53

I'd expected the scene to be bad, because the last scene had been bad. But I hadn't expected this. Either our rapist murderer had moved to the bathroom for his second kill, or we had a whole new killer. I'd smelled the same hamburger smell as I walked through the house. Zerbrowski had given me little plastic booties to put over my Nikes, and handed me the box of gloves. He'd said something about the floor being messy. I'd never thought of Zerbrowski as a master of understatement.

The room was red. Red, as if someone had painted all the walls crimson, but it wasn't an even job of painting. It wasn't just red, or crimson, but scarlet, ruby, brick red where it had begun to dry, a color so dark it was almost black, but it sparked red like a dark garnet. I tried to stay cold and intellectual and look at all the shades of red, until I saw a piece of something long and thin and meaty that had been glued to the wall with the blood, like a piece of offal tossed aside by a careless butcher.

The room was suddenly hot, and I had to look away from the walls, but the floor was worse. The floor was tile, and that didn't absorb liquid. It was covered in blood, blood deep enough that it sat liquid and shining on almost the entire floor. The floor space was small, admittedly, but it was still a lot of blood for one room.

I was hugging the doorframe that led into the room. My feet in the little booties were still on the relatively clean tile of the area where the stool sat, a tiny room, with a vanity area, complete with double sink beyond. The master bedroom was beyond even that, but the bed was carefully made, untouched.

There was a small lip of marble that held the shallow lake of blood inside the final room. A tiny ledge of stone to keep the rest of the rooms clean. I was grateful for that tiny edge.

I looked at the walls again. There was a three-person, deep shower in the far corner. The glass doors were splattered with blood, and it had dried to a nice candy red shell. The shower stall wasn't covered as completely as the other walls. I wasn't sure why yet.

Most of the rest of the space in the room was taken up by a bathtub. It wasn't as large as Jean-Claude's, but it was almost as large as the one I had at my house. I liked my bathtub, but I knew it would be days before I'd be able to use it again. This scene would ruin that particular pleasure for a while.

The tub was full of pale blood. Blood the color of dark red roses left too long in the sun, faded to a shade of pink that never looked quite pink, but always as if it had meant to be a darker color. Pink bloody water filled the tub almost to the brim, like it was a cup filled up with punch. Bad thought. Bad thought.

Thinking about food or drink of any kind was a bad thing right now, a truly bad thing. I had to look away, stare back into the smaller rooms, catch a glimpse of the bed and the police still milling around the far room. None of them had volunteered to accompany me on the tour. Couldn't blame them, but I suddenly felt isolated. They were only three small rooms away, but it felt as if it were a thousand miles. As if, if I screamed now, no one would hear me.

I used the farthest doorframe to get to the vanity sink area. I leaned on the cool tile sink and ran cold water over my hand. When it was cold enough I splashed it on my face. There was no hand towel, probably it had been bagged and sent to the lab, where it would be checked for hair and fiber and stuff. I untucked my T-shirt from my jeans and wiped my face dry. I came away with a few dark stains. The remnants of last night's makeup. I looked into the wide shining mirror, glaring bright in the overhead lights. I had dark smudges of mascara and eyeliner under my eyes. Waterproof really isn't. It's more like water tough, but not proof. I used the hem of my T-shirt to dab at the black marks, and got most of it. I also ended up with black stuff on my shirt, but it didn't seem to matter.

Zerbrowski looked in at me from the doorway. "How's it going?"

I nodded, because I didn't trust myself to speak.

He grinned suddenly, and if I'd felt better I would have dreaded his next comment, but today I was too numb. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. Because for anything to matter I could not have gone back into that room, and I had to go into that room. So nothing mattered. I was empty, and quiet, and there was nothing.

"Who was the girl this morning? We've got a pool going. Some people think it's your best bud Ronnie Sims. Personally, I don't think so; she's still hot for that professor guy at Wash U. I'm betting on the blond wereleopard that's always at your house. Which is it?"

I think I just blinked at him.

He frowned then and stepped into the little room. "Anita, are you okay?"

I shook my head. "No, I am not okay."

His face was all concern, and he came close enough, almost took my arm, then stopped himself. "What's wrong?"

I stayed leaning on the sink, but pointed backwards with one hand, not looking where I was pointing, not wanting to look.

