Last Dance, Last Chance

again.
    What they saw was so shocking they couldn’t believe it at first. There was no love-making—nor any life at all—inside. Pale light filtered in and cast shadows over two bodies. As their eyes adjusted to the dim light, they saw that there was blood everywhere.
    With their feet sinking in the beach sand, they ran clumsily toward their truck and drove to a phone.
    Sheriff Sumpter and Undersheriff Gene Niece led a crew of officers to the beach in Moclips. It was almost 40 miles from Montesano. The caravan of sheriff’s units driven by Sergeant Larry Deason, Detective Nick Johnson, and Deputy George Sepansky tailed Sumpter’s speeding vehicle. Even so, daylight disappeared as the sun dipped into the ocean.
    The body site was only a few hundred yards from the houses and mobile homes that huddled near the sea in the tiny town. It wasn’t easy to get to the driftwood hut. The investigators drove to the end of a narrow dirt road, and then they had to walk along a trail leading past a dump site for sawdust and shakes to the beach. Only the rising moon and their flashlights guided them. The Moclips River cut through to the sea near them, and the huge, jagged rocks marking Point Grenville were silhouettes against the last muted colors of sunset as they rose from the ocean to the north.
    Sumpter knew that the Moclips River was within feet of the boundary that divided his county from the Quinault Indian Reservation. There was a very good chance that the shelter and the bodies inside were actually on federal property. He would probably have to coordinate his probe with Indian tribal police and with FBI agents. He had worked with them before, and it made a difficult case easier.
    Even as the officers’ flashlights sent cones of light through the beach grass and brush that separated the overgrown path from the beach, a storm gathered in the ocean. High winds and torrential rain bore down on the investigators, and the surf crept closer to the driftwood shelter. The waves were black now, capped by snowy foam, and the warmth of the day’s sunshine was only a memory.
    Grays Harbor County’s prosecuting attorney, Curtis Janhunen and his deputy, David Edwards, were only 15 minutes behind the sheriff’s party, and they joined the men on the beach. So did John Siemers, a criminal investigator for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
    The weather and the dark night cast the whole crime scene into grim flickering shadows as they peered inside the pile of gray wood. It wasn’t a couple inside; they saw two young women who were obviously dead. They lay atop sleeping bags, the bags so saturated with blood that their life fluid had soaked through into the sand beneath.
    The taller girl was facedown, her hands apparently tied in front of her, her feet effectively hobbled by her jeans and panties, which had been pulled down around her ankles. She wore a plaid shirt, and it and her bra had been pulled up to her shoulders. Even a cursory exam showed them that she had been stabbed several times.
    The second girl lay on her side, her hands tied behind her with bloodstained twine. She was a tiny girl, with dark hair pulled into a ponytail. As with her companion, her clothing had been yanked both down and up until she was almost nude, her T-shirt and red-and-green plaid work shirt high above her breasts, her ankles pinioned by her jeans.
    Both of the victims had been gagged with strips of the plaid material sliced by a very sharp knife from their own shirts.
    As they listened to the roar of the surf and shouted to make themselves heard, the investigators commented that the gagging couldn’t have been necessary. Any cries for help would never have carried back to town, even though the lights of houses seemed close enough to reach out and touch.
    The smaller girl had been stabbed, too, again and again around the throat and chest.
    Oddly, no sign of a prolonged struggle was evident inside the cramped shelter. The girls’ hiking boots had been neatly placed upside down to keep them dry, and some wet clothing was spread out to dry. Their orangy-red backpacks had barely been opened, and their cooking utensils and food supplies were not disturbed. It looked as if they had arrived at the beach late at night and had been too tired and wet to do anything but change into dry clothing, crawl into their sleeping bags, and go to sleep.
    If their killer came upon them while they were swaddled in the cocoon-like sleeping bags, he could have immobilized