Kitty stared at the nice man in the nice car, then ran back to the house to show her mom her new doll.

FIVEBILLIE ANN

Neither of us spoke in the car. Tom and I hadn’t said anything to each other since the Chief had spoken. Just those four infamous words.

It was a kid.

Now as I drove the car down South Brevard Avenue toward the spot where it met Tenth Street, Tom finally made the first sound to break the silence.

A deep sigh.

It wasn’t often we had cases involving children, but drowning accidents did happen from time to time in Florida. Usually, it was tourists coming down on vacation and running into trouble in pools or getting caught in a rip current in the ocean. Rarely, we had a shark bite, but that was usually not fatal.

Chief Doyle said the girl was already dead when she was pulled out of the water. Having children myself, it made me sick to my stomach. The coroner had declared her dead and something about her body was suspicious. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been called out there. We were needed because it was likely murder.

I killed the engine and looked at Tom. “You ready for this?”

He swallowed. Tom had a huge heart underneath all that joking and sarcasm. Often, I believed he tried to be funny just to hide how soft he really was. Calling him a gentle giant would be a cliché, but hey if the shoe fits, and it did.

“I guess I’m as ready as I will ever be.” I wished for a second I had asked Scott to come along, but he had another case he was finishing up his report on. I could have used him here. He was good at keeping his head cool in these types of situations.

I exhaled. “We’ll need a drink tonight.”

We got out and walked toward the police blockade. The forensic tech department was there in their white vans, and the place was crawling with people in blue body suits. Someone handed us plastic shoes and gloves to wear as we showed him our badges.

I spotted my colleague from the coroner’s office, Dr. Phillips. He was talking to someone, a young officer, when I approached him.

“Tom and Billie Ann. Just the duo I was hoping for.”

“What have you got?” I asked. I threw a glance toward the body by the side of the pond. It was covered by a white mortuary sheet.

Dr. Phillips pushed his glasses back on his nose and started to walk. I followed him. Tom stayed back and told me he would have a chat with the responding officer. I knew he had a hard time seeing bodies, and I didn’t mind him not coming. Even if I knew I was going to have nightmares for a very long time, there was no reason for us both to have them. Besides, I was the far more experienced one.

Dr. Phillips knelt down and pulled off the sheet so I could see the girl’s face. I bit back my tears as I saw her eyes staring blankly into the air.

“Oh dear God,” I said.

“As you can see, we’re dealing with a female body here. She has been in the water all night, probably longer, but no more than twenty-four hours I’d say.”

I swallowed, trying to remain calm. I stared at the young girl, then thought of my own daughter Charlene.

“Anything to identify her?”

He shook his head. “She’s barely wearing any clothes.”

“Did she drown?” I asked.

“That’s what I thought at first.”

Uh-oh. I didn’t like the sound of that.

“But…?”

He sighed, then pointed at the girl’s neck. Seeing this made me close my eyes briefly to compose myself. I had seen bruises like these before.

“Death by asphyxiation,” I said. “She was strangled.”

He nodded. “That would be my initial judgment yes. But of course, I can’t tell you with certainty until after the autopsy. I will have to open her up and see if she has water in her lungs, to determine if she was dead before she fell in.”

“Someone hurt her,” I said, “whether that’s what killed her or not.”

He exhaled. “Yes, and the bruises are very likely made by a rope or a cord of some sort that was wrapped around her throat from behind.”

I rubbed the bridge between my eyes. It was always worse when it was children. “All right. I need that autopsy ASAP,” I told Dr. Phillips. I stood up. In the meantime, it was my job to find out who this poor girl was.

SIXMARISSA

Marissa could hear her own pulse. It was pounding in her ears, making it impossible for her to hear anything else. She tried to listen to the chatter among the spectators as she elbowed her way through the crowd. Words like body and child were among those she heard, and they terrified her. She wanted to get closer to the pond, so she could see.

“Excuse me,” she said and pushed her way past a man. He grumbled something angrily at her, but moved aside.

“Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me.”

She continued till she could see the police blockade and the officer guarding it. Then she stopped. She didn’t want to get so close they might see her in the crowd. Instead, she stood on her tippy-toes, and soon she could see enough for her to realize that there were people in blue bodysuits crowding the area. She knew enough to realize that there had to be a body.

Her heart stopped.

Could it be her Emma?

She had been searching for her all over the house, and even in the attic. She had then taken her bike and ridden around the neighborhood, searching for her everywhere and also around the pond. But she had been nowhere to be found. All day and the entire night, she had looked for her everywhere. She had passed out when she returned home, before she was woken up by the sound of sirens and saw police car after police car arrive, along with an ambulance.

She had watched them from the house, heart throbbing, paralyzed, until she worked up the courage to approach the crowd.

“Excuse me, I was actually standing there,” a voice said behind her. “And now you’re blocking my view.”

Marissa turned to look at the woman behind her. She was short and stubby and wearing a red T-shirt that read:

IF YOU THINK I’M SHORT, YOU SHOULD SEE MY PATIENCE.

Marissa stared at her, confused. “I’m… I’m sorry.”

She moved to the side and found another spot where she could see. The area where she believed the body to be was covered by a screen, so she had to hunch down by the edge of it where there was a small crack. The crowd surrounding the pond was growing rapidly as news spread fast about the finding of a body. It wasn’t every day that type of thing happened in their quaint little town. This would be something the neighbors would talk about for years to come. Mostly the chatter was about the sight of a coyote or the one time someone claimed to have seen a black panther on the beach. Most people believed it had just been a big black housecat, but it was still a topic they discussed from time to time. That and then the rocket launches.

Please tell me it’s not my daughter.

Marissa could barely breathe as she watched a female police officer walk toward the body, and a man pull off the sheet. It was hard to see properly through the crack. She braced herself for it, told herself it probably was her daughter, and she prepared herself for the shock it would be to lose the biggest love of her life.

Marissa gasped lightly as she could see the color of the girl’s hair. She tried to move, yet she still couldn’t see much. She felt like someone was sitting on her chest, but as the sheet was removed completely, she slowly realized this wasn’t her worst nightmare.