Immediately—quicker than immediately if that was at all possible—he knew. Knew. With a certainty that was as inexplicable as what he did.

Now he understood the background chatter he hadn’t quite recognized when he had walked in. It had been the scent of familiarity. He knew this work. It was him.

Him.

Jake stood there, the minutiae of the scene humming in his skull. He knew what had happened. How it had happened. How long it had taken.

The world was gone—just gone—and there was no sound except for the howling of the child. The screams of the woman on the floor. Jake heard the celery-bite crunch when her ribs were kicked in. He heard the snap as her jaw broke when she was hit with the pommel of the hunting knife that would be used to skin her. He listened to her screeching above the sound of her skin coming off her body. And her gurgled intimate prayers for it all to stop. For death to come for her.

And then, just as quickly, it was gone. He was back at the threshold and a voice off to his left made a joke. Someone laughed. Jake was jolted out of his work, out of himself, and he turned.

A big trooper with a shaved head had the tail end of a smile hanging on his lips.

Jake kept himself from yelling but made sure everyone in the house heard him. “Does this look fucking funny to you, asshole?”

The trooper, whose nametag identified him as Scopes, locked his eyes on Jake. The look on his face was half resentment, half embarrassment.

“Do you know what happened here?” He waited, and the house went silent. Everyone stopped what they were doing. “A woman was skinned alive. She was held down, forced to watch a little boy mutilated while the fucking kid probably broke the sound barrier with his screeching. And he bled to death before his murderer was finished with him. He would have twitched a lot at the end. Then the motherfucker dropped the kid to the floor like a broken toy and kicked the woman’s ribs in. While she was gasping like a fish, trying to find some breath to pray or scream for help, he scalped her. Then he probably winded her again, and she almost lost consciousness. And while she was sinking away from the world, he sliced all the meat off of her face. Then he waited. And when she woke up, he probably let her scream for a few minutes so he could get a nice memory-image to jerk off to later. Then, because he liked the sound of her voice too much at this point, he held her down with his foot and sliced all the skin off of her while she went through degrees of agony that would take your brain apart. So if you find something even remotely funny here, I am personally going to take you outside and beat some fucking sense into you and if you think I am not serious,” Jake took a step toward Scopes, a good half-head taller, and easily the biggest man in almost every room he entered, “say something just a little bit stupid.”

Scopes dropped his eyes. “I didn’t—”

“Shut the fuck up. I don’t want an apology. I want you to get the fuck out of my sight. And if you decide to build up enough balls to come after me later, liquored up and full of rage, you have an open invitation. Are we clear?”

“I’m sorry.” His face went a little pale, then shifted to a deep red that showed the veins in his neck.

“Go do something useful and I’ll consider this forgotten.”

Scopes nodded and grudgingly went outside.

Jake turned, looked at Hauser. The sheriff’s eyes were locked on the bedroom door and his skin had gone pale, greenish.

“You okay?” Jake asked, trying to be the other half of his personality.

Hauser still looked green, although he was starting to get his bearing back. The sheriff waved him away. “I’m sorry about Scopes. We all deal with stress in different—”

Jake shook his head. “Forget it.”

Hauser swallowed, his lips a tight line that barely moved when he spoke. He swallowed again, trying to breathe through his mouth. The house smelled of metal, blood, shit, and fear.

Jake wanted to turn back to the bedroom, to the violated bodies on the thick pile rug. Back to the work. But that little voice in his head was chattering away now, rattling off the unifying factors in this case and the other one. The first one. The one that had made him decide to do this.

Hauser cut into his head. “The house is owned by Carl and Jessica Farmer and from what the neighbors tell us, they rent it out when they travel. Right now I assume these, um—” he paused, turned his head consciously away from the room of the dead—“people are—were—renters. We don’t know their names. Not the woman or the child.”

“He’s her son.”

Hauser looked at Jake and his eyes narrowed. “How do you know?”

“I just do.”

Hauser started back up. “According to a neighbor, the Farmers are sailing in the Caribbean. They go every fall and winter and there’s always new people coming and going.”

Jake looked around, took in the art, the antiques, the expensive fabrics. The neat order was in stark contrast to his father’s morbid cave down the beach. “It doesn’t look like they need the money. There’s twenty grand in Aubusson cushions in the living room. Why would they rent it out?”

Hauser shrugged, pulled the back of his hand across his mouth again. “I don’t know. The rich are different.” He paused and looked over Jake’s shoulder, his eyes peering to the bedroom. “So far, none of the neighbors have seen any renters or heard a child playing. Maybe the woman and…her child just arrived. Maybe they were the renters.”

“You checking the Farmers’ bank account?”

The sheriff nodded. “If rent was paid by check we’ll have something tomorrow. Two days if it’s an out-of-town bank.”

“No purse? Mail? Prescription bottles in the bathroom?”

Hauser’s blank expression slid back and forth as he shook his head. “No purse. No wallet. No luggage. Nothing distinguishing, nothing personal found.”

“Clothes?”

Hauser shook his head. “No kid’s clothes. No clothes for a woman that size. Or age, if you’re right and she is the mother. Without her…skin, it’s hard to tell. Could be his grandma or—”

Jake shook his head. “She’s the right age. Good musculature, not much subcutaneous fat.” What about the other things you saw? the little voice asked from the dark.

A woman of about sixty-five, primped and perfect in a once-blonde pageboy haircut, came over. She was thin and wearing one of the antistatic spacesuits that Jake had seen on hundreds of crime scenes. Hauser introduced her as the medical examiner, Dr. Nancy Reagan. “No relation,” he added very matter-of-factly and Jake hoped he wouldn’t turn out to be one of those dumb cops who had somehow slid into the job because of family influence in the area.

“Is the FBI officially involved?” Reagan asked pleasantly, like a snake greeting a mouse.

He thought about the woman behind him, sprawled out and glued to the carpet with her own blood. “Yes.”

The ME’s smile went a little flat and she said, “Do I look incompetent to you, Special Agent Cole?”

“It’s not a question of competence, it’s a question of experience.” Jake slipped back into character. “You mind if I have a few minutes in here with Madame X and the child?” he asked. “By myself.”

Hauser swallowed for what must have been the hundredth time in two minutes and nodded. “Sure. No problem. I give out tickets. Sometimes I see accidents. Drunk kids in fights in town. Killings? Sure, this is America, there’s enough of that shit to go around. Shootings and stabbings and beatings and drownings and suicides. But I have never even imagined that people do this kind of shit to one another. Not once.” He glanced over his shoulder and his Adam’s apple Ichabod Craned again. “Why would anyone skin a child? I can’t…I just…I don’t…”

Jake cut the sheriff off to prevent him from crying in front of his people. “I’d like Dr. Reagan’s photographer to stay with me. Shoot what I ask him to. On my own flash card. You can have copies, of course. I’ll also expect copies of your protocols.” The ME’s office had already gone through the place. Blood spatter patterns had been recorded, the crime scene cataloged by a photographer, and every surface dusted for prints or genetic evidence. But Jake wasn’t looking for the things that the ME would be interested in—or even able to see. What Jake Cole wanted was to reach inside the fear he felt pulsing through the house and speak to the dead with that part of him that he never really understood.