Chapter Fifty-two

March 31, 1 p.m.

Vashon Island , Washington

The water was corduroy as bands of blue and gray etched the surface of Colvos Passage, the mile-wide stretch of Puget Sound that separates Kitsap County from Vashon Island. The island’s western side is a sparse mix of beachfront cottages and farmhouses facing an equally rural southern Kitsap County. Robert Carmichael and his sister, Leah, were bored out of their minds as they took a break from their grandparents’ place up the hill from Lisabeula, a park that had once been a campsite for Scouts and Native Americans long before Scouting was anyone’s idea of fun. The teens hiked down the steep road along a creek to the five-acre park. Fifteen-year-old Robert was hoping to get a glimpse of a pod of whales, as he had during the dull visit the year before. Leah, almost fourteen, didn’t care what they did. Their grandmother had been on Leah’s case for text messaging when she should be “engaging” with human beings.

Grandma didn’t get it.

They followed a trail to a madrona tree that had slipped down the hillside, its red bark rubbed off, leaving a green and brown indentation where others had tied a rope swing. During a hot summer’s high tide, it was the perfect setup for swinging and jumping into the water. The tide was out, and the wind coming down from the south brought a brisk chill. March was a far cry from summer weather.

Robert grabbed the rope, stepped up on the big knot at its base, and gripped another knot above his shoulders.

“Watch this,” he said, looking over at his sister, who was frustrated with her Sidekick.

“There’s no signal here. This sucks,” she said.

“So what? Engage with people, remember,” Robert said as he started to move over the beach toward the water.

“If you were a person, I might.”

Robert kept going as his sister dug her feet into the rocky beach, a disinterested gaze on her face that she’d perfected. He caught a glimpse of something red next to a silvery and gray remnant of a fir.

“Over by that driftwood,” he said, “someone left a backpack. Check it out.”

“Last time we found a dead harbor seal here,” Leah said. “Anything would be a step up from that stinky thing.”

She got up, put her phone in her back pocket, and walked over to the log. She bent at the knees to get a closer look.

“Hey, it’s a purse. It’s been out in the water. Not as gross as a dead seal, but not so great, either.”

Robert jumped off the rope swing and landed with a thud, his feet digging two deep holes in the gritty beach.

“Let me see. Could be some money in it.”

“If there is any, you better split it with me.”

Robert shot his sister a dirty look. “If there is any money, we’re going to give it back to the owner, stupid.”

“I hate you, Mr. Perfect. Whatever.” Her eyes widened all of a sudden. “That’s a Dooney,” she said as her brother picked up the soggy red leather purse.

“A what?”

“Dooney & Bourke.” Leah squatted next to Robert, who hadn’t a clue as to what she was saying. “An expensive purse. Too bad it’s ruined.”

He undid the clasp and dumped the contents of the purse onto a flat space atop the driftwood. A makeup brush; a lipstick; a pair of sunglasses; a set of car keys on a circular key fob with the DB logotype on it; a soggy packet of tissues; a tampon that had done what it was supposed to do-absorb liquid; a hairbrush; a tin of Altoids; a Mont Blanc pen; and a wallet that matched the red leather of the purse.

Leah didn’t bother telling her brother that the pen was expensive too.

“Not much here,” Robert said, opening the soggy wallet. “No money.”

Leah started to put her earbuds back in place. “That sucks too.”

From behind a clear plastic shield, fogged from the elements, the teenage boy retrieved a driver’s license. Although the photo had flaked off, the name was still legible: CAROL GODDING.

“Let’s head back to Grandma’s,” Robert said. He scooped up the contents of the soggy purse and put everything back inside.

Leah scrunched her nose in an exaggerated manner. “You’re bringing that?”

Robert shrugged as they started up the hill. “You said it was expensive.”

“When it wasn’t waterlogged. Now it’s a piece of crap. But if you’re going to keep it, can I have the pen?”

Melody rubbed the interior of the freezer with a rag soaked in diluted bleach. There had been so much to do to get the place ready for the new girl-the new toy. She could hear her husband laugh as the girl in the next room begged for her life. She hated the sounds the playthings made. It wasn’t because she felt sorry for them; it was more out of embarrassment. She knew that no amount of pleading or begging could set any of them free.

Not until Sam had done what he wanted.

Not until she’d done what Sam commanded her to do.

The freezer gleamed, and she noticed that she had missed a spot of blood. She wiped it again. Gone…then back.

She noticed for the first time that her knuckles were bleeding.

“Damn you, bitch!” she called out. “You made me bleed. Daddy! She made me bleed!”

The moaning in the other room stopped.

Good, Melody thought. She shut up. Good girl.

The freezer sparkling clean, Melody set down her cloth and took a pair of brand-new steak knives from the Fun House’s kitchen drawer. She hooked her fingers through a spool of fence wire and started toward the bedroom door.

Sam summoned her from another room.

“Coming!” she called out.

Elizabeth Carmichael studied the kids’ find. A concerned look pinched her normally tranquil face as she considered the sodden purse, the pen, and the wallet her grandchildren had found on the beach near her Vashon Island home.

“Did you see anything else down there?” she asked.

“There’s nothing to see, Grandma. Just some water and seagulls. Real exciting.” Leah wanted nothing more than to have her grandmother send her to her room so she could listen to music and text her friends at home in Seattle ’s North End.

“Leah, this is serious. We need to call the police about this,” Elizabeth Carmichael said, going for her kitchen telephone. “I’ve heard this woman’s name on the news.”

Before she shrugged it all off and plugged her iPod earbuds back in, Leah couldn’t resist getting one more comment in. “Can’t we just take it to a lost and found somewhere on the island? You must have a lost and found around here somewhere.”

“We have no such thing,” Elizabeth said as she dialed the number for the King County Sheriff’s Office, which served the island with a small station and a couple of patrol cars.

“My grandchildren unearthed something on the beach at Lisabeula,” she said. “I think it belonged to that woman missing from Port Orchard. She was on the news. Carol Godding.”

After her grandmother hung up, Leah eyed the pen one more time.

“You’re not keeping that,” Robert said. “Get real, Leah. This stuff belonged to a woman who might have been killed by the Kitsap Cutter.”

Robert Carmichael watched the news too.

Kendall stood on the rocky shore and looked west across Colvos Passage to Kitsap County. A dog barked. Gulls swooped down into the wake of a green and white Foss tugboat towing a two-block-long boom of peeled logs toward Olympia or Tacoma. A deckhand tossed a cigarette into the water. Kendall had never been on that side of Vashon Island before. The view of the southern- and easternmost part of the county was somewhat deceptive. Million-dollar residences that aspired to look like Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard shored up the frontage along the passage. Those were the homes of the people of means; seldom were they visited by the likes of her and her badge.