“Look at how precise this is,” Dr. Waterman said. “This was no hacking but a careful-and I’d say skilled-decapitation.”

Josh popped an Altoid mint into his mouth, as if the fresh taste of the candy would mitigate the stench of the room. “Who has that kind of-as you put it-skill? A taxidermist? A French Revolution reenactor?”

Birdy let a slight smile break across her usually serious face.

“That’ll be your job to figure out,” she said. “I’m just calling it like I see it, Josh.”

Next, scalpel gleaming, she made her Y-incision, slicing the skin shoulder to shoulder, then down the sternum.

“I suspected this,” she said.

Kendall bent closer. “What’s that?”

“See the crystals here?” She pointed to the edge of her scalpel next to the heart. Thin wafers of ice glistened like tiny diamonds on deep-red velvet.

Kendall indicated she did.

“This lady’s been kept in a freezer.”

Josh Anderson’s cell phone sounded, but he let it go to voice mail.

A beat later, Kendall’s buzzed. Thinking it might be something about Cody at school, she snapped off her glove and reached for her phone. It wasn’t the school. It was the number for Serenity Hutchins. She ignored it.

“Your reporter girlfriend is certainly quick on the story,” she said to Josh, who seemed to shrug it off. Birdy regarded the two detectives and spoke up.

“Now that you mention Ms. Hutchins,” Birdy said, “I was wondering how she was able to write such an incisive story on victim two.”

Josh looked a little embarrassed, his face darkening. He stepped away from the autopsy table and put his hands out as if to push back.

“I didn’t tell her about the cuts,” he said.

“Of course you didn’t,” Kendall said. “You’d never kiss and tell.”

“But I didn’t,” he said. He looked intently at both women. “Not this time.”

October 15, noon

Bremerton

The hospital chapel had seen ten thousand tears. Maybe a million. It was a dour little room with four pewlike benches upholstered in dusty olive and facing a simple brass and wood cross. Very modern, or at least it was modern in the 1970s, when having a hospital chapel was part and parcel of dealing with dead patients.

Donna Solomon said nothing at first. She simply buckled over, hugging herself, as Kendall Stark told her the news.

“I’m sorry,” Kendall said. “This is such sad, sad information to take in.”

Donna found the strength to draw in a deep breath. Her eyes were flooded by then, and tears started to pour down her cheeks, collecting in the corner of her mouth.

“It is, it is…” she finally said.

“No one should ever have to go through this. Few people have.”

“Thank you for telling me before the papers put something out there.”

Kendall put her arms around Mrs. Solomon. Her daughter had been missing since mid-April. She’d thought, hoped, that Marissa had gone somewhere to be with a boyfriend.

“I always thought she’d come back. She did love her baby, just as I loved her.”

“I know.”

“Can I see her?”

Kendall shook her head. “That wouldn’t be a good idea. Her body isn’t completely intact. I’m sorry.”

Donna Solomon dabbed at her eyes with a tissue from a dispenser on a table.

“What do you mean, intact?”

“The body was in bad shape, I’m afraid.”

Kendall didn’t want to tell her the details just then. She studied Donna’s reaction, and she seemed to be satisfied.

Devastated. Resigned. Satisfied.

Kendall Stark could have cried when she saw the headline in the Lighthouse the next morning. It was beyond anything she could have imagined.

HEADLESS IN SOUTH KITSAP:

THE CUTTER STRIKES AGAIN!

Despite the fact that Kendall was suspicious that Josh had tipped off the young woman, there was the distinct possibility that Serenity had gotten the information from the jogger or others at the scene. Even so, she poked her head into Josh’s office to give him a piece of her mind. He was gone. Next on her list was Charlie Keller.

She wouldn’t even bother with Serenity.

She dialed his number, and the editor got on the line.

“Big happenings in Port Orchard, Detective.”

“Look, Charlie, I like you. I like the paper. I don’t even mind it when you get things wrong. But don’t you have any kind of decency over there?”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“How did you get that information? Couldn’t it have waited a day before you blasted it to everyone that the victim had been decapitated?”

“The news doesn’t wait.”

Kendall sighed. Of course he was right.

“No offense, Charlie, but the Lighthouse is hardly CNN. It could have waited.”

“Ouch,” he said.

“Don’t you care about the victim’s family? They’d barely been notified.”

“That’s your job.”

There was no point in the call, and Kendall Stark knew it. She’d dialed the Lighthouse editor to give him a piece of her mind about ethics, dignity, and concern.

All of that was lost on that bunch.

Serenity watched her boss turn off his office speakerphone. Despite Charlie Keller’s bravado during the call with Kitsap County detective Kendall Stark, he didn’t look happy. In front of him was a stack of messages from national media outlets ranging from Fox News to CNN. Kitsap was making the news in the way that forgotten little burgs gain overnight notoriety when evil presents itself.

“She was pretty hot, wasn’t she?” she asked.

Charlie Keller fanned the messages on the desk in front of him.

“Yeah, she was. Too bad. I like her. She does good work, and we don’t advance a story very often without the help of the police. No offense to you.”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at, Boss.”

He shook his head, not looking up at her. His eyes still riveted on the messages. “You know. And I’m not saying that you’re not doing a great job. But really, it won’t look good for the paper if some blogger points out that our reporter is getting her info from her cop boyfriend.”

Serenity looked surprised. She hadn’t said a word about seeing Josh Anderson.

“Well, for your information, Josh didn’t tell me this info. Not this time. I have more than one.”

“I’m sure you do,” he said. “But let’s watch this, okay? These things have a way of biting people in the ass. And you don’t want your ass chewed, believe me.”

Serenity nodded. “You’re right. I don’t.”

Jamie Lyndon was petite, but she had nerves of pure carbide. If she hadn’t been too slight in her build to take on all the physical requirements of the qualification exam, she would have been happy to be a corrections officer at the Kitsap County jail. At a breath under five feet and not quite a hundred pounds soaked to the skin, she eventually found her niche with a headset firmly in place as a 911 operator working at Kitsap County’s central communication center, CENCOM. Less risky. Less fun, to be sure. But her cool demeanor always served her well in a job that demanded calmness on the rocks with a splash of humor.

“Must be a full moon,” she said to her coworker, Sal, as they fielded call after call. “Werewolves and teenagers, if you can tell either apart on a night like this.”

“Yup, the board’s on fire tonight, for sure,” returned Sal, a part-time communications officer, part-time student, and full-time single dad. “That’s what we live for around here. Love it when we’re busy.”

“Me too-” Jamie began to answer before swiveling around to face her console and another call.

“9-1-1. What are you reporting?”

“Hello?”

The voice on the other end of the line was female, soft-spoken. So much so that Jamie couldn’t quite make out what she was saying.