“For the moment, Mike, while you put the pieces together, I’m quite confident that the first two bodies autopsied-one male, one female-are accidental drowning,” Pomeroy said, stepping to the table and lifting the sheet to fold it down to the waist of the young woman we had seen earlier, at the temporary morgue. “This is Jane Doe Number One.”

Her eyes were closed now. The auburn hair had been brushed neatly off her face in the postautopsy washing, revealing an uneven line of scrapes and cuts across her forehead.

Pomeroy pointed his finger to the small bruise on her left chest. “That’s it.”

“That’s what?” Mike asked.

“This girl was stabbed to death.”

“The mark is so small it looks like a bullet wound.”

“That’s what I thought, too, at first. But it’s a single thrust, right into the heart. Someone knew what he was doing, or got very lucky.”

“A knife did that?” I asked.

“Not likely. Something pointed and very sharp. Something with a fine, thin tip.”

Homicidal stab wounds usually involved some cutting as well as thrusting, the knife pulled down or up, twisted during its insertion or removal. The injury was usually longer than the widest part of the blade.

“What then?”

“A sharp pair of scissors, maybe. A pick of some sort.”

“Crime Scene take any weapons off the ship?” I asked Mike.

“Control your control freak instincts, Coop. That sloop crossed the ocean. There’s a galley with kitchen equipment to prepare food for hundreds of people and a boiler room with enough tools to keep the damn thing afloat. That’s not to mention that half the men on board had homemade shivs and all kinds of metal to protect themselves. And don’t ask me to start dragging the ocean bottom tonight, okay?”

“We will need to see every sharp object you find,” Pomeroy said.

“Yeah, Doc,” Mike said. “What kind of public statement will you make about her death?”

“That’s up to the chief. To my view, Jane here was stabbed to death and disposed of to simulate drowning. Something we don’t see very often.”

“Why not?”

“Because, Alex, it would be fairly easy to discover the bullet hole or track the internal hemorrhaging of a stab wound at autopsy. Your killer must have counted on this body not being found for days, if at all.”

“The vicious riptide,” Mike said. “We’re not done waiting for bodies to wash up.”

“Far likelier for this girl to have been dragged out in the ocean. If and when she came ashore, the odds are pretty good that she would have been skeletonized. All those marine creatures would have gotten to work on her. You’ll see, if there are more deaths in the next few days.”

“So almost the perfect crime, Doc, right? One well-placed thrust between the ribs and overboard with the mutineers. Jane just surfed the wrong way.”

“Possibly.”

“So I’m looking for someone who heard her squealing like a stuck pig just before the other desperate souls decided to jump.”

“Those bruises,” I said, pointing to the marks on the young woman’s forehead, “are those-and her hands-signs of a struggle?”

Pomeroy lifted the girl’s left hand to point out the abrasions on the wrinkled skin of her knuckles. “They’re not defensive wounds, Alex. Nothing to suggest that she struggled. She was dragged by the tide along the shallow bottom of the ocean, drifting below the water’s surface. Those scrapes here, on her forehead, and her knees are all postmortem, all superficial.”

“I’m just thinking about Mike’s comment about her squealing. Someone certainly took advantage of all the commotion if she was killed after the ship beached itself on the reef. That should help us once we get to talk to these people.”

“I’ll bet half the boatload was wailing and screaming,” Mike said. “You know how long she was dead before she was tossed in?”

“The waterlogging makes it hard to determine lividity,” Pomeroy said. “There’s a loss of translucency of the upper layers of the skin, can you see? The internal organs display lividity normally, though. I’d say she wasn’t dead many hours before she was found.”

“We’re not talking about Jane being on ice since she left home?”

“No, we’re not.”

“How about her clothing?” I asked. “There must have been blood all over it.”

On a workbench in a far corner of the room, Jane Doe’s clothes had been laid out to dry. “I’m afraid they won’t be all that much help. Yes, exsanguination was the cause of death, Alex, but most of the bleeding went into the body cavities.”

I knew that was common in stabbings that didn’t involve the head or neck. Often, the track of the wound closed up after the weapon that pierced the flesh was withdrawn.

“This was on Jane’s upper body, more or less,” Pomeroy said, pointing at a black fleece jacket with a zippered front and a hood. “Those tears in it may well have been caused by the ocean floor. They’re too ragged, too uneven, to have been cut.”

Mike pulled a pair of latex gloves from his rear pants pocket and lifted the jacket to examine it. “Still damp. Looks pretty chewed up.”

“That hole in the chest area is a spot we cut out for the lab. I assume it’s blood, but it’s a pretty discreet little stain. Easy to miss in light of all the action.”

“Any labels?” I asked. I wanted to know where the clothing had been manufactured and, if very lucky, where in the Ukraine it had been sold.

“Nada,” Mike said. “Your generic sweat jacket.”

“And the pants?”

“Kinda look like pajama bottoms, don’t they?” he said, holding up a pair of thin cotton pants with a drawstring waist. They had also been shredded, presumably, while being tossed around in the sea. “Brrrrrrrrrr. Guess she didn’t mind the cold very much.”

Mike looked in the waistband and along the interior seam of each leg but shook his head to indicate he had found no markings.

“Underwear?” I asked.

“It’s a sports bra, right?” Mike said. He hoisted it up with his fingertip. It appeared to be some sort of Lycra stretch material, again with no label.

“No panties,” Pomeroy said. “Probably set to bunk down for the night.”

“That’s odd. I’d have thought they’d all be warmly dressed and ready to be unloaded for their arrival in America,” I said.

“Maybe she was offed while she was suiting up,” Mike said. “It doesn’t take every broad in the world as long to get herself presentable as it does you.”

Pomeroy looked at me for a response or change of expression. People who had worked with Mike and me for years tried to guess at whether his personal jabs reflected an intimacy that meant we had crossed professional lines. I sometimes wondered the same, but had put up with them for so long that now they rarely distracted me.

“How about the two drowning victims?” I asked.

“The young man was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. Very American style,” Pomeroy said. “I think my assistant said they were made in China.”

“And Jane Doe Number Two?”

“Her things are spread out across the hall, if you’d like to see them. A coarse sweater that looks homemade.”

“Intact?” I asked.

“Practically unraveled,” Pomeroy said, screwing up his face as he searched for words to describe the items. “Her underwear was in tatters. Sort of dingy-looking stuff. And both girls had tattoos.”

“Did you know that?” Mike asked me.

“No. Are they the same?”

Pomeroy covered the victim’s head-as though he didn’t want her watching while he exposed her lower torso to us-and folded back the sheet from her feet up to her waist. “The other girl has a small flag.”

“Blue on top, yellow below?”

“Yes, Mike.”

“The Ukrainian flag-they were all over the ship too.”

“Where? I mean, on what part of her body?”

“On her shoulder blade, Alex. The right one.”

“But this girl-Jane Doe Number One-where is hers?”

Pomeroy moved his gloved hand along Jane Doe #1’s thigh. “It’s a flower of some sort. Looks to me like a-I don’t know. I’m not into gardening.”