Page 96 of Water's Edge

“The body couldn’t have been here very long. If the tide could bring this monster in, a body would have been pulled out when the tide went out.”

“Good thinking,” I say.

I look at the pictures. Dina’s body was on this side of the trunk. Spread out in the same way as the other bodies, about five feet from where the roots stretched out. I don’t see any drag marks in the picture. I drag a boot across the moist sand.

“She was dumped here after high tide,” I say. “She had to have been found within hours. The coroner estimated she’d been dead for no less than twenty-four hours.”

“So where was she killed?” Ronnie asks. “Where was she being kept before he dumped her here?”

“Clay said she had very faint scuffs or scrape marks on the skin of her knees and elbows. I didn’t see anything in the autopsy report about carpet fibers, did you?”

Ronnie shakes her head.

We clambered over a hundred feet of sharp rocks to get here. I wonder if the body was recovered by boat.

“Did the report say how the body was recovered?”

Ronnie looks back the way we came.

“I doubt they carried her out. Roy was the one who spotted her.” She started nodding her head. “I know what you’re thinking. Roy loaded her on his boat. He pilots theIntegrity. It has a rough deck. That could have caused the scuff marks.”

My job is safe. That wasn’t what I was thinking at all. That wasn’t even a possibility. The marks were only on her knees and elbows. Unless she crawled around on the deck, it couldn’t happen. But it could have happened if she was confined in the trunk of a vehicle while she was alive. Or in a house with carpeting.

“Where were the scuff marks?” I ask. School is in.

She thinks only a moment, to her credit. “It couldn’t have been on theIntegrity. The marks were made while she was alive. Carpeting. There’s no carpeting on any of our boats.”

“Where do you find carpeting?” I ask.

“A house.” She snapped her fingers. “And the trunk of a car. But she would have had to have been alive to get the marks. Maybe it was when she was kidnapped? She was transported in the trunk of a car.”

“My guess is that the marks came from carpeting in a room where she was being held,” I say. “It was a carpeted room, so probably not a basement or a toolshed. I know that doesn’t limit the location much.”

“But if we get a suspect, we know what areas to search for evidence,” Ronnie says.

This girl is quick on the uptake. But she won’t be sticking around after the case is finished. She’s on rotation and only has today left. Then on to somewhere, maybe Records or Dispatch or riding with a sworn deputy on patrol.

“Pull up the next location,” I tell her. “Crane isn’t far away.”

“Are Clay and Larry going to join us?”

“They’re busy,” I lie. I don’t want anyone going to our possible witnesses before we do. It can be hazardous for their health. For example, Qassim Hadir. We started looking for Boyd and his roommate, and they’ll both end up dead before we find them.

Forty-Seven

I follow State Route 20 and turn north onto SR-101. Ronnie’s GPS leads us to Crane, a small unincorporated town of about a dozen households. I thought we were lost twice before we found a row of houses with a view of the water. Margie’s home was a neat little bungalow with a handicap access ramp and lots and lots of yard gnomes and potted plants.

The man who answers the door looks to be in his nineties. A woman in a wheelchair behind him is older, or maybe I think so because of the wispy white hair that barely hides her scalp. They are Mr. and Mrs. Ivy. They didn’t know Margie Benton—had never heard of her—and the neighbors on both sides of them had only been there for a couple of months. The Ivys, like most of the elderly I’ve encountered on this job, invite us in for coffee and maybe to stay and talk for a few hours. I decline the invitation.

“Let’s go to the Alibi and see if anyone there remembers her,” I tell Ronnie. “No point in talking to the neighbors.”

We’re in Port Angeles in fifteen minutes by skirting SR-101 and sticking to backroads. It’s almost noon. Our choices for food are McDonald’s, Wendy’s, or the Asian Buffet. I drive past the Port Angeles US Border Patrol building and turn in at Wendy’s. We eat in the car. Ronnie has pulled up a map of Port Angeles.

“Where did you go to college?” I ask to be polite.

“Washington State University. My dad wanted me to be a lawyer and join his practice.”

“But you went into law enforcement. Why?”

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