He hadn’t told anyone they had argued the day before she left. Skye had told him in no uncertain terms that her life was her own and that her college degree would always be there for her, like a savings plan for rainy day.

“But I won’t always be young, Dad. I want to do something other than what you and Mom see for me. I don’t know what it is, but I’ll know it when I see it.”

He had told her she was ungrateful. The next day she was gone.

As he rolled though his e-mails, he noticed that his spam filter was full. He opened the file and, one by one, started deleting the unwanted offers of sex, larger breasts, and a bigger penis. Near the list’s end was a two-meg file-too large for the settings of his free e-mail account.

It was from Skye, sent the day after she disappeared.

He clicked on it.

The message was brief.

Dad, Don’t worry about me. Don’t be mad. I’m going to do what you always told me you wanted me to do: be myself.

I’ll call you tomorrow.

Love, S

The e-mail included a large, uncompressed photograph. Cullen clicked on the image, and slowly the pixels found focus and a picture filled his computer screen. It showed Skye standing on the deck of a Washington State Ferry, the cloud-laden Seattle skyline in the background. She had a big smile on her face and a backpack slung over her shoulder. She was wearing a red hoodie, halfway unzipped. Around her neck was the sterling silver yin-and-yang necklace that her mother had made for her when she graduated from high school. Not only did the sight of his daughter looking at the lens with a smile on her face bring tears to his eyes, it brought him newfound resolve. There would be time to be together in heaven. But not yet.

He forwarded the e-mail to the two women who seemed to care most about his daughter’s fate; neither woman was Skye’s mother.

Cullen tapped out a short note:

Just found this… She made it to Bremerton… Please find my daughter’s killer. She said she’d call me “tomorrow”-there was no tomorrow for Skye.-CB

Kendall Stark opened Cullen Hornbeck’s e-mail on an office computer and deliberated on the photograph while Josh looked over her shoulder.

“She was a beautiful girl,” Josh said, as if such a remark had anything to do with the reason they were viewing the last known image of the Cutter’s second victim.

“Notice something?” Kendall asked.

“One thing jumps out, for sure.” He pointed to the name of the vessel, visible on a flotation device in the foreground. It was familiar to most native western Washingtonians. “She was on the Walla Walla, which means she made it to Bremerton.”

Kendall nodded. “Also, look: she’s not wearing the green blouse she had on when we found her body in Little Clam Bay. That can only mean she either changed her outfit that day-not likely-or she was picked up by someone after she got off the boat.”

Josh processed what Kendall had said. “Not only that,” he said. “She promised to call her dad the next day, which we know she never did. Look at the time stamp on the photo. It was Sunday.”

It was not a night for eighties music. Her cat, Mr. Smith, at her feet and the sounds of a Seattle classical music station filling the apartment, Serenity Hutchins went about the task of checking her e-mail before calling it a night. She resisted the urge to Twitter, or log on to Facebook. Those were extras after a long day. E-mail, however, was just part of staying connected with those friends and family members who really mattered.

She had twenty messages in her in-box, but skipped the others in favor of Cullen Hornbeck’s. She talked to him at least once a week, and for a while, early on in the case, they had traded e-mails daily. But their contact had dwindled, and it pained her.

The picture of Skye on the ferry appeared, and she felt a lump in her throat. Skye was such a beautiful girl, and if Cullen was correct, this image had to have been taken not long-hours, maybe-before she died. She wanted to write back with a request to publish the photograph in the paper. She stopped herself. Partly because it was opportunistic and she knew it. But there was another reason. The pendant around the dead girl’s neck jolted her a little.

She’d seen someone wearing one just like it.

She clicked on the zoom feature and expanded her view. Around Skye’s neck was a silver charm. It was a familiar design, the ancient Chinese symbol of the connection between opposing forces. Good and evil. Light and dark. Laughter and tears. And while its design was common, its construction was unique.

It was silver and black, with the silver part hammered with a hundred tiny dents. Both of the swirls were accented by a diamond.

Chapter Forty-two

February 4, 9:40 p.m.

Bremerton

Pillow talk was always the surest way to get a good scoop. As Serenity Hutchins lay next to Josh Anderson, it crossed her mind that she was using him as much as he was using her. Her youth, her figure, and the pleasure that he gained from being with her were undeniable. He kept saying so. As the light crept across his features while he stared into her eyes, she noticed that he was pleading in a way. It was gross. It was demeaning.

And yet, there she was.

“You feel like going out to eat?” he asked, rolling closer to her on the bed. “Or we could see what’s in the fridge. I’m a pretty good cook, babe.”

“Sounds good,” she lied.

Josh propped his head up on her pillow. She could feel his foot caress her.

“Which?”

“Let’s stay in.”

Serenity knew that what she had been doing was wrong. It was wrong on every level imaginable. She could hear the girls at the paper whisper about how she “slept with her source.” Charlie Keller would probably say something inane like “you gotta do what you gotta do,” as if there could be some excuse for her behavior. She didn’t want the people she knew in town to see her out with Josh Anderson and make judgments about her.

Even though they would be correct.

“Let me cook for you,” she said. “You’ve had a tough day.”

“They’re all tough,” he said, planting his feet on the floor and reaching for a robe slung on the back of a chair.

“What happened over at McCormick Woods this afternoon?”

He looked at her, sizing her up a little, wondering if she only cared about what he could tell her. Not about him. Deep down he knew the answer, and for a beat he felt deflated. It was no longer about how handsome he was, how sexy he was, how charming he could be. A pretty young woman like Serenity Hutchins, he figured, was either looking for money or a father figure. With his string of bad marriages and poor financial decisions, money was not the reason she was attracted to him. As for being a father figure, he knew that she had some unresolved family issues. His own relationship with his son was likely the best measure that he was hardly a paragon of fatherhood.

It was about what he could tell her.

The sex was good, and whatever she was really doing there in his bed seemed a fair tradeoff. She made him feel younger, virile. She made him think that he could still catch the eye of a pretty girl, even when she was clearly using him.

“You’re asking about Godding, correct?”

Serenity tucked a towel around her lithe body, her breasts compressed by the fabric. “I never got the name. I just heard there was something strange going on in Kitsap’s version of Stepford.”

“Whatever I tell you will be in the paper, right?”

“You know the rules. You tell me. I write it.”

They walked into the kitchen of his Bremerton view condo and swung open the door of his stainless-steel refrigerator. The interior held an array of Styrofoam takeout boxes: Chinese, Italian, and something so far gone that it could be either.