The body she was kneeling over looked bloodless by comparison. Archie had seen a lot of carnage in the Beauty Killer days. He had seen bodies that had been gutted and electrocuted and dismembered. He’d seen the remains of people who had been eaten alive by rats. He had smelled burned flesh, and putrid flesh, bleached flesh, broiled flesh, and bodies that had been skinned and baked and boiled. This girl had no smell. The frigid lake had slowed decomposition. Even dead, she looked cold. It appeared as if she’d been submerged, but had been out of the water long enough that she was no longer soaking wet. Her blue dress was damp and stained with lake muck, but the hem had dried enough that it moved in the breeze off the lake, and her wet hair had dried to the point that thin wisps of bright blond were visible. Her arms were at her sides, palms up, her fingers curled just enough that Archie could make out the silver glittery polish on her nails. Her feet were bare. Her toenail polish matched her fingernails. She seemed peaceful, her eyes closed and faintly sunken, a hint of gray where her lips closed in something close to a smile. Yet her death had been far from peaceful. Ugly red gashes cut across her neck and chest, creating open fissures of flesh. The blue slip dress she had on was a wet second skin, revealing every bony notch on her, every cleft and joint. Bodies floated with the head and arms down, backside up, and could get fairly battered, caught in boat propellers, knocked against debris. But this girl hadn’t been a floater. She was too fresh. A corpse in water took a week to bloom enough bacteria in the gut to gas up sufficiently to float, longer in frigid water like this. Besides, Archie had seen this girl just last night.

Archie looked over at Henry. “I know her,” he said.

Henry’s mouth opened.

“Who the hell are you?” Dr. L.L.Bean asked them both before Henry could speak. The ID clipped to the pocket of her plaid wood shirt said she was the Clackamas County ME and that her name was Belinda Green.

“Major Case out of Portland,” Henry said, his eyes still on Archie.

Archie said it again, his stomach tightening, emphasizing every word: “I know her.” He saw her in his mind’s eye, her hand on the bathroom door, face flushed from alcohol. Twenty-two, she’d said, though he hadn’t believed her. She looked older now. “She was at the party,” he said. “She was with a friend. They’d both been drinking. I only saw her for a few minutes. Her friend was in the bathroom, sick. This girl was standing outside. We spoke briefly. But I don’t know her name.”