Kendall put it this way on an interdepartmental memorandum:

There’s no doubt he’s a sexual sadist, but he’s also scrupulously careful. We may be in the unfortunate position of waiting for someone to come forward or another victim to turn up.

Chapter Thirty-seven

December 10, 5:30 p.m.

Key Center

The voice on the phone spoke in husky, quiet notes. Serenity Hutchins had to strain to hear as she swiveled away from the TV playing in her apartment kitchen. She might have even hung up out of annoyance like she had with other callers to the paper.

She didn’t this time.

“Too bad you don’t have all the facts about my latest little project.”

“You again? Just who are you?”

“Does it matter?”

“I think you should tell me who I’m talking to.” With the phone pressed against her ear, she undid the latch to the dishwasher. The washing cycle stopped. But the damned TV was still playing in the background.

“Can you speak louder?” she asked.

“I could, but I don’t want to wake the baby,” he said, his voice still very low.

“Who are you?”

“I’m the one who knows the truth about the body in Little Clam Bay.”

Serenity hadn’t been on the job long, but she knew the ring of truth when she heard it. She popped the phone from her ear and looked at the Caller ID window. The code, like the other calls, indicated a calling card, not a phone number and a name.

“How is it that you know?” she asked.

“Do you need me to spell it out? Are you really as stupid of a bitch as you come across in the paper?”

She ignored the personal insult, and as far as insults go, it wasn’t the worst aimed at her by a reader of the pages of the Lighthouse.

“I guess I am,” she said. “I do need you to spell it out.”

“I put her there.”

Serenity felt the downy hairs on the back of her neck rise up. The man’s voice was utterly emotionless. There was no reason to believe him, but neither was there any reason to dismiss what he was saying.

“Who are you?”

A short pause.

“Seriously, you think I’m going to tell you that?”

“What are you going to tell me?”

“I’m going to tell you how much the girl begged for mercy. I’m going to feed your nightmares for the rest of your life. Or I’m going to hang up and tell someone else. You choose.”

Serenity reached for some paper in the drawer under the phone. She moved the ballpoint pen in cyclone curlicues over its surface, but it only scratched the paper. She reached for another, a red pen, and found success.

“Tell me.”

Another short delay. She thought she heard someone talking in the background, but she was unsure if that was the caller’s radio or TV.

“You’ll ask no questions,” he said.

“But that’s my job.”

“Or I’ll tell someone else.”

Serenity felt the flutter of fear, the kind that comes when making a deal with the devil. She didn’t know it, but in a way that was exactly what she was doing.

Steven Stark strung the lights on eaves of their home. He’d used a combination of blue-and-white LED lights that seemed too dim to really do the job.

“Interesting, in a subtle kind of way,” Kendall said. She had joined Steven and Cody on the driveway to get a better view.

“I know what you mean,” Steven said. “I actually like the gigantic bulbs that my folks used to put up. Energy hogs, but they at least told the world that you’d bothered to decorate.”

Cody’s eyes traced the string of lights that his father had hung with the taut precision of a perfectionist.

“Pretty,” he said, a broad smile over his face.

“I think so, too, baby,” Kendall said.

The three went back inside the house with the promise of hot chocolate. The moment outside had been a welcome escape from the Christmas card that she’d received that day at the office. She hadn’t opened it. She hadn’t wanted to.

Now it was time.

The address was from Vancouver, British Columbia. Hornbeck was the last name.

While Steven poured milk into a saucepan, Kendall pulled the envelope from her purse and opened it.

The front was a picture of a Madonna and child. Inside was a message signed by Cullen Hornbeck. Two photographs were also enclosed. She read the message first:

I want to believe that you are doing your best to find out who killed Skye. It has been months since she was found. I think of her every day. I want you to think of her too.

The first photo was a picture of Skye with her father at some kind of sporting event. They appeared to be laughing. Her hand rested on his shoulder. On the back of the photo, Cullen had written:

These are the memories that I wish were at the forefront of my thoughts of my daughter.

The second photo was one of the images taken by the teenage boys who’d found Skye’s body while skipping school that September. He wrote:

This is what I see every night in my dreams. Please don’t forget about her.

Kendall set down the card and photos, her eyes damp with emotion.

“What is it, babe?” Steven asked.

She turned to Cody. “How about you get your jammies on?”

Cody spun around and went down the hall to his bedroom.

“Skye’s father,” Kendall said, indicating the card. “But it is more than Cullen. Tulio Pena. Donna Solomon. All of them. All of them are facing the holiday without their loved ones and no answers to let them rest in peace. This isn’t right. We have let them down.”

“You haven’t.” He put his arms around her.

“I don’t know what more we can do. The FBI has taken its sweet time to tell us what we already know. We have a serial killer somewhere around here. He’s a sexual sadist. We know he lives somewhere in a fifty-mile radius, which means Kitsap, King, Mason, and Pierce counties.”

“And he’s stopped killing,” he said.

She shrugged slightly. “The last profiler we talked with said it was likely that he has moved from the area or…get this…is taking a break. Or it is possible that he’s killed and we just haven’t found the next body.”

Cody came into the kitchen. He’d changed into his pajamas. Green tree frogs ran up and down his flannel legs.

“Hot chocolate is about ready,” she said, looking at first at Steven, then at her son. “Let’s find a book, and I’ll read to you.”

She tucked the photos back into the card and slid it under her purse.

What next? she asked herself.

Despite her best efforts, Kendall had come to grips with what most seasoned investigators of serial killers learn, piece by bloody piece. The perpetrator is only caught when he makes a stupid mistake.

It was only a matter of time. And yet, at the same time, that meant that someone else would have to die. Someone else would be made to suffer.

The voice on the end of the line was hauntingly familiar. It was husky, slightly modulated in a way that sounded as if he had been out for a run and was trying to rest up as he spoke.

“You fixing dinner for someone special tonight, Ms. Hutchins?”

She looked at her caller ID. The screen indicated: OUT OF AREA, PRIVATE.

“Who is this?” she asked. She was in her car about to unload her groceries when she picked up the phone. She turned off the engine and looked around.

“You know who it is,” he said.

It was him.

“I’m going to call the sheriff.”

“You mean that cop you’ve been screwing? Good for you. Call him, and you’ll miss what I have to say to you.”

Serenity rolled down her window and looked around the apartment complex parking lot. A little boy and his brother rolled past her on skateboards toward the play area. A girl walked her dog. There was no one else around. She looked in the backseat of her car, even though it was packed with groceries.