Pete folded the paper and returned it to Kendall. “Sure, it’s possible that your perp is flitting around in a speedboat; my guess is that the boat’s a larger one. It would need to be a boat of some size to chug through the waters from Hood Canal to Southworth.”

“A commercial boat? Tug?”

“Possibly, but also a large pleasure craft. My point being, I’m doubtful he’s launching his boat off some trailer at Harper or Southworth. Must be moored somewhere around here.”

Kendall bent down and kissed his forehead.

Pete Monroe actually blushed.

“What did I do to get that?” he asked.

“Just because you’re a great man and I want you to know it.”

He smiled broadly as she gathered her things to leave.

“Come back and see me soon, okay?”

“There’s no doubt about that,” she said.

Max Castile knew that his parents had their secrets and there was no asking about them. The mobile home was off limits, of course, but so was the old Navy trunk kept at the foot of their four-poster. It had his dad’s name stenciled in block letters, CASTILE, and the black-and-white dial of a combination lock of the type that he’d seen used by kids to secure bikes to the metal railing behind the school.

For as long as the boy could remember, his father kept the trunk locked. The one occasion that it wasn’t was the time he looked inside. His dad was at work and his mom was doing something in the back of the house when Max’s curiosity got the best of him. The lid was heavy, and he had to pull hard to swing it open.

On top was a covering of thin, dark fabric. Max turned the edge and immediately caught a glimpse of silver. Chains. He pulled back more of the fabric to reveal a leather whip coiled and twisted into a figure eight, just like all the electric extension cords hanging on pegs in his father’s garage. He wanted to play with the whip, but he didn’t dare reach for it.

Something else caught his eye. He blinked. Next to the whip were various flesh-colored tubes: replicas of enormous penises. They reminded him of a horse’s he’d seen once when he was over at a friend’s house when he was five. The kid had told Max what it was, and he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off the stallion. He looked deeper into the trunk and saw a pile of magazines with covers showing men wearing masks and woman bound with cords.

Pleading. Begging. Screaming.

The images scared the boy, and he let the lid slam shut. Thud! He heard his mother’s footsteps and ran out of the room.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, catching him near the kitchen doorway.

“Nothing,” he lied, not looking her in the eye.

Melody studied her son, taking in his fear and wondering what he’d been up to.

Twenty minutes later he returned to his parents’ bedroom, drawn to whatever he’d seen. This time the box was locked.

Chapter Thirty-five

October 20, 8:30 p.m.

Key Center

Melody Castile turned to her husband and flashed an uneasy smile. It was subtle, and she turned her head as quickly as she could and faced the window. Rain splattered against windowpanes with broken seals, making the trailer fifty yards away hard to see. She knew what was coming.

“You coming to the Fun House or not?” Sam asked.

“The boy’s restless, Baby.” Melody looked in the direction of the TV room. Max was watching some kind of Japanese anime cartoon that held his imagination captive. He wasn’t restless in the least.

“Daddy wants you there,” Sam said. He was demanding, his meaning implicit: either you come now, or you’ll pray you did later. “Don’t make me get angry.”

She looked directly at him. “Baby wants to be there, but you know the boy needs me too.”

He shifted his weight on heavy work boots that had tracked in fir needles and the leaves shed by the willow she’d planted when they first moved onto the property. Corkscrew willow. She’d imagined that she’d be harvesting the curling stems for floral projects and craft shows. She had no idea that she’d have to abandon all that she’d dreamed of in order to fulfill his needs in the Fun House. The best she could say of herself was that she was a reluctant participant. But not all that reluctant. She’d done everything he’d wanted, when he told her to do it. She knew that if the unthinkable had ever occurred and they were found out by the police or someone else, she was going down too. She’d been there. She’d helped him.

And sometimes she had even enjoyed it.

“Fun House,” he said. “Now!”

Melody took a bottle of olive oil from the kitchen cabinet and followed him outside, across the wet grass, past the drippy willow stems, and between two firs that acted like shutters to the doorway of the mobile home. She filled her lungs with air and followed him. It was a single-wide, in decent shape, but outdated in a world in which only a lowlife Kitsap meth-head would call such place home. He’d ripped out the kitchen and knocked out the wall between the two bedrooms. He’d burned most of the garbage, filling the air with black smoke.

She was sure a neighbor would call in the illegal fire, and when she told him so, he’d looked at her with those cold eyes.

Eyes that she found full of cruelty, but in a way that made her lust for his touch. She’d never recoil from him.

But that was before the Fun House became what it was to be.

One afternoon he showed up with two old queen-size mattresses he’d purchased from Craigslist. She looked at them and made a face. She indicated a big stain that looked like dried blood.

“Those are nasty,” she said. “Someone had her period all over that one.”

“Baby, don’t worry. I’ll make it nice for us.”

She helped Sam carry the mattresses one at a time across the yard into the single-wide. She heard the laughter of children on the acreage next door as they played with the family dog, a German shepherd that they insisted would protect them from prowlers. With the truck bed empty, she noticed a box of chains and a spool of wire.

“What’s that for?”

He offered a smile, his lips barely parted. “That’s for me to know and you to find out, Baby.”

In time, yes, she’d find out.

From the beginning, Sam reminded Melody what was at stake and that any failure of their secret would be her fault alone.

“Look, I’ll kill you and go have a pizza before I do any time.”

She simply nodded. Her heart fluttered, but she only agreed.

“No one knows what goes on here besides you, me, and the girls we pick up here and there. They won’t say anything, that’s for sure. They’ll never get the chance to.”

“I love you,” she said. “I just want you to be happy.”

“I might have been happy if I’d have married someone other than you. But you’ll do what I want nine times out of ten, and that’ll be enough to keep you breathing.”

It was a threat, and it excited her.

“I promise to be good.”

“Good isn’t what I want or need. I like my women a little on the rough side, bitch. You know, sweet like a soft cookie, but with the crunch of nuts inside.” He let out a laugh.

She laughed, too, as if what he’d said was the funniest thing she’d ever heard.

It was too much of a reaction, and his eyes shot her a shut up glance. She shut up right away.

Kendall answered Dr. Waterman’s message with an in-person visit. She needed some space to think, and the walk across the parking lot from the Sheriff’s Office to the morgue was about as good as it was going to get. She found the county’s forensic pathologist eating some slightly congealing ramen at her desk in what had been the dining room of the sad little house that served as the county morgue. Birdy set her mug of noodles down and greeted her with a smile.

“Such service,” she said.