He glanced back where I was pointing, then his eyes flicked, very quickly, back to me. "What about it?"

I just looked at him.

He shrugged. "Yeah, it's bad. You've seen bad before."

I lowered my head so I was staring at the golden faucet. "I took a month off, Zerbrowski. Thought I needed a vacation, and I did, but maybe a month wasn't enough."

"What are you saying?"

I looked up into the mirror, and my face was almost ghost pale, my eyes standing out like black holes in my face, the remaining eyeliner making my eyes larger, more compelling, more lost than they should have been. What I wanted to say was I don't know if I want to do this anymore, but what I said out loud, was, "I thought the bedroom scene was bad, but this is worse."

He nodded.

I started to take a deep breath, but remembered in time about the smell, and took a shallow breath, which wasn't nearly as soothing to my psyche but better for my stomach. "I'll be okay."

He didn't argue with me, because Zerbrowski treated me by guy rules most of the time. If a guy says he'll be okay, you just take him at his word, even if you don't believe it. The only exception is when lives are at stake, then the guy code can be broken, but the man that you broke it with will probably never forgive you.

I straightened up, hands still death-gripping the sink. I blinked into the mirror a couple of times, then went back for the far room. I could do this. I had to do this. I had to be able to see what was there, and think about it logically. It was an awful thing to ask of myself. I'd finally acknowledged that. Acknowledged that seeing things like what lay in the next room were soul-destroying. Acknowledged and moved on.

I was back in the bathroom door. Zerbrowski had come with me, though, standing just behind me. There really wasn't room to stand in the doorway together, not comfortably.

I looked at the room, at the walls with their coating of blood and gore. "How many people were killed in here?"

"Why?" he asked.

"Don't be coy, Zerbrowski, I don't have the patience for it today."

"Why?" he asked again, and this time there was a note of defensiveness in his voice.

I glanced back at him. "What is your problem?"

He didn't point at the carnage. In fact for a second, or two, I thought he was going to tell me to mind my own business, but he didn't. "If Dolph said why, you'd just answer him, not argue with him."

I sighed. "Dolph's shoes hard to fill?" I asked.

"No, but I'm damned tired of repeating myself when I know that nobody makes Dolph fucking repeat himself."

I looked up at him and felt a smile creep across my face. "Well, actually, I make Dolph repeat himself, too."

He smiled. "Alright, alright, maybe you do, but you are such a fucking pain in the ass, Anita."

"It's a talent," I said.

We stood in the doorway and smiled at each other. Nothing had changed in that small horror chamber. There wasn't a drop less of blood, or an inch less of gory bits plastered to the walls, but we both felt better.

"Now," I said, still smiling, "how many people were killed in the bathroom."

His smile slid into a full grin. "Why do you ask?"

"You bastard," I said.

He wiggled his eyebrows above the rims of his glasses. "Not what my mom says, though you're not the first to speculate."

I half laughed and knew that I'd lost. "Because, Zerbrowski, there are only two full walls in that room, both of them are so thick with blood and heavier bits that it's like two kills, one at one wall, one at the other."

"What about the bathtub?" he asked.

"The water's pale. I've never seen anyone bled out in a bathtub, so I don't know if the water would be this pale, or if it would be darker. But my gut tells me that no one was bled out in the tub. They may have been killed in the tub, but most of the blood is on the floor and walls."

"You sure about that?"

"No, like I said, I've never seen anyone bled out in a bathtub before, but I'm also wondering why the tub is so full, almost to the brim. You can't fill most tubs that full; they've got that little hole that stops it from overflowing. This one is so full that you couldn't even step into it without sloshing water all over the floor."

He watched my face while I talked, then his gaze slid away to look into the room beyond, then to the clean section of floor we were standing on.

"I'm right about at least two people being killed, aren't I?"

He had control of his expression now, and met my gaze. "Maybe."

I sighed, but it was more frustration now. "Look, I've worked with Dolph for years, and I like him. I respect his work methods, but damn it, Zerbrowski, you don't have to play it as close to the chest as he does. I've always hated playing twenty fucking questions. Let's try something new and different. I ask questions, you answer them."

He almost smiled. "Maybe."

