The Face of Death

training and observation, based in greater part on a willingness to become intimate with them. They sing to themselves, a song only they can hear, and you have to listen the way they listen if you want to hear the tune. The tune's important; it dictates the dance. The most important component is thus the most unnatural act: I don't turn away. I lean in for a closer look. I sniff them to catch their scent. I touch them with the tip of my tongue to catch their flavor. It has helped me capture a number of evil men. It's also given me nightmares and moments where I wondered at my own hungers: Were they mine? Or had I just understood too much?

'Barry is coming,' I tell Alan. 'It's his scene. It may not become ours, but let's proceed as if it's going to be. Callie, I want you to walk the scene with me. I need your forensic eyes. Alan, I want you to recanvass the neighborhood. Barry won't have a problem with that. Let's find out what the neighbors know.'

'You got it,' he replies, pulling out a small notepad from his inside jacket pocket. 'Ned and I will dig in.'

Alan has always called his notepad 'Ned.' He told me his original mentor said the notepad was a detective's best friend, and that a friend should have a name. He'd demanded that Alan come up with one, and thus Ned was born. The mentor was long gone, the name was forever. I think it's a form of superstition, Alan's version of a baseball player's lucky socks.

Callie squints at a black Buick that has just been let past the cordon lines. 'Is that Barry?' she asks. I stand up, and recognize Barry's heavy, bespectacled face through the windshield. I feel a kind of relief run through me. Now I could do something.

'I'd give you a hard time about the date you pulled me away from,'

Barry says as we approach, 'but you look like you're having a shitty night yourself.'

Barry is in his early forties. He's heavy without being fat, he's bald, he wears glasses, and he has one of the more homely faces I've seen--the kind of homely that becomes cute in the right light. In spite of these handicaps, he's always dating pretty, younger women. Alan calls it the 'Barry phenomenon.' Supreme confidence, without being arrogant. He's funny, smart, and larger than life. Alan thinks a lot of women find that combination of self- assurance and a big heart irresistible. I think that's just a part of it. There's a hint of unyielding strength in Barry that rolls through all that amiability like thunder in the distance. He's seen it all, he knows that evil is a real thing. Barry is a hunter of men, and at some level, right or wrong, that's always going to be sexy in an animal-scent kind of way.

I know his grumbling is all for show; we've lost track of who really owes a favor to whom, and in truth, neither of us really cares.

'Anyway,' he says, pulling out a notepad, his own Ned, ready now to get down to business. 'What have you got for me?'

'Ritual slaughter. Evisceration. An ocean of blood. The usual,'

I say.

I fill him in on what I know. It isn't much, but it begins the backand-forth rapport that works so well for us. We'll walk the scene and talk as we go, bouncing observations off each other, honing our conclusions. It might seem aimless to an observer, but it's method, not madness.

'Three dead?' he asks.

'Three that I saw, and I'm pretty sure that's it. Patrol cleared the house, and they didn't mention any other bodies.'

He nods, tapping his pen on the notepad. 'You're sure the girl didn't do it?'

'No way,' I say, emphatic. 'She didn't have enough blood on her. You'll see what I mean when we go inside. It's . . . messy. I'm also fairly certain that one of them was killed downstairs and then carried into the bedroom. Carried, not dragged. She doesn't have the strength for that.'

He looks toward the house, thinking. He shrugs. 'Doesn't really play for me, anyway,' he says. 'The girl doing it. What you described sounds like advanced killing. Not to say that sixteen-year-olds aren't doing some bad things these days, but . . .' He shrugs again.

'I sent Alan off to interview the neighbors. I didn't think you'd mind.'

'Nope. He's the man when it comes to that stuff.'

'So when can we go in?' I ask.

I'm anxious now, reenergized. I want to start looking at this killer. He glances at his watch. 'I expect the Crime Scene Unit here any minute--another favor you owe me. Then we can slip on our paper booties and get to work.'

I start outside the house. Barry and Callie wait, patient, listening. I examine the front of the home. I look up and down the street, at the homes on either side. I try to imagine what it would have been like in the daytime.

'This is a family neighborhood,' I say. 'Crowded. Active. It was Saturday, so people would have been at home. Coming here, today, was a bold move. He's either overconfident or very competent. Not likely a first-timer. I'm guessing he's killed before.'

I walk forward, moving up the walkway and toward the front door. I imagine him, moving up this same path. He could have been doing it while I was shopping with Bonnie, or perhaps while I was clearing out Matt's master- bedroom closet. Life and death, side by side, each one unaware of the other.

I pause before walking through the front door. I try to imagine him here. Was he excited? Was he calm? Was he insane? I come up blank. I don't know enough about him yet.

I enter the home. Barry and Callie follow.

The house still smells like murder. Worse now, as time has passed, and the odors have begun to deepen.

We move to the family room. I stare down at the blood-soaked carpet. The CSU photographer is busy taking pictures of it all.

'That's a hell of a lot of blood,' Barry observes.

'He cut their throats,' I say. 'Ear to ear.'

'That'd do it.' He looks around. 'Like you said. No blood trails.'

'Right. But all of this tells us things about him.'

'Such as?' Barry asks.

'He likes what he does. Using a blade is personal. It's an act of anger, sure, but on another level, it's an act of joy. The way you kill a lover. The only thing more intimate is using your bare hands. It can also be the way you kill a stranger that you love. A sign of respect, a thank-you for the death they're giving you.' I indicate the bloody room with a sweep of my hand. 'Bloodletting can be intimate or impersonal. Blood is life. You cut the stranger you love so you can be close to the blood when it starts flowing. Blood is also a path to death. You drain pigs of blood pretty much the same way. Which way did he see them? As pigs, or lovers? Were they nothing, or everything?'

'Which do you think?'

'Don't know yet. The point is, however he viewed them, there wasn't any doubt. You don't kill with a knife if you're conflicted. It's an act of certainty. A gun gives you distance, but a knife? A knife has to be used up close. A knife is also evidence that the manner of death is as important to him as the death itself.'

'How's that?'

I shrug. 'A gun is quicker.'

Callie is walking around the room, looking at the blood and shaking her head.

'What's wrong?' I ask.

She indicates a dark puddle near her feet. 'This is wrong.' She points at another pool off to the left. 'That's wrong.'

'Why, Red?' Barry asks.

'Blood-spatter analysis is a mix of physics, biology, chemistry, and mathematics. No time for a detailed course here, but suffice to say that physics, blood viscosity, and the carpet material itself tell me these two puddles are likely here by design.' She walks closer to us, points to the much larger blood patch near the entrance to the family room. 'Note the lines here.' She leans forward, indicating a line of blood that widens as it moves away from us, ending in a somewhat rounded head with jagged edges. 'See how it almost looks like a giant tadpole?'

'Yes,' I reply.

'You see this all the time on a smaller scale. Castoff spatter produces a long, narrow stain with a defined, discernible head. The sharper end of the stain, or the 'tail,' always points back to the origin point. This is simply a