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.
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 razor. Your team went to the most logical conclusion because that’s what the scene was meant to present. What exactly do we know about Amanda Souleyret?”
Fletcher caught the tone in her voice. “Not much. We just took her body out of here an hour ago. Why?” he asked slowly.
“Do you know where she’s from?”
Fletcher’s dark eyes were troubled. “We don’t know much at all. Just the basics. It’s early days in the investigation. I figured her family can fill us in.”
“I’d like to be there. To talk to them, I mean.”
“Sam, what aren’t you telling me?”
Sam ignored him. She bent, looked closer at the small breakfast bar. “Here,” she said quietly. “It started here.”
Fletcher nodded, ran a hand across his chin. He hadn’t shaved and the hairs rasped against his palm. “That’s what my blood spatter analyst said, too. First strike left that lovely castoff.” He pointed at the ceiling. Spots of blackened blood speckled the white. “I’d say whoever killed her was in a rare temper.”
Sam could envision the knife, gliding silver through the air, an overhand arc. Landing with a thunk into the woman’s neck, the arterial spray shooting. Souleyret’s screams, if she had screamed, would have been cut off as quickly as they started. And then he’d stabbed her again and again, driving her back into the bedroom, where Cattafi had tried to defend her, had put himself in the killer’s path.
She admired him for it. It would most likely cost him his life, but at least he’d die a hero. A waste, either way.
“Tell me what you know, Sam.”
“I don’t know anything, Fletch. For a moment, the scene seemed familiar. Just to satisfy my curiosity, when we finish up here, let’s stop back at my place. I’ll take a look at my files, see what’s niggling at me about this.”
He took her word for it. She tucked the odd feeling of familiarity away. She’d look at it later. There were other questions that needed to be answered. Most importantly, what was an undercover FBI agent doing in the apartment of a Georgetown University medical student?
She took a deep breath, trying to clear her head. Smelled something off, something close. Deeper than the tang of blood and the effluvia of dead bodies. Sweet, almost flowerlike, but not. She couldn’t place it, had never come across the scent before. It wasn’t pleasant, and it wasn’t a natural part of the crime scene, she was sure. It smelled a bit like overripe honeysuckle, but sharper, with some mint, perhaps, both scents overlaid with a sickly rot that made her gorge rise.
Where was it coming from? She saw nothing unusual, or out of place, except for the copious streaks of blood.
“Fletch, come here. Do you smell anything?”
Fletcher breathed in deep. “Blood and gore and carpet cleaner. Maybe some old pot smoke. Bacon grease.”
“Nothing flowerlike? Like old flowers left to mold in a vase of water?”
“Like the way patchouli smells? I’ve never liked it, but I can’t say—”
“No, that’s not it.”
Fletcher came closer, sniffing. “Ugh. Yeah, I smell it now. What the hell? It wasn’t here earlier.”
Sam edged to the breakfast bar, wrinkled her nose as the smell grew stronger. She looked closer at the bar. Runnels of blood had come off the counter, streamed down the paneling. There was a break in the blood, almost as if a ruler had been placed in the down flow and the blood had run over it in a perfect line.
“Do you have a Maglite?” she asked.
“Sure,” Fletcher replied, handing her the flashlight he’d stuffed in his jacket pocket.
She shone the light on the edges of the counter, then down into the paneling. In one small area, about twelve inches across, the blood dribbled into nowhere, just plain disappeared. There was an edge here, a break in the wood. It was almost indistinguishable from the other panels—it looked like a normal seam where the pieces met. She reached out and pressed the edge, and a panel popped open. The scent gusted forth, and she stepped back, gagging.
“Christ, what is that?”
Sam pulled the waist of her T-shirt up to cover her nose. She flashed the light into the small space. Saw a silver handle. Using her gloved hand, she pulled it open.
And immediately began backing away again.
Son of a bitch.
“Fletcher, alert HAZMAT. Now.”
His head jerked toward her. “What is it? What’s in there?”
“It’s a wine refrigerator, but the power’s been cut.”
“Let me see.”
“Don’t—”
He stepped around her. “What is this stuff? Some sort of science experiment?”
Sam grabbed his arm and pulled him backward, toward the front door. “Without examining it closely, I can’t say for sure. There’s a bottle labeled Vibrio cholerae.”
At his blank look,