I fought an urge to yell. I spoke very calmly, very quietly. "At least two people were killed, slaughtered against the walls." I forced myself to turn back and look at the two walls in question again. Now that I had another human being to talk to, and he'd made me a little angry, I could think again. The walls weren't literally painted with blood. There were spots where the tile showed through, but the tile was a medium brown color, so that at first it looked worse than it was, and God knew, it was bad enough.

I turned back to Zerbrowski. "Okay, two kills one against each wall. Or at least they were sliced open, up, whatever, against each wall." I looked at the tub again. "Are there bits of bodies in the tub?"

"Dolph would make you go fish."

I stared up at him. "Maybe, probably. But you're not Dolph, and I'm not in the mood."

"We left the bits in there special for you, Anita. No joke." He held up his hands. "You're our monster expert, and if this isn't a monster, I don't know what is."

He had me there. "It's a monster, Zerbrowski, but is it a human monster, or something else? That's the sixty-four-billion-dollar question."

"I thought it was sixty-four-thousand-dollar question," he said.

"Inflation," I said. "Do you at least have any long gloves, or something?"

"No long gloves on me," he said.

"I fucking hate you," I said.

"Not the first to say it today," he said, and he seemed tired again.

"I am going to track blood all over hell and back."

He fished under the sink and retrieved a garbage bag. "Put the booties in here before you step out of the room."

"What can I possibly learn by fishing around in that mess?"

"Probably not a goddamned thing," he said.

I shook my head. "Then why should I do it?"

"Because we held the scene for you. We didn't drag that damn tub, just in case we spoiled some arcane piece of monster shit, that you would have noticed, and we would have thrown away."

"Arcane," I said, "what, Katie been reading the big grown-up books to you again?"

He smiled. "The faster you do this, the sooner we can all get the hell out of here."

"I'm not stalling," I said, even as I knew I was.

"Yeah, you are, and I don't blame you."

I looked into the next room, then back at Zerbrowski. "If I don't find some really nifty clue, I am so going to kick your ass."

He grinned. "Only if you can catch me."

I shook my head, took a shallow breath, and stepped over that last bit of doorway.

54

The blood closed up around the plastic bootie, not quite to the top of it, not quite rolling over onto my shoe, but close. Even through the plastic, through my shoe, I could feel that the blood was cool. Not cold, but cool. I wasn't sure if it was my imagination or not. I didn't think I should have been able to feel the blood through the bootie and my shoe. But it felt like I could. Sometimes my imagination is not an asset at a crime scene.

I slid my foot forward, one hand still on the door frame. I wasn't sure that the plastic booties would be slippery in this much liquid on a tile floor, but I so didn't want to find out the hard way. There were two things I didn't want to do in this room. One, was fall on my ass in the pool of blood, two, was put my hand in the bathtub. I had to do the second, but I would be damned if I did the first.

I eased my feet forward, slowly, cautiously, and kept my fingers on the doorjamb as long as possible. Actually the room wasn't that large, and it wasn't that big a reach between the door and the tub. I got a death grip on the edge of the tub with my glove-covered hands, and when I had both my feet planted as steady as I could get them, I looked down at the water.

It was like some kind of red soup. I knew it was mostly water, but the color . . . I kept thinking of the cups you use to dye Easter eggs. It looked like a great big cup for dyeing Easter eggs, and just like sometimes happened if you didn't get the mix right, it wasn't exactly red, or pink, but both. I concentrated on the thought of Easter eggs, the smell of vinegar, and better times than this.

The water seemed to swirl, heavier than it was. Probably illusion, but I suddenly had this image of something floating right below the surface. Something that would pop up and try to grab me. I knew it wasn't true. I knew it was just too many horror movies, but my pulse was in my throat, my heart thudding.

I glanced back at Zerbrowski. "You guys don't have any rookies to do this?"

"How do you think we got the first piece out?" he asked.

"That would explain the uniform that was throwing his guts up in the bushes as I came through."

"It's his first week on the job."

"You bastard."

"Maybe, but no one else wanted to put their hand in there. When you're finished looking, the techies are going to pump the water out and filter it for evidence. But you get to see it first. Tell me this wasn't a lycanthrope kill, Anita, tell me, and I'll tell the media. It'll quiet down the witch hunt."

