Rainie arrived at Bethie's residence. Inside the hastily roped off perimeter, a young officer was guarding the scene, sipping coffee from Wawa's and yawning every two or three seconds. Rainie flashed her PI's license.

"Nope," he said.

"I'm working for FBI Agent Pierce Quincy," she countered.

"And I'm working for Mayor John F. Street. Fuck off."

"You kiss your mother with that mouth?" She arched a brow, then dropped her voice to deadly serious. "Hey rookie, go inside. Find Supervisory Special Agent Quincy and tell him Lorraine Conner is here."

"Why?"

"Because I work with him, because he personally called me to this scene, and because you don't want to start your day getting your ass kicked by a girl."

"Like I'm going to start my day taking orders from one – "

"Officer."

Both Rainie and the young officer jerked their attention to the open doorway. Of all people, Special Agent Glenda Rodman stood there, wearing the same stark gray suit from the day before, except as she'd also been dragged out of bed in the middle of the night, her dark hair was a bit more mussed around her face. Rainie thought the hairstyle was kinder, but mostly she was mortified at being caught in yet another losing battle.

"Special Agent Quincy has requested Ms. Conner's presence," Glenda informed the officer. "Do allow her in, and don't mind what she says. I understand that she's not a morning person."

"Oh, I like mornings just fine. It's people I can't stand."

"If you will follow me…"

Officer I'm-in-Charge grudgingly raised the police tape. In turn, Rainie flashed him a gloating smile, then immediately blanked her features before entering the scene. She had no sooner followed Special Agent Rodman into the foyer, when she was assaulted with the stench of blood.

She recoiled, caught herself, and for a moment, simply had to stand her ground. Special Agent Rodman had stopped as well. Her expression was patient, perhaps even kind. At that moment, Rainie understood just how bad it was going to get.

Blood was everywhere. Streaked across ecru-colored walls, splattered onto oil canvases, pooled on parquet floors and century-old silk carpets. In the foyer, the table had been toppled, the phone yanked out of its socket, and the answering machine dashed against a massive gold-framed mirror. Shards of glass riddled the floor, and the sweet smell of alcohol mingled with bodily fluids.

Jesus, Rainie thought. She couldn't get beyond that. Jesus.

Special Agent Rodman was moving. She led Rainie into the dining room, where crime-scene technicians were now dusting a gleaming cherrywood table for prints, while another pair of officers were rolling up the oriental rug to be shipped to the lab. Glenda paused again. She was providing a tour of the scene, Rainie realized. Giving discreet but effective highlights of events.

It would appear that the attack started in the foyer.

Given the spray pattern, the weapon was maybe a knife or blunt object. Elizabeth is ambushed. Elizabeth fights back. Elizabeth runs into the dining room. A gilded French lamp. Rainie saw it ripped out of the wall and flung across the room. The base bore a small round mark of blood and hair. His? Hers? She supposed it depended on who grabbed the lamp first. More spray patterns on the far wall. Someone had taken another solid hit, probably Elizabeth.

Bloody footprints on the oak parquet floor. Rainie and Glenda followed them into the Spanish-style kitchen, where a large butcher's block of knives had been overturned on the tiled counter. The smaller knives, paring knives, steak knives, had been knocked on the floor as someone – again him, her, who got here first? – reached frantically for the butcher blades. It had not gone well. More blood, smeared along the vast expanse of deep blue tiles, a larger print on the floor.

Rainie could see it now. Quiet, refined Elizabeth Quincy attacked, wounded, already dizzy from terror and blood loss, racing into the kitchen. Knowing she was overpowered and outmaneuvered. Desperate to even the odds. Then seeing her collection of knives. And making a desperate gamble.

Poor, poor, Elizabeth. Knives were always a bad choice for a woman. Blades required skill, strength, and reach, attributes better suited to a man. It was one of those things police officers got to analyze in case studies. Women who ran into the kitchen for a knife, almost always had it used on them instead. Bethie should have gone after a cast iron skillet. Something big and heavy that could punish an opponent without a great deal of accuracy.

Had she realized that as he caught her at the end of the counter? Had she considered her other options as she went down on the hardwoods, her bloody fingers scrabbling at the cupboard handles, desperate for support?

On the floor was a clear imprint of her hip and her thigh as she'd fallen on her side. But somehow she'd managed to fight him off, because the blood trail kept going. She had been tough. Or he simply hadn't wanted it to end.

"It's trickier in here," Special Agent Rodman murmured. "Follow the tape."

For the first time, Rainie noticed the masking tape forming a thin, zig-zagging line through the debris field. Smart, she decided, having once worked a large, complicated crime scene herself. By the time all was said and done, dozens of people would have walked through this house, searching for evidence and providing their individual areas of expertise. It would take weeks to sort it all out, and months to write it all up. Best to try and corral the intrusion from the very start, versus trying to sort out all the sources of contamination later, as she had needed to do.

Rainie tiptoed along the masking tape, following it into the hallway, where the burgundy runner carried wet splotches and the walls bore a cacophony of bloody handprints. The prints ran the length of the tight, claustrophobic space, an obscene version of sponge painting. Jesus, Rainie thought again.

"We think he did this postmortem," Glenda said.

"But the palm prints are too small to be his."

"They're not his."

" Quincy walked through all this?" Rainie asked sharply.

"Many times. At his own request."

They came to the master bedroom. Rainie didn't look at the bed right away. The ME and his assistant were standing over there and she did not want to see what they were studying that had already caused the assistant to turn an unnatural shade of green. She looked at the perimeter first. More shattered mirrors. Two lamps ripped from the wall. Another phone jerked from a nightstand. Pillows had been gutted, strewing feathers across the deep-pile rug. Perfume bottles had been shattered, leaving the horrible, cloying scent of flowers in a blood-ravaged room.

"Somebody had to have heard something," Rainie said, her voice no longer quite sounding like her own. "How could all of this go on without someone calling the police?"

"The previous owner was a concert pianist," Glenda said. "When he had the town house redone twenty years ago, he soundproofed the walls so he wouldn't disturb his neighbors."

"Who… who finally called the police?"

" Quincy."

"He was here?"

"He claims he drove here shortly after midnight, when he still couldn't reach his ex-wife by phone. He was worried about her safety, so he took a ride."

"He claims?" Rainie didn't like that phrase. "He claims?"

Special Agent Rodman wouldn't meet her gaze anymore. "There is a stained-glass window broken in the master bathroom," she murmured. "One theory is that the UNSUB broke into the house earlier in the evening, and surprised Mrs. Quincy when she came home."

"One theory?"

"This house is equipped with a state-of-the-art alarm system. It never went off."

"Was it armed?"

"We are working with the security company now to determine that information. They should be able to provide us with a record of the system's most recent activity."