'Didn't know you fished,' Monk said.
Liz glanced up at him. Her dirty-blond hair was tied back off her neck, and her level gaze was somber in the moonlight. 'Fly-fishing,' she answered and moved her flashlight toward the shadowy form.
Captured in its yellow glow was the bloated face of a child who appeared to be Asian. Long black hair, swirling in the water, marked her as a girl.
Monk peered down at her. He could not see her legs; though soaked with water, her wool sweater appeared dark green. As her hair swirled again, Monk caught the glint of what might have been a silver barrette.
'Who found her?' he asked Shelton.
'Samoans. A bunch of them were sitting on the rocks, drinking beer.'
Which figured; in Monk's reckoning, they were about the only folks scary enough, or maybe just dense enough, to hang out here in the dark and cold. Monk's knee had begun to throb.
'How long she been in the bay, you think?'
Shelton peered at the body with narrowing eyes, as if trying to see the child beneath the bloated mask. 'Two days, maybe.'
Beside the victim, the criminologist studied her for signs of trauma. In terms of external evidence, it was all he could accomplish now, and perhaps ever: a floater in the bay would have all sorts of stuff on it, from seaweed to the residue of toilets, and there would be little way of telling where any of it came from. Far better if she'd been wrapped up in a blanket and dumped in Golden Gate Park.
Monk looked up again. 'How long dead?' he asked Shelton.
'Not sure. Maybe about the same.'
'Any guess on cause?'
'Not yet.'
Monk stared down at the victim. More quietly, he asked, 'Think it's her?'
Shelton considered this. Monk did not need to explain: two afternoons ago, in a crack-infested section of the Bayview District, the nine-year-old daughter of Cambodian immigrants had vanished after school. She had stayed late for extra help with English; she had left alone; and as of now, her teacher was the last person who claimed to have seen her. In the photographs shown on television, the girl, named Thuy Sen, appeared grave and delicate.
'I'd say I hope not,' Shelton answered, 'but then she'd just be someone else's daughter.'
Turning from the body, Monk gazed out at the sloping hills of the Bayview District, their light and shadow some distance beyond the stadium. 'Why,' he wondered aloud, 'would Cambodians decide to settle in Bayview?'
'It's like Bogart said in Casablanca,' Liz responded wearily. 'They must have been misinformed.'
* * *
After Liz took charge of the body, transporting it to the Hall of Justice, Monk had gone to his office and begun calling the plainclothes cops who were searching for Thuy Sen.
The lead cop was in a sports bar in the Marina District. Above the din of voices and the Giants game, he told Monk where things stood.
They had done it by the numbers—cruised the neighborhood, searched her house, broadcast her description to operations, called hospitals, interviewed her teacher and, of course, her father, mother, and sister. 'You know how it is in the Bayview,' the cop told Monk. 'Ninety-nine percent of the kids just decide not to show, or Mama lets 'em run around loose. Maybe nine or ten o'clock she'll get curious about where the kid might be. But Cambodians are different.'
From blacks, you mean, Monk thought but did not say. 'The parents have any ideas?' he asked.
'Nope. Last time they saw her she was heading off to school with her twelve-year-old sister. Sis's job was to walk her to school every morning, and home every afternoon. This time she didn't—she seems pretty much of a mess. You can see the parents staring at her—they don't need to say a word.'
Monk found himself studying the picture on his desk, his wife and their two daughters. 'How are they?' he inquired. 'The parents.'
'Mom's jittery and anxious, can't sit still. Dad's, as they say, inscrutable. But they say they had no problems with Thuy Sen—no acting up, no conflicts, no hanging around with drug dealers or bad kids on the street. Her teacher agrees; as far as she knows, the girls keep pretty much to themselves.'
'What does Sister say?'
'Not much,' he answered, 'except that they took the same route every day from home to school. We've been knocking on doors to ask if anyone saw her. Nothing yet.'
In the bar, Monk heard a ragged chorus of cheers—the Giants, he guessed, had just done something good. 'When she left for school,' he asked, 'did they say what she was wearing?'
'Yeah—a plaid skirt, Mom says. And her favorite green wool sweater.'
* * *
By the time Monk caught up with Liz Shelton, the victim was on the autopsy table, her eyes shut, her naked limbs rigid and pitifully thin under the harsh light of an overhead lamp.
Monk gazed at her. 'So?' he asked Shelton.
'No evidence of a beating, no obvious indications of brain damage. The only bruises seem to be postmortem.'