"But not the hysteria, Zerbrowski. If this is a second killer, then we've got two of the worst psychos I've seen in St. Louis. I'd love to prove it's not a shape-shifter, but if it's not, then we've got other problems."

He blinked at me. "You'd really be happier if it's the same shape-shifter?"

"Traditionally two separate killers slaughter more people than just one."

"You still think more like a cop than a monster expert, Anita."

"Thanks." I turned back to the tub, and suddenly I knew I was going to do it. I wasn't fishing deeper than the gloves. Too fucking unhealthy, but if I could find a piece with the shorter gloves, I was going to do it.

The water was cold, even through the gloves. I reached down, the line of cold, bloody water creeping up my skin, and with my hand less than halfway in, I hit something solid.

I froze for a moment, took a shallow breath and ran my hand down along what I'd touched. It was soft and solid at the same time, meaty flesh. I came to bone, and it was enough to grip, and raise it free of the water. It was what was left of a woman's arm. The bone showed pinkish white as the water streamed away from it. The end that had attached to the shoulder was crushed. There were man-made tools that would do that kind of damage, but I doubted anyone would have gone to the trouble.

I set the arm aside and went back to where I'd found it. My hand sunk in a little farther this time, and I pulled out a nearly meatless bone. It didn't look like a piece of person, so I didn't think of it that way. I just looked at it as if I'd found an animal in the woods and was trying to figure out what had eaten it. Big teeth, lots of crushing strength. Very few real predators had this kind of bone-cracking strength, but most lycanthropes did. I doubted that some hyena had escaped from the zoo to rampage in a suburban bathroom.

I let the bone drift back into the water, slowly, easing it down, because for some reason I really didn't want it to splash on me.

I turned away from the bathtub, walked carefully to the doorway, stripped off the gloves, threw them in the sack that Zerbrowski held open for me, leaned against the doorjamb, removed the booties, threw them into the garbage sack, stepped out of that awful room, and kept walking until I hit the bedroom.

The air seemed cleaner, more breathable here.

Zerbrowski followed me out, and it was Merlioni who said, "She did it, didn't she?"

"Yep."

Merlioni made a sort of crowing sound. "I knew it, I won."

I looked at him, then at Zerbrowski. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"

Zerbrowski didn't even look embarrassed when he said, "We had a bet going on whether you'd actually fish around in the tub."

I sighed and shook my head. "You are all such unmitigated bastards."

"Unmitigated, ooh," said Merlioni, "if you use big words to insult us, Blake, we'll never figure it out."

I looked back at Zerbrowski. "It's a shape-shifter. I don't know if it's the same one. The first vic was done in her bed. Was the second?" He nodded. "This was in the bath, and there's at least two bodies cut up in the bathtub."

"Why two?" Zerbrowski asked.

"Because the pile is too damn high to be only one woman's body, especially since he ate parts of it."

"You say 'he,' like you know."

I shook my head. "I don't know, but I'm assuming male, because you don't find many women willing to do this kind of shit. It happens, but it's rare."

"We actually got a witness that the woman who owns the house and another girlfriend were seen entering the residence at about 2 A.M." Zerbrowski had his eyes closed, as if he were quoting. "They appeared drunk, and there was a man with him."

"You have a witness?" I asked.

"If the man who brought them home is the shape-shifter, and not part of what is in the bathtub, yeah."

I hadn't thought about that. "He could be in the tub. By the way, why is the water so deep, why isn't the overflow valve working?"

"Our rookie says a piece of body has been stuffed into the valve."

I shivered. "No wonder he freaking threw up."

"I lost on that one," Merlioni said.

"Lost on what?" I asked.

"Most of us bet you'd be sick."

"Who bet I wouldn't be?"

Zerbrowski cleared his throat. "Me."

"What did you win?"

"Dinner for two at Tony's."

"What did you win for me fishing in the tub?" I asked Merlioni.

"Money," he said.

I shook my head. "I hate you all." I started for the door.

"Wait, we got one more bet," Merlioni said, "who was the chickie on the phone when Zerbrowski woke you?"

I was about to let loose a scathing comment, when a voice from the door stopped me. "Haven't seen anything this bad since New Mexico?"

I turned to find my favorite FBI agent in the doorway. Special Agent Bradley Bradford smiled and offered me his hand.