He was about to climb the steps to the second floor when he noticed the blinking light on his answering machine. He hit the play button and leaned against the wall while the message played.

“Beck, Warren Daley over here in Ballard. I got your message but this is the first chance I’ve had to return the call. Listen, all hell’s breaking loose over here, so call me as soon as you get this. I’m hoping to God you called me because you have something that will help make some sense out of this, because I sure as hell don’t understand it. Never seen anything like this in my life. Call my cell…doesn’t matter what time. God knows I’ll be up…”

Warren Daley repeated his cell phone number twice, and Beck made a note of it. Whatever was going on in Ballard did not sound good. Beck dialed the number and identified himself when Daley answered the phone. He listened carefully as the police chief told him what they’d found in Ballard earlier that evening.

“Where are you now?” Beck asked.

“Still at the scene. I expect we’ll be here for a while.”

“Mind if I drive down there?”

“I wish you would, buddy. I really wish you would. It’s the last house on Crawford, where it dead ends.”

Beck hung up and went right out the front door. In his haste he’d forgotten he did not have his patrol car and had to go back inside the house for the keys to his Jeep.

This was not going to be a good night, he told himself as he backed the Jeep out of the drive. A bad night for everyone involved, but especially for the family of Colleen Preston.

At first glance, the thing that lay on the front porch of the small white Cape Cod house looked to be anywhere from five and a half to six feet in length. It was sort of oblong, sort of opaque, and in the porch light’s yellow glare, it was impossible to identify.

The fact that five or six cops were standing around the object didn’t help. From where Beck parked his Jeep, he could see the vague shape and size, and little else. But since he already knew what had been found on Paul and Kitty Preston’s front porch a few short hours ago, Beck didn’t need to figure it out.

He showed his badge to the first officer he met at the foot of the driveway, the one charged with making certain no civilians came within fifty feet of the house. The last thing Chief Daley wanted was to subject any of the citizens of Ballard to the sad and strange cocoon that held the remains of Colleen Preston.

Beck softly greeted one of the local detectives and continued on toward the porch. Upon hearing Beck’s voice, Warren Daley stepped out of the glare and came down the steps as if he carried the weight of the entire Preston family on his back. In a way, he did.

“Jesus, Beck, this is the weirdest shit I’ve ever seen.” Daley, nearing sixty with a slight paunch and a full head of salt-and-pepper hair, looked pale, even in the light cast by the lamps set up by the CSIs who were hovering over the form on the porch. “You gotta see it to believe it.”

He motioned Beck forward, then grabbed his elbow and led him to the porch. Beck shook free and climbed the steps, his eyes on the object that lay just outside the front door. From inside the house came a steady sound of anguished sobs. Beck approached the object which glistened in the light and knelt down.

Inside a cocoon of clear plastic wrap Colleen Preston lay trapped, tightly enclosed from her feet to the top of her head. A closer look revealed that her feet were side by side, her arms behind her, a tiny portion of her tongue showing between her closed lips, her lifeless eyes bulging.

“Holy Mother of God,” Beck whispered.

“Yeah. My thoughts exactly,” Daley said from behind.

“Her parents found her like this?” asked Beck.

“Her younger brother. Sixteen years old.” Daley shook his head. “Imagine coming home and finding this waiting on your front porch.”

“Where’s the kid now?”

“Inside with his parents and one of the state detectives. I had to call them in. I don’t have the crime scene techs to handle something like this, don’t have the lab. The usual, we handle okay. Better than okay. But shit like this…I’m not too proud to say when something’s over my head.” Daley shook his head again. “This is serious shit.”

“Can’t argue that,” Beck muttered.

The county medical examiner’s van pulled up and a woman in khaki shorts and a dark tank top got out. As she walked toward the house, she pulled on a dark gray smock that covered her to right below her knees. She reached the porch and climbed the steps, her eyes fixed upon the form on the deck.

“ Warren. Beck.” She greeted them without looking away from the body.

“Viv,” the two chiefs responded at the same time.

“Sorry it took me so long,” she said, her full attention on the shiny opaque cocoon. “I was at my niece’s birthday party in Annapolis. Traffic on the bridge coming back was a bitch.”

She knelt down, much as Beck had done.

“What happened to you, sweetheart?” She crooned almost inaudibly. “Who did this to you?”

She opened the bag she carried and took out a pair of plastic gloves, which she pulled on. She drew closer to the form and leaned over it, studying the contorted face of the victim for a few long minutes.

“I don’t see any reason to prolong this here, with her family inside.” The ME looked up at Warren Daley. “Let’s get her over to the morgue and I’ll unwrap her there. It’s obvious she was killed elsewhere, and the CSIs can continue to look for evidence here. But there’s nothing to be gained in unwrapping her on her front porch.”

“It’s your call, of course,” Daley replied.

Dr. Vivian Reilly stood and muttered what sounded to Beck like “one sick bastard,” then called to one of the technicians to bring a body bag. She stood between Daley and Beck and watched as the victim was removed from the scene.

“I’ll give you a call as soon as I have something,” she told Chief Daley before walking toward her van.

“Viv, you ever see anything like this before?” Daley called after her. “You hear about something like this?”

She didn’t bother to turn around, she merely shook her head emphatically and kept on walking.

“I suspect if there’d been another like this in the area, we would have heard,” Beck commented.

“That’s some sick shit.” Daley watched the van pull away.

“ Warren, have you spoken with Rich Meyer in Cameron?” Beck asked.

“Not for a few weeks, why?” Daley’s eyes were still on the van’s taillights, just barely visible as they rounded a bend in the road.

“You got that e-mail from him about the girl who disappeared a few weeks before the Preston girl?”

Daley turned to look at Beck.

“You think there’s a connection?” He stared at Beck. “You think the same guy…?”

“I don’t know what to think.” Beck shrugged. “I’m just saying, a girl went missing in Cameron a few weeks before Colleen Preston. I was just wondering if you and Meyer had been in touch about it; if you knew whether or not the Kenneher girl had turned up.”

“I’ll give him a call first thing in the morning,” Chief Daley told him. “No point in getting him out of bed now. Not much he can do at this hour anyway.”

“Chief.” One of the Ballard officers motioned to Daley, and he excused himself before walking away.

Beck stood to the side of the house and watched the state detectives comb the Preston ’s front lawn for any evidence that might have been left by whoever dumped the girl’s body on the porch for her family to discover. After ten minutes, he waved to Daley, who was discussing something with a few of the state troopers. Daley waved back and called, “Thanks.” Beck nodded and walked down the drive to his Jeep, the image of what had once been a beautiful young woman firmly in his mind’s eye.

What kind of person did such a thing?