Seattle has a homeless crisis, but there are so many subcategories to the population: The single moms living in shelters and transitional housing. The mentally lost men who wear ten layers of clothes while dragging three shopping carts full of junk down the street. The druggies and runaways squatting in abandoned buildings. The anarchists and romantics camping in the woods. She guesses this man was one of the latter, given his gear and the organization of the camp. She spots a Misfits and E.L.F. sticker on a Nalgene water bottle that lies on its side. In the tent he will likely have soiled, broken-spined paperbacks by Kerouac and Abbey. She guesses his body will be marked by a tattoo of the tree of life, an ankh, or a yin-yang symbol. He will have a social media account with #eco or #green in the bio.

She picks her way down the trail and finds Augustino Chives on his cell—talking to someone from the Park Service, it sounds like. He waves to her and motions with one finger to indicate he’ll be free in a minute. His eyes are turned down at the corners, giving him a permanent look of sadness. He has a graying crew cut and the body of a former wrestler—broad shoulders, short legs, a paunch. He wears his standard uniform of fleece and khakis. His voice should sound like gravel, but there’s something whispery and gentle about it.

She pokes her head into the tent first. Two sleeping bags have been zipped together, and they’re deeply bloodied, almost jellied. There is a flashlight lantern near the pillow. A mesh pocket is sewn into the wall, and a copy of The Dharma Bums and the Audubon Society’s Field Guide to Mushrooms are tucked into it. At the foot of the tent is a duffel stuffed with clothes. She spots a sports bra amid the tangle of flannels and thermal long sleeves. Nothing so far surprises her except the hiking boots. Two sets of them—a man’s size twelve and woman’s nine—sit just outside the tent, within arm’s reach of the flap.

The medical examiners unfold and unzip a body bag that looks like a loose, black pupa. But before they can hoist the body out of the water and into it, she says, “Stop.”

They look at her and slump their shoulders, clearly unhappy to deal with her, ready to call it a night. “Shit,” one says. “It’s her.” They mean something else. Names she has been called before. Control freak. Wack-job. Psycho. Bitch.