Rough weather notwithstanding, the currents and tidal oscillations are a little sluggish here by the bridge,” he said, indicating the floating bridge used to traverse the narrowest part of the channel from Kitsap to Jefferson County. “Not knowing where he put her in the water, of course, my guess is that she couldn’t have been dumped off the bridge and floated all the way to Belfair. Not likely. If he put her around here,” he said, pointing to a location about a quarter mile from the bridge, “she’d ride the tide to the location in the wetlands.”

“How long would it take her body to travel that far?”

His answer was immediate, though not precise. “A few hours. Half a day at most.”

Kendall pointed to Little Clam Bay and Anderson Point, on Colvos Passage across from Vashon Island.

“Currents flow northerly on the Seattle side of Vashon,” Pete said, “and southerly on the side where you’ve indicated here and here.” He tapped a twiggy fingertip on the two red dots.

“So if we found some evidence related to one victim here near Anderson Point,” Kendall said, taking it in, “you’re telling me that the perp likely dropped the evidence north of Olalla.”

Pete nodded. “Yes. The passage is busy there, but not as busy as the east side of the island. I’d say if someone wanted to get rid of something overboard he would do it around Fragaria, maybe a little further north around Southworth. Not as far as Harper, where you live. The current’s too weak there.”

“Right,” she said, looking at the boat launch at Southworth. “That’s the only place along the whole passage where he could launch a boat other than here. No other ramps until way south until you get to Olalla.”

Little Clam Bay, where Skye Hornbeck’s remains were found, was less problematic.

“No doubt that the body caught a current right about here,” he indicated a location off Blake Island to the east of Manchester. “Current flows this way,” he said, drawing a line near the Naval Supply Center. “The body likely got sucked into the bay, here. Not easy to do. But doable. Terrible clamming there, by the way.”