“I can wait with you, if you like,” said the officer.

I shook my head. Elsa shook hers.

“Thank you,” I said. “No.”

“Someone will be with you shortly.”

It was only then that we cried, wordless, by the white canvas wall that separated us from the body of our murdered child. We cried to prepare ourselves for what was to come: the fragmenting of bone, the tearing and obliteration of muscle and lung. We cried silently because we could not surrender to the pain, could not let it consume us, could not scream and rail and shout when we were surrounded by other parents who knew—but had not yet seen the proof—that their sons and their daughters would not be coming home.

“Cal Curtis and Elsa Steen?”

I looked at Elsa. Elsa looked at me. She nodded.

“Yes,” I said, my voice as steady as I could keep it.

“Yes,” said Elsa.

“This way.”

Dry earth. Stale air. Disinfectant.

The body had been covered with a hospital sheet, ruched at the thigh. Pearl-white underwear on milk-white skin in the blinding light of the arc lamp.

“Is this how she was found?” I asked.

The officer nodded.

Half-naked, and so very vulnerable. She must have jettisoned the kingfisher dress.

I loved her for wearing that dress. Those iridescent blues, constantly changing. So exuberant; so very unlike Licia.

“Promise me you will have fun,” I had said in the hall.

“Why would you think this time would be any different?” Vee had said. “You know she never does.”

“I promise I will.” Licia smiled a serious smile as she leaned in to kiss me, as if having fun would require preparation.

“Love you, Licia.”

“Love you so much, Dad.”

My little girl.

How unlike herself she was now. How strange her hand looked, palm up, fingertips bleached in the glare of the arc light, like an object I knew but could not recognize.

I turned to the police officer who stood between us and our daughter. She looked exhausted, worn out by other people’s grief.

The officer stepped out of the way. Elsa knelt down, began to draw the sheet down Licia’s torso.

“Please,” said the officer. “You mustn’t touch.”

The child-white skin. The pair of bullet wounds in her shoulder, a finger-length apart, just above the left clavicle. The bruising that radiated outward.

Seawater had emptied the wounds of blood.

Elsa’s hand up by her mouth. “Oh my . . .”

Something odd. Wrong.

I stepped forward, crouched down. A beautiful face. A girl’s face, tiny pink spots the only disturbance on her otherwise perfect skin.

Elsa put three fingers on the strap of the girl’s bra, ran them up and down.

“You mustn’t touch,” said the officer again.

“Elsa,” I said. “Step back.”

“This is not . . .”

“I know . . .”

“But . . .”

The girl’s lips were a fraction tighter than Licia’s. Her forehead a fraction broader; her hairline a fraction higher.