LITMIR.BIZ

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shook her head. “Why must you torture the youngsters?”

      “Oh, that was nothing. You should have seen the hazing we got when I was coming up. These kids are so protected, the worst we can do is hassle ’em a little. We can’t get mean with them.”

      “Still, Fletch. You’re a leader now.”

      “Yeah, that’s me. The leader. Leaderman!” He put his hands on his hips and braced his legs apart, turned his head to the side in his best superhero pose. “I should have a giant L on my shirt.”

      “And a cape. Don’t forget the cape.”

      “Lieutenant Leaderman. I like it.”

      “I don’t know, Leaderman. You’d probably have to wear lederhosen or something, just to go with the theme.”

      “Screw that, Owens. I’m wearing tights and a cape, or I’m not gonna play.”

      “You are five. You know that, don’t you?”

      He smirked at her. “You have no idea.”

      The banter felt good, right. But it was time to be serious now. Sam snapped on nitrile gloves and followed Fletcher down the stairs.

      Fletcher turned off the goofball, turned on the cop. “You know some of the story, but I’d like you to give me your impressions based on what you see. Be prepared, it’s a bloody mess.”

      He swung open the door, and they went inside.

      The hallway was dimly lit. The windows were low and the space didn’t have much light. But it was surprisingly spacious, with dark hardwood floors and white walls. They walked past a kitchenette with brown granite countertops and stainless appliances into a decent-size great room with a large flat-screen TV and a relatively new black leather couch.

      “Someone spruced up this place,” Sam said.

      “Apparently, Cattafi. He likes to renovate in his spare time. Landlord was all for it—it will only improve the rental value for a new renter.”

      “Spare time? When I was in med school, spare time meant shoving in two slices of pizza while mentally rehearsing the vascular system and getting horizontal as quickly as possible for as long as I could.”

      “Horizontal, eh?” he said with a leer.

      “Sleeping,” she replied forcefully, but couldn’t help blushing. There’d been quite a bit of horizontal rumba while she was in med school, too, with her love, Eddie Donovan, away from home. He was gone now, but it wasn’t lost on her that Eddie was the reason she was standing here, in a blood-spattered apartment in Georgetown, her own house and new life, a new love, only a block away.

      Eddie had been an officer in Xander’s Ranger unit in the Army. Their shared loved for the man was an unbreakable bond between them.

      “Earth to Owens.”

      She came back to the apartment. “Sorry, Fletch. Daydreaming.”

      “If you’re ready, then...” He gestured toward the small hallway, and she stepped through into the living room.

      Fletcher wasn’t kidding. The place was a bloody mess. Dark stains were everywhere. The bar to the kitchen, the floor into the hall, the walls.

      “Someone went pretty nuts in here.”

      Sam shook her head. “It’s arterial spray. The velocity can be shocking. I assume this is Souleyret’s blood, since she’s the one who’s dead. She’s clearly missing quite a lot of it.”

      “That’s what it looks like. Keep going.”

      Sam stepped carefully, avoiding the bloody trail of shuffling footprints that smeared down the hallway. She hugged the wall, edged into the bedroom. Things were worse in here, the meaty scent of the blood intensified in the smaller space. She could see where Souleyret had bled out; she’d crawled across the small bedroom floor until she bumped up against the base of the bed. The rug was stained crimson, with a small, nearly bloodless impression in the middle. Sam could see the girl, curled up against the bed, arms around legs as she died. The bedclothes themselves were rumpled and stained with blood. The wall behind the bed was decorated with cast-off spatter in a morbid Jackson Pollock–esque pattern.

      “Where was Cattafi found?” she asked.

      “There. Other side of the bed. Like he fell off.”

      She moved carefully to the other side of the room. There was a lot of blood on the floor here, too, similarly spaced, with a bloodless impression. “He was half on, half off?” she asked.

      “Yes. Three great big wounds to his torso, the knife in his hand.”

      “Photos?”

      “Plenty of them. But first, tell me, what do you see?”

      She shut her eyes briefly and let the scene coalesce before her. Heard the screams of Souleyret, tried to envision the step-by-step that led to the great gouts of blood spread throughout the apartment. A bottle fly bumbled drunkenly past her ear. She opened her eyes, swatted at it. Amazing how the food chain supplemented itself. Less than twelve hours in and new lives were already springing up.

      “Conventional wisdom says Cattafi stabbed her in the living room. She managed to get away and dragged herself into the bedroom. He followed her, administered one last cut, then stabbed himself in the chest three times. He did leave a note.”

      Sam was already shaking her head. “No. That’s not it. Look.”

      She pointed to the floor, showed Fletcher a scrape in the trail of blood. A fuzzy footprint, barely discernible, with the heel and toe in the wrong spot to support his theory. “He was backing in here. Blocking whoever had attacked them from getting to Souleyret again. He was protecting her. When the blood’s run, you’ll find his is in the living room, too. There was definitely a third party involved.”

      Fletcher was looking at her like she’d just conjured water out of thin air. He knelt down, looked closer at the footprint. Walked it off mentally, stood with a grunt.

      “You’re right. Damn it. How did you do that? You saw the whole scene.”

      “I...” She stopped. He was right. What the hell had just happened? Was she suddenly psychic? Able to discern from the scene what had happened just by its proximity?

      A feeling of dread ran through her. No. She wasn’t. And she wasn’t reimagining the crime scene, either. She’d seen it before. Or one that looked damn close to it.

Chapter 10

      SAM WALKED THROUGH the crime scene once more, tracing the backward steps of Thomas Cattafi. Everything was muddled; the blood had dried in streaky brown swooshes, but now that she knew what she was looking for, she could clearly see his steps. It went that way sometimes; when the blood was fresh, it was hard to see exactly what had happened. That’s why it took so long to release crime scenes—good homicide detectives would come back two or three times to see how the scene changed as it aged.

      She thought about the files on her coffee table. The Hometown Killer stabbed several of his victims. Could he have struck again, so soon, this time in Georgetown? And was this the reason Baldwin wanted her on the case? He sensed yet another connection?

      No. She was reading into the crime scene, projecting all the horrors from the files she’d been reading the night before. It was all in her imagination.

      She dragged her attention back to Fletcher, who was visibly upset. “This is staged to look like a murder-suicide. The note, the blood being dispersed, everything. But it’s a setup. How did we miss this?”

      “Sometimes a zebra is a zebra,” Sam said. “And sometimes a zebra is an elephant in disguise.”

      He cocked his head. “Huh?”

      “Occam’s

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