Death had not been easy.

Homicide Detective Carina Kincaid stared at the dead, naked body of the young woman, avoiding the wide-eyed terror etched on her face. Her mouth was gagged, but what drew Carina's eye was the word slut scrawled in thick black marker across her chest. A small red rose was tattooed on her left breast.

The victim lay in a disjointed fetal position, dried blood on her legs and vicious red welts on her breasts indicating her murder had followed a sexual assault. In California, that made the killer eligible for the death penalty. One small step toward justice, but it didn't satisfy Carina. This Jane Doe would still be dead.

She glanced away from the body, just for a moment, and watched the waves roll up the beach. Back and forth, calming. Her cheeks stung from the early morning salt air, but in just a few hours she'd be tugging off her windbreaker as the sun peaked over San Diego.

When she first arrived on scene with Jim Gage, supervisor of the Forensic Field Services Unit of the San Diego Police Department, they immediately documented that the evidence had been contaminated. Three layers of heavy-duty green garbage bags had been cut away from the body. The park ranger who had discovered what he thought was trash, hadn't been able to lift it, so he sliced it open. What had he been thinking?

"I didn't think there was a body inside," he'd said when Carina questioned him. Idiot.

By the tension in Jim's jaw, he was pissed. But true to form he didn't say anything. He never said anything, which had been the primary reason Carina broke up with him last year. She could handle his moodiness--she had four brothers, she could put up with almost anything--but his refusal to talk about what bugged him, on the job and off, was a relationship breaker. Or, maybe, they hadn't loved each other enough to make it work.

Carina glanced behind them when she heard a car approach. The coroner's van pulled into the empty parking lot and a short, trim, well-dressed Asian man exited the vehicle. Assistant Coroner Ted Chen, the perfectionist. Carina always liked it when he pulled one of her cases, but he still made her nervous. She always triple-checked her reports when he was the responding coroner, afraid to appear the novice even after nearly ten years on the job.

"Doctor Chen is here," she told Jim.

"Hmm." Jim finished photographing the body and surrounding area, then glanced up as Doctor Chen crossed the sand to where the body lay. "Hello, Ted."

"Gage. Detective," he acknowledged, then nodded toward the victim. "Was the body found in this condition?"

"The bag had been intact. The park ranger opened it."

"Why on earth would he do that?"

Jim removed his wire-rim glasses and rubbed his eyes with his forearm. "Thought it was filled with garbage and planned on taking multiple trips to dispose of the contents."

Dr. Chen shook his head in disgust, his thin lips a tight line. He knelt in the sand, careful to prevent further granules from rolling into the plastic. "She suffocated," he said quietly.

"You mean she was put into the bag alive?" she asked for clarification.

"It would appear so, but the crime lab will need to go over the bag to confirm it," Dr. Chen said. "See her discoloration?" The victim appeared bluish, almost purple. "No oxygen. No sign of strangulation, and no blood in her eyes or ears to indicate it, either. I can give you a better answer at the autopsy." He glanced at his watch. "I have three autopsies scheduled this morning, but I'll postpone the afternoon schedule to fit her in."

"Thanks, Doctor Chen. I appreciate it."

"I'll have her on the table at two."

Carina nodded, caught Jim staring at her, his face unreadable. "You going to join me?" she asked.

"We'll see how far my team can get with the bag. We're backlogged as it is."

Not a surprise. Contrary to popular television, most evidence wasn't processed until a suspect was apprehended and a court date set. The wheels of justice also turned the cogs of the laboratory.

Carina forced herself to stare at the victim's face while Dr. Chen and Jim prepared her for transportation to the morgue. She was so young. Eighteen, maybe. Was she a college student? There were two universities within spitting distance of the beach. Or maybe she was still in high school.

She thought about her baby sister. Well, Lucy wasn't a baby anymore. She was a high school senior and smart enough to go to just about any college she wanted. Their parents wanted her to stay close to home; Lucy desperately wanted to move away. But college campuses were dangerous and Carina found herself siding with her parents on this one.

Fourteen years ago she wanted the exact same thing as Lucy--to get out from under her parents thumb. But that was before she'd decided to become a cop. Before she realized how truly dangerous the city could be. Before she realized that justice wasn't always swift, that the system didn't always work.

That some murders would never be solved.

She turned away from death and stared again at the Pacific Ocean, unconsciously wrapping her arms around her waist. It would be temperate today, as virtually every day in San Diego. Here on the coast, the cool morning breeze loosed a few strands of hair from the French braid she wore when on the job. The tide was receding, the waves small and playful, pulling back. The shells and rocks reflected the sunrise behind her, the ocean still dark and mysterious. A pair of early morning joggers, a man and woman, ran on the packed sand.

Did they have a crime scene on this quiet, clean beach? Or had Jane Doe been dumped?

She voted for dumped, but she asked the experts.

"Dump is my guess," Jim said. "There's no sign of struggle, but the scene's been contaminated." He visually scanned the area to confirm his hypothesis.

Carina followed his gaze to the parking lot adjacent to this stretch of beach. The highway on the other side was just beginning to bustle with morning commute traffic. Dozens of small, insanely expensive homes lined the opposite side of the road, and a few hundred yards north was a beachside shopping district with several popular restaurants and a bar that catered to the college crowd which, even on a Sunday night, wouldn't have closed down until the state mandated 2 p.m.

That didn't mean the body hadn't been dumped before two, but from Carina's college days as well as her years on patrol, she knew this beach saw heavy traffic until the wee hours of the morning. Certainly someone would have seen a body-sized bag being tossed onto the beach.

Besides, most body dumps were done when no one was around, to minimize the chance of being caught. Though Carina didn't rule out the possibility that the girl had been left earlier, logic put it between three and five in the morning. Commuters hit the road early, and by 5:30 traffic steadily passed only a hundred feet away. Sunrise had hit about thirty minutes ago.

"Do you know when she died?" she asked.

Dr. Chen glanced up at Carina from his position next to the body. "Lividity isn't fixed, and it's obvious she's been moved. Her body temperature is 86.3 degrees. But I'm not sure how being wrapped in the garbage bags would effect the loss of heat." He glanced at Jim.

"I'll do some research on it," Jim said. "I'm thinking it would slow it down, but not more than half a degree." Dr. Chen nodded. "That would indicate she died four to twelve hours ago, but I'd put it closer to four to eight hours because rigor mortis hasn't completely set in. There's still some movement in her larger muscles."

Carina made notes. Ten p.m. to two a.m. Sunday night. He killed the girl somewhere else--in a car? The woods? Someone's house? A secluded part of the beach? She dismissed that last idea simply because there were no secluded areas on this stretch of the coast, and the police routinely patrolled the area because of the nearby college.

Someone kills her, puts her in their vehicle, and transports her here, to a public beach, where her body would most certainly be found sooner rather than later.

"Arrogant," she muttered.

"Excuse me?" Jim asked.

"The killer. Arrogant. Dumped her body where we'd most certainly find it. Doesn't think he'll be caught, thinks he's smart." "Dusting off your psych degree, Carina?" Jim teased.

She rolled her eyes and smiled. Jim knew she'd taken all of one psychology class and had never graduated from college.

She walked over to the uniformed officers and instructed them to canvas the area. "Start with the houses across the street. See if anyone noticed something unusual after ten last night up until five this morning. A suspicious car, unusual noise. People on the beach. Then hit the shops up the street when they open, focusing on any place that is open past eight pm, clubs and bars in particular."

She'd walked back to Jim and Dr. Chen when she heard a car turn into the gravel parking lot. Her partner, Will Hooper, jumped out and strode across the sand toward them.

Jim shook his head. "Asshole," he muttered.

"Give it a rest, Jim."

"Sorry, Kincaid," Will said with a guilty grin as he approached. "I didn't hear my beeper go off."

"What's her name?"

"Come on, you woke me at five-thirty this morning. Just because you rise before the sun doesn't mean all of us like to suffer." Forty and divorced, Hooper enjoyed playing the field. He was also a good cop, a veteran, and Carina trusted him with her life. He'd taught her how to play hardball in a male-dominated profession, and never once hit on her. Next to her brothers, he was her best friend.

"And? You live ten minutes from here. Did your precious car throw a gasket?"

"Okay, okay. Her name is Monica. And she lives up in Carlsbad, it took me time to get down here."

Before Will and Jim could really get into a testosterone warm, Carina filled her partner in on what they'd learned. She looked back at the dead girl and noticed something unusual around her mouth.

"Doctor Chen, what's that?" She knelt beside Jim and gestured toward a thin, pale yellow substance around the edges of the gag.

"Lipstick?" Will said. "Not that you would know about that." He tugged on her braid.

Carina ignored him. In the increasing light, the gag--a black bandana--almost seemed to shimmer. "I couldn't say." Dr. Chen frowned.

Jim took out a swab from his kit and wiped the area around Jane Doe's gag, but nothing appeared to come off. He popped the swab into a sterile tube and closed it. Leaning close to the dead girl's face, he breathed deeply, frowned. Taking prongs he attempted to remove the gag. It was then that Carina noticed the bandana wasn't tied. The end was wrinkled, as if it had at one point been tied in a knot, but now it flapped free.

The gag would not budge.

"Glue."

"Glue?" Carina and Will repeated simultaneously. "He suffocated her then glued the gag onto her mouth?" Carina added.

Jim shook his head. "I don't think so. I think he glued her mouth shut then suffocated her."

# # #

He'd first killed twelve years ago.

The victim wasn't human, wasn't even a mammal. But he remembered the day with vivid nostalgia as the day he gained a mature self-awareness.

He'd been sitting on the steps waiting for his mother's friend to leave so he could go inside and watch cartoons. Jason Porter ran past, toward his own two-story house on the corner, the one with the broken fence. Two big kids ran after Jason and tackled him right there on the sidewalk. His head hit with a dull whack on the cement and left a smear of blood, which dripped down Jason's face as one of the boys pulled him up and shook him back and forth so his head flopped.

The big kids shouted bad words at Jason, pushed him down again, but Jason jumped up and ran quickly down the street. The bullies were surprised and raced after him, but Jason got inside his house before they caught up.

He watched the bullies throw rocks at the door until Jason's mother came out, a steak knife in her hand. She used some of the same bad words they'd used at Jason. "Tommy, you touch my son one more time and I'll cut off every one of your fingers, don't you forget it!"

The kids ran off, laughing.

Jason's mother slammed the door and he was alone again, except for a butterfly that came into the yard. It flew from one dying flower to another, searching for something it couldn't find, black and orange wings pumping up and down. When it finally landed on a wilted petunia near him, he leaned forward and captured the creature in his fist. It fluttered against his closed hand, the insect's little body moving frantically.

The screen door slammed behind him and he jumped.

"You can go back in now, kid," the man said as he walked down the stairs.

"When my daddy comes home he's going to kill you," he said.

The man laughed as he got into his truck and drove away.

He pouted and thought about what Jason's mom said. Maybe next time that man came he could cut off all his fingers.

Something caught his eye on the sidewalk where Jason had fallen. Curious, he crossed the dry lawn and squatted. On the rough surface of the cement a layer of skin and some blood dried in the summer sun. He pictured Jason's bleeding face and the large scrape on the side of his head.

Pretty cool.

Something moved in his hand. He opened his hand just a bit and looked at the bug curled in his sweaty palm. He picked it up by a wing and it tried to fly away. Grabbing both the butterfly's wings, one in each hand, he watched the legs and antennae frantically reaching out, trying to get away.

He was fascinated by the struggle. So much movement but it wasn't getting anywhere.

Slowly, he pulled the wings from the body of the bug. One came off clean, but the other tore. The dying bug fell to the sidewalk, it's body jumping, squirming.

He stared, oddly fascinated and detached at the same time, until what remained of the butterfly stopped moving. It took several minutes. Peering closely, he realized it wasn't dead. He pushed it with his finger, it jumped once, twice, then stopped.

He picked up the pieces of the butterfly and brought it into the kitchen to find an old jar to keep it in.

# # #

The bug was not much more than dust twelve years later, but the old mayonnaise jar still rested on his nightstand.

It took him nearly two hours to remove all traces of the slut from his bedroom. He wrinkled his nose in disgust. He hadn't realized she'd be so messy. She'd shit in his bed and the smell was god-awful. Why'd she have to go do that? He'd taken her to the toilet several times a day.

He'd bought the sheets and blanket especially for the weekend, so he stuffed them into a 33-gallon trash bag. Heavy duty. What a joke. The slut had torn the first bag when she tried to get out and he'd needed to use three just to make sure she couldn't break them.

Every detail had been planned carefully. He washed her body, getting rid of any evidence of himself, though he'd taken great care all weekend. He wrapped her in the plastic bags so he could fully immerse himself in her death, at the last minute putting a blanket on top of her body.

Then he laid on her, holding her tight. She bucked beneath him, her body fighting for air, to escape. For a long minute he lost himself in an odd state of hot ecstasy and cold fear.

It really didn't take that long for her to die. In fact, it was rather anti-climatic. After two days of taking her to the brink of death and back, trying to figure out what made her scream and what didn't, her death was . . . boring.

She died too quickly and he was left unsatisfied. It made him mad. Next time he needed to think of something else, like maybe an air hole in the bag. Something he controlled. Or maybe he'd do it like the movie--except he'd wrap her in some sort of plastic wrap. Most of her, anyway. He'd have to think about that. It would certainly keep her clean. And if she shit, it wouldn't get all over everything.

He'd watched all those forensics shows on television and he was paranoid about them finding him with all their tricks. Otherwise, he would have used his hands. He wanted to, just like the film. Squeeze, release, squeeze, release. Give her just enough air, then cut it off. Make it last. Much more satisfying. At least, it looked more satisfying. He didn't try it with the slut. He had wanted to, but it was safer his way. Keep a barrier between them. Minimize contact. The plastic wrap idea might work.

He sprayed disinfectant around his room, scrubbed spots he could barely see, flipped his mattress. Put her clothes in the garbage bag along with the sheets.

Safe. What would happen if he'd left his DNA on the body? The police had no reason to take samples of his blood or hair. Didn't they need evidence? Something to connect him? At least that's what he picked up from television. If they had his DNA it wouldn't do them any good unless they had other evidence against him. Then they'd need a warrant and all that stuff. He'd never been arrested, so it's not like a computer would flash his name.

At first reality had been so much better than his imagination, but then . . . nothing. It didn't feel right. He must have done something wrong because when she died he didn't feel the power he was certain he'd have.

What could he have done different?

With that thought in mind, he drove thirty miles and looked for a neighborhood that had Monday trash pick-up. A quiet neighborhood where no one was out. He found a perfect one, where the trash cans were in an alley. He threw the sheets and clothes and everything the slut might have touched, into a half-full garbage bin.

He had thirty minutes to get to class, and the garbage truck had just rounded the corner.

Perfect timing.