The man who’d introduced himself to them as “Sam” twenty-­five years ago hadn’t looked like a serial killer. That had just been a terrible stroke of luck.

Barb Bonifacio has tried her best to move on from that fateful night Lorelei died and everything changed suddenly and irrevocably. It isn’t easy to do, especially living in Seaside, where memories of her best friend are everywhere. For instance, the particular stretch of beach she’s standing on now has a clear view of Wonderland’s infamous skyline, and Wonderland is where they all met Sam.

She forces herself to look away from the amusement park in the distance. The woman she’s interviewing deserves her full attention, and she holds her phone closer to Edna Sparrow’s chin so her voice memo app doesn’t miss anything.

“From a distance, I thought it was a piece of driftwood,” Edna Sparrow says with a shudder. “But it wasn’t. Not even close.”

Barb nods, inwardly stifling a yawn. It’s not that the discovery of a detached foot on the beach isn’t interesting, but Barb’s become a bit desensitized to stuff like this, especially since she started working freelance for the Chronicle. It’s Seaside. Macabre stuff happens here all the time.

“I sat right over there on that picnic table, drinking my morning coffee and watching the sun come up like I always do.” Edna points to a spot closer to the water, just beyond the yellow crime scene tape. “Then O’Henry starts barking and digging at something in the sand. Turned out to be a shoe. I didn’t think much of it at first. Random objects wash up on this beach all the time. There’s something about the direction of the tides and water flow at certain times of the day that causes things to float toward—”

“Right,” Barb says, hiding another yawn by fake-­coughing into the crook of her arm. “And when did you realize it wasn’t just a shoe?”

“When he dropped it at my feet and I picked it up.” Edna shudders again. “My finger touched something goopy and I looked inside it and then—”

“Screamed bloody murder,” Eileen Sparrow cuts in. Barb had almost forgotten that Edna’s identical twin sister is standing nearby. “She screamed so loud I could hear her from the damn porch, and you know we live halfway up the hill.”