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human foot in the woods. Her older sister Monica and her brother Waid were clearly up to their necks with their sister’s need for center stage.
    “You don’t even seem traumatized,” Monica said, texting her friend Carli while the three siblings were eating in front of the TV. “Finding a dead person—or even part of one—would make me hurl.”
    “I did hurl,” Tracy said, dipping her chicken into a pool of catsup. “It was totally gross. But I got to talk to the newspaper and Ms. Hatfield said that I can have a counseling session tomorrow. If I need it.”
    Waid rolled his eyes. “Some people have all the luck. I never get to miss any school. Both of you have crappy teeth,” he said, looking at his sisters. “So you get ortho. You have stupid dance, so you get that time off. Not me. I get nothing. I wish I could have found a dead body.”
    “Well, you didn’t,” Tracy said. “And you’re probably never going to. I’m the lucky one.”

C HAPTER 5
    T he Kitsap County coroner’s autopsy suite—Birdy Waterman’s undisputed domain—was in the basement of an old white house on Sydney Avenue adjacent to the courthouse, the sheriff’s office, and the other government buildings that hugged the side of the hill like barnacles. A new building across the inlet on a hill above Bremerton was being built to house the coroner’s offices. All had been designed to be state of the art. That was good. It was not a surprise to any civic-booster that progress had occurred across the water, and not in Port Orchard proper.
    Port Orchard, the Kitsap County seat, was tattered, bruised, and a little rusty around the edges. In truth, the town of about ten thousand had always been a lovely location in search of a better town. It had its bright spots—no one who lived there couldn’t name at least a half dozen places that out-of-towners simply had to visit when they came—especially in the summertime. There were good restaurants and antique shops along the waterfront, and it was in close proximity to Seattle. But what made Port Orchard almost cool was its slightly ratty seaside vibe that was just waiting for hipsters to discover it. It was a town along the shore without a salt water taffy stand or a bevy of shops selling dried starfish, brass portholes, and seafaring bric-a-brac that had more to do with Nantucket than Washington’s inland sea, Puget Sound.
    That was good too.
    Birdy could see all of that when she took the job, her first after medical school. She rented that little house on Beach Drive on a lease option before she fully knew that Port Orchard was destined to be the comeback kid of Kitsap County. It had to be. It was quirky and diverse. Traits Birdy loved. The town had, she liked to tell others, potential. When she told colleagues that she conducted autopsies in the basement of an old house, many were more charmed than horrified. Or at least that’s how they acted.
     
     
    After enrolling Elan in South Kitsap High School, driving to the coroner’s office and conferring with the staff upstairs, Birdy went down to the basement and changed into pale green scrubs and gloves. She retrieved the foot from the walk-in refrigerator, a space that was large enough to hold several bodies at a time. That morning, it was empty, except for that sad little maggot-infested foot. Birdy noted that Sarah had taken great care to ensure the evidence was protected during transport in an Igloo brand Styrofoam ice chest purchased from the Walmart on Bethel Avenue. She peered inside a second foam container. It held some soil and the sword fern that had been shading the dismembered foot where it had been discovered in Banner Forest.
    The foot was small and its very size saddened Birdy. She wouldn’t cry about it, but it pained her. She knew that someone was missing someone. There was a dinner table with an empty space. Maybe a classroom with a desk that sat vacant. Someone out there was missing the person who belonged to the