Delia answers. “We’re here on holiday from Vancouver,” she says, starting slowly, staring me in the eye. “Stupidly,” she says, “not realizing how busy things would be here with Memorial Day weekend. I guess you have a lot of war dead to remember in America.”

She stops herself before going on. “We got the last cottage at Mar Vista Beach just down the road.”

“A cancellation,” Carmine says. “Lucky for us.”

“The only thing lucky about this trip,” Delia says.

“We brought our kayaks and put in at Mar Vista. It was early. About seven? Right, Dee?”

She nods. “Right. The current was in our favor,” she goes on. “Took us barely three-quarters of an hour to make it here. I brought some breakfast snacks and some coffee, and we thought Octopus Hole would be a good spot to eat.”

“Right,” he says. “I was paddling behind Dee, so she saw it first.”

“I thought it was a blow-up doll,” she says. “I’m embarrassed to admit that. Not because either one of us have ever seen one in person, but it just seemed like that’s what it was. Naked. Bobbing up and down a little.”

“When we got up close,” Carmine says, “it, or rather she, was in the reeds, and I poked her with my paddle. I thought it was a big joke at first.”

“We both did,” Delia adds. “We don’t think there’s anything funny about it now, of course.”

They tell me how they went to shore as fast as they could and phoned 911.

“Was there anyone else here?” I ask. “Did you see anything?”

“No,” Delia says. “It was just Carmine and me. And her, of course.” She looks in the direction of the body.

“Did you notice any cars?” I ask. “Trucks? Other vehicles?”

Again an emphatic no.

I watch Montrose talk to some new arrivals at the crime scene. I know he’s wondering if the killer has shown up. He’s a big believer in that. Me? I’ve never seen it happen.

“This place is probably packed with people in the day,” Carmine says. “But it was morning. The air still had a chill in it. Besides—and I mean no offense by this—Americans aren’t early risers, right?”

I offer a faint smile from across the table. “Many aren’t,” I say. “You’re definitely onto something.”

I take down the rest of the Winters’ information. She’s an administrator at the University of British Columbia. He works for Muji, a large Japanese retailer, building out new stores in the city. I know for a fact that they will tell this story over and over when they get back home. In time, they’ll forget about all of the things that made their holiday special up until the moment they found Sophie Warner’s lifeless body floating in the pristine, blue waters of what many consider America’s only fjord.

They will only talk about the dead lady in the water.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

ADAM

I return to the Wisteria to pack my things. Sophie’s things. What else am I supposed to do? I could stay here parked outside the cabin and cry. I almost want to do that, but I can’t find the tears. I’m in that place where it all seems like something happening to someone else. Not me. There is no reason to stay another minute, I know. Sophie is dead. She’s been found. I know everything that has happened is extremely real. I grasp that everything that happened is decisive, final